Dallas Accord

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The Dallas Accord was a compromise between moderates and radicals at the 1974 Libertarian National Convention.

The result was that the 1974 Libertarian Party Platform was not to state explicitely whether or not the state was recognized as legitimately existing. The intent of the compromise was to make the Libertarian Party a suitable home for both minarchists (i.e. libertarians who advocate a small but existing government, or what Robert Nozick would call the "night-watchman state") and anarcho-capitalists (i.e. libertarians who believe the free market can effectively replace all government functions). In other words, the Libertarian Party was to serve as a "big tent" party wherein both radical and moderate libertarians could work together to further their shared goal of decreasing the size, cost, and scope of government.

Some claim that full adherence to this compromise lasted for decades, ending in Portland in 2006 with the inclusion of the following language: "Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property." This alteration was mostly the result of the efforts of the Libertarian Reform Caucus, an organisation which also cut the length of the platform down to one-eighth the length it was in 2004.Others note that it is impossible to abrogate this agreement as the Statement of Principles has language acknowledging that governments may not exist and that the Platform including is descriptive, not proscriptive, with anarchists seeing it as transitional in according with the Platform Preamble which acknowledges that the Platform statements are not the goal which remains a "world set free in our lifetimes."