The Contradictions of Javier Milei
Can you achieve liberal goals using authoritarian means?
Editor’s Note: This week marks the first 100 days of the Argentine president’s Javier Milei’s term in office. When he was elected, I texted my friend, today’s contributor Mario Šilar, and told him: “You are not dreaming! A follower of the Austrian School of Economics is now president of Argentina! This is really happening!” Mario is a lifelong libertarian, but he was not as happy as I expected him to be. Since then, the world has taken notice of Milei, and not only because of classic rock moptop, his provocative speech at the World Economic Forum three months ago, and his wielding a chainsaw while on the campaign trail. Milei also stands out because of his strict adherence — in his public statements, at least — to libertarian ideas. But while Milei speaks like a libertarian, he governs like a right wing populist, or better, a Latin American caudillo. I asked Mario to offer some reflections on the contradictions of Javier Milei, and to answer a more general question: Is it possible to achieve liberal goals through authoritarian means?
— Santiago Ramos, Executive Editor
I live in Spain, but I owe my education to Argentina, where I was born and where my mother and sister live. I teach philosophy and business ethics and, like Brazilian UFC star Renato Moicano, I have come to believe that the ideas of the classical liberal tradition—and even some aspects of libertarianism—constitute the most suitable framework for improving social life and human flourishing. More specifically, I mean the liberal-libertarian tradition that includes the Austrian School economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, as well as classical liberals like John Locke, Adam Smith, and Frédéric Bastiat. My political conscience was formed in the context of Argentine politics during the 1990s, during a period of economic liberalization, when I worked as an aide for a former government minister.
The current political situation in Argentina is one that I ten years ago I would never have thought possible. Today, president of the Republic is not merely a center-right administrator who believes in free markets and liberal ideals. In Javier Milei, Argentina has a president deeply formed by, and expert in, the liberal-libertarian tradition. We are now one hundred days into his presidency. Things might seem stable, but they are not. And I am worried they will soon get worse.
I became aware of Javier Milei in 2017, when several friends mentioned the name of a certain economist who, aggressively and unapologetically, defended many of the liberal ideas I stood for since my university years. From the beginning, my feelings toward Milei were mixed. His ascendance to the presidency of Argentina has only intensified my doubts.
The opinions I hear from friends and colleagues in Argentina are varied. Of course, some support Milei while others reject him. But things begin to look more complicated once you consider who supports Milei and who rejects him. Many of my anti-liberal friends (mostly anti-free market conservative Catholics) are supporting Milei. On the contrary, it is my friends who share liberal-libertarian convictions who are critical of Milei. It’s not just that they oppose several of his policies, which contradict his liberal-libertarian beliefs. Anyone not blinded by fanaticism is capable of accepting that politics involves compromise, pragmatism, and sometimes even openly accepting contradictions. It’s just that, in the case of Milei, these contradictions are especially sharp insofar as they punish the segment of the citizenry that has been the basis of his electoral support and that lifted him to power: The middle class.
For most of the last few decades, Argentina has been governed by the left-wing Peronist political party, which favors interventionist policies and promotes the growth of the public sector. There was a hiatus with the government of center-right Mauricio Macri, who governed between 2015 and 2019. The failure of the “Macri experiment” tells us a lot about what Milei is facing today. Because the memory of Juan and Evita Perón still looms large in Argentina, there is a prevailing conviction that “only Peronism ensures the governability of the country.” Macri was aware that in Argentina, the possession of legitimate political power did not imply having de facto power. Control of the administrative bureaucracies would vanish if he dropped in the polls, and on top of that, he was not a Peronist. Therefore, in order to keep popular support, Macri opted for a “gradualist” strategy, softening the measures of economic liberalization in order not to abruptly increase levels of poverty and social conflict. In retrospect, most analysts agree that “gradualism” is what doomed Macri. Indeed, under his watch, the citizenry continued to suffer the consequences of an ongoing economic crisis, with resulting increases in poverty and social instability, and loss of governability.
In the wake of Macri’s failure, many feared that Milei would need to adopt strong measures, so-called “shock therapy,” even at the risk of squandering his political capital. That is, it was feared that, to avoid the dangers of gradualism, Milei would cause an even worse evil: Social unrest, which would result from the dismantling of the state-run welfare system which, however dysfunctional, is foundational for many Argentine families. One might describe Milei’s dilemma as a trade-off between avoiding social chaos by adopting ineffective measures, or adopting effective measures at the price of compromising social peace. Milei the candidate promised the latter option. He promised to radically transform the country in the first hundred days of his government. But Milei the president has, so far, governed like a gradualist.
Milei’s gradualist measures are not having their expected impact, and poverty levels continue to rise. But then, why hasn’t Argentina exploded? How has Milei kept social unrest at bay? He has managed this because, in a somewhat sadistic move, Milei has been loading almost all the economic cost of the adopted measures on those who supported him the most: The middle class. The upper classes continue to benefit from their privileges and contacts with political power, and the lower classes continue to enjoy public aid and state assistance. There was a popular saying in the 1990s, during the years of center-right President Carlos Menem’s first term: “We are doing poorly, but we are heading in the right direction.” Milei seems to have adopted a similar attitude, albeit with a different set of policies. Despite the current discomfort, there is still confidence that Milei is leading the country in the right direction. Milei proudly declares that he is executing the most important fiscal and bureaucratic readjustment in modern Western history. According to him, and the polling he reviews, more and more people are putting their faith in the future, trusting in his capacity to pull Argentina out of its economic quagmire. However, as the current situation deteriorates, more and more citizens will question that optimism. More and more people are starting to wonder: “We are doing poorly, but ... are we heading in the right direction?”
The question of how all this will end can be answered in two ways. If the level of social and economic improvement is in tune with existing expectations, Milei could consolidate power as a charismatic leader, and his government will have a future. On the other hand, if the expectations of an economic improvement do not materialize, social unrest will compromise Milei’s ability to govern effectively, or at all.
Another element makes this poisonous situation even worse: The personality of the Argentine president. Indeed, the character of Javier Milei is not precisely that of a statesman concerned with harmony, consensus, and political stability. Milei often sounds like a right-wing populist, and his way of understanding politics in terms of friends and enemies owes less to the liberal-libertarian tradition, than to Foucault’s inversion of von Clausewitz: “Politics is the continuation of war by other means.” Neither Milei the media figure, nor Milei the politician, believe in the civilizing ideals of the public agora, where one’s ideological opponent is not an enemy, but a legitimate rival in a democratic contest.
On the other hand, other liberals in Argentina support not only Milei’s ideas but also his way of acting and his brusque personality, arguing that his hell-raising demeanor is the only way to dismantle cultural Peronism. For them, Peronism can only be defeated using its own language: Verbal aggression, oversimplification of the message, chicanery, insults, ad hominem arguments, etc. Their argument touches upon the heart of my interior conflict over Milei: Is it possible to defend liberalism through illiberal means? Can we defend the ideals of von Mises with the methods of Perón? Even if Milei is merely being tactical in his affronts, and not compromising his core beliefs, isn’t it true not only that “the medium is the message,” but that form often ends up transforming content? If a politician begins to talk like a demagogue, he will quickly become one.
Moreover, in modern politics, it’s common practice to distinguish a politicians’ public ethics from their private behavior. Therefore, we liberal-libertarians tend to reject simplistic moralism: It would be naive to think that if we had “saintly” rulers, political problems would disappear. Liberal-libertarians do not clamor for political messiahs. They understand that the fundamental elements of political order are the legal and institutional structures of a state, which channel social life in a context of democracy and freedom, and which may function independently of the morality of particular political actors. In this sense, one can have reservations about the personality of a political actor and yet not consider this figure a threat to democracy—as long as the institutions have enough resilience to withstand their onslaughts. However, today Argentina needs creating, from scratch, new liberal institutions and norms of governance. We are starting almost from zero. In this context, is the character of political actors irrelevant to the promotion of liberal institutions?
There are many signs that Milei sees himself as a political messiah. Journalist and author Juan González has recently published a book titled The Madman: Javier Milei, the Man Who Obeys His Dog (March 2024), where some rather alarming stories are recounted. Following the death of his beloved dog named Conan, whom he attempted to clone, Milei recounts that he began to have vivid conversations with Christ, and to have even seen Him. Milei asserts that “the Number One”—as he calls God—told him that, just as He had previously done with Moses, the Number One assigned him to a special divine mission: To enter politics to defeat the “Evil One,” and not stop until becoming president. There is also an Argentine medium named Melamed, who is a central figure in Milei’s life and is training Milei’s sister, Karina, whom the Argentine president calls “the boss.” Medium Melamed claims that she and Karina share the ability of “inter-species communication,” which allows them to talk with dogs, mosquitoes and even, as this medium claims to have done on occasion, talk with the Covid-19 virus.
Yet despite Milei’s personal faults, I fear something even more disturbing. I fear that Milei’s contradictions aren’t so much attributable to his peculiar personality, as they are inherent to liberalism itself. I fear that Milei is acting out unresolved tensions intrinsic to the principles of liberalism and libertarianism. Is it possible to transform society, and to support the principles of liberalism using established governmental structures as transmission belts? Wouldn’t this imply adopting top-down strategies, typical of social engineering, which the libertarian tradition abhors and considers doomed to failure? On the other hand, how can a “moral defense” of free market institutions be made without falling into naive moralism or the crude reductionism of politics understood in terms of a friend-enemy struggle?
Those are theoretical questions. But here is a more personal one: What do you do when a politician shares all of your political ideals and yet, something keeps you from supporting him? I found an answer in the story of Miguel de Unamuno, a great Spanish philosopher. As a young man, Unamuno felt torn between his faith and modern ideas like German idealism, atheism, and Protestant theology — ideas that undermined the naive and provincial Catholicism of youth. Unamuno could not resolve this crisis intellectually. Instead, he asserted his right to live out a “vital contradiction.” Unamuno decided that his heart would be Catholic, and his mind would be Protestant. Fortunately, Milei’s impact on my own psyche is much less momentous. Nevertheless, Unamuno’s “resolution” speaks to me, because I feel affection for Milei as a media figure, along with a powerful intellectual rejection of his government. My heart approves of him, but my mind rejects him.
At least, Milei still has time. In his latest statements, amid signs of social unrest, he has promised radical changes in the second half of this year. If, in that time, the people do not see a light at the end of the tunnel, or if there is no concrete sign that things are changing, then probably “the Milei experiment” will become the umpteenth chronicle of a death foretold in Argentine politics, only this time with the added drama that failure implies the virtual disappearance of liberal-libertarian ideas from the political arena. Just over a hundred years ago, during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, and before the civil war, Unamuno coined a phrase that in light of subsequent events would acquire prophetic overtones: Me duele España. “Spain hurts me.”
Argentina hurts me.
Nothing would make me happier than for my pessimism to be proven wrong.
This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.
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This is a very interesting article. As a Spaniard, I appreciate the use of Unamuno to convey the author’s emotions. Additionally, the subtitle ‘Can you achieve liberal goals using authoritarian means?’ is particularly apt. Overall, the article is very interesting. Great job.
Singapore achieved liberal ends through illiberal means.