The creed of laissez faire-individual liberty,inviolate rights of property,free markets,and minimal government-is virtually bound to be a radical one.That is,this libertarian creed is necessarily set in profound conflict with existing forms of polity,which have generally been one or another variety of statism.In this paper,we concentrate,not on examining or justifying the laissez-faire doctrines of various thinkers,but,given those doctrines,how these writers and theorists proposed to try to bring about their ideal polity.In short,having adopted a profoundly radical creed at odds with the ruling dogmas of their day,what,if anything, did these theorists offer as a strategy for social change in the direction of liberty?
We are familiar with how Marx and the Marxists met this challenge of how to proceed in the direction of a radical ideal.How did laissez-faire thinkers meet their own particular challenge,in some ways similar and in some ways quite different? In this paper,we do not presume to be comprehensive;we select several important laissez-faire intellectuals and groups of intellecluals,over the centuries, and see what solutions thev could offer to the oroblem of libertarian social chanee.-To their credit,the Marxists have spent an enormous amount of their time and energy grappling with problems of strategy and tactics, much more so than have ~laissez-faire thinkers.o n the other hand,the libertarians have not enjoyed the
luxury of having a readily identifiable social class to ordain as the preferred agent of change (the "proletariat"for classical Marxists;the peasantry for Leninists-Maoists,and the lumpen proletariat and the "student class"for the short-lived New Left in the United States of the late 1960s.)

Neither did the libertarians have the comfort of knowing that their triumph has been made inevitable by the "scientific laws of history,"and by the irresistible if murky workings of the materialist dialectic.
All new,radical ideas and ideologies begin necessarily with one or a handful of lone intellectuals,and so through history such intellectuals,finding themselves in possession of a radical political creed,have realized that,if social change is ever to occur,the process must begin with themselves.Most classical liberal or laissez-faire activists have adopted,perhaps without much thoughtful consideration,a simple strategy that we may call "educationism."Roughly:We have arrived at the truth,but most people are still deluded believers in error;therefore, we must educate these people-via lectures,discussions,books,pamphlets, newspapers,or whatever-until they become converted to the correct point of view.For a minority to become a majority,a process of persuasion and conversion must take place-in a word,education.
To be sure,there is nothing wrong with this strategy so far as it goes.All new truths or creeds,be they scientific,artistic,religious,or political,must proceed in roughly this way:the new truth rippling out from the initial discoverers to disciples and proteges,to writers and journalists,to intellectuals and the lay public.'
By itself,however,pure educationism is a naive strategy because it avoids pondering some difficult problems,e.g.,how are we to confront the problem of power? Do we have to convert a large majority,a narrow one,or merely a critical mass of an articulate and dedicated minority?And if we perform such a conversion, yhat will happen to the State?Will it wither away (or wither to an ultraminimal nugget)by itself,automatically,as it were?And are there one or more groups that we should concentrate on in our agitation?Should we invest our necessarily scarce resources on one more likely group of converts rather than another?Should we be consistent and overt in our agitation,or should we practice the arts of decep-
tion until we are ready to strike?Are we most likely to make gains during one state of affairs in society rather than another?Will economic,military,or social crisis benefit our movement or hurt it?None of these problems is an easy one, and unfortunately the general run of laissez-faire thinkers and activists has devoted very little time to considering,let alone solving,them.
In this essay,we consider some outstanding laissez-faire intellectuals of the past,and how they went about pondering the problems of social change.And, in particular,as intellectuals,what they thought the role of intellectuals (perhaps including themselves)should be in fostering such change.

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