Established by Sam and Esther Dolgoff in 1945 at the behest of Grigorii Maksimov, the group held monthly discussion fora and social events in a rented Workmen's Circle room and served as a social center for a small, aging group of immigrant radicals whom the Dolgoffs knew from their work on Road to Freedom and Vanguard.
[3] In 1954, the Dolgoffs and anarchist Russell Blackwell formed the Libertarian League to supplement the Book Club.
[4] In their founding statement, titled "What We Stand For", the League suggested an alternative to the bipolar Cold War: a libertarian socialist society with a worldwide federation of free communities, cooperatives, and workers' councils.
Sam Dolgoff described their aims as anarcho-syndicalist society with anarcho-communist sympathies.The League hosted weekly political discussions and published Views and Comments.
Notably, core members of the group were librarians and printers, decidedly more professionalized than the industrial unionism for which they advocated.