Rothbardian Javier Milei Takes Control of a Major Country
Three lessons from the Austrian economist Murray Rothbard on how American libertarians might think about Milei's Argentina ascension.
Fans of Austrian economist, major theorizer of anarcho-capitalism, polemical firebrand, and American libertarian movement founding father Murray Rothbard can take some cheer in the fact that it took the same amount of time after the publication of his most seminal work for a major nation to fall under the control of one of his followers as it did for his ideological enemy, the arch-communist Karl Marx.
Fifty years passed between the 1867 publication of Das Kapital and the 1917 fall of Russia via an armed revolution inspired by Marx. Now, 50 years after the publication of Rothbard's major 1973 manifesto For a New Liberty, self-declared Rothbard superfan (he named one of his beloved dogs, Murray, after him) Javier Milei has won in a free and fair election the presidency of Argentina in a 56–44 victory over his Peronist opponent Sergio Massa. As befits the major differences between voluntarist and peaceful libertarianism and tyrannical and violent communism, the Rothbardian rise to power took no bloody violence, unlike the Marxist takeover in Russia.
It would be delightful to hope that this electoral victory for an avowed anarcho-capitalist will presage a 21st century as influenced, via peaceful persuasion and fair election, by Rothbard as the 20th century was marred by Marxist revolutionary and post-revolutionary violence and oppression. However, it's definitely too early to predict the way Milei's administration will play out in Argentina or what its ripple effects across the globe might be.
But studying some of Rothbard's strategic and tactical thinking regarding the hopes for a national or worldwide libertarian revolution delivers three lessons about how American libertarians might fruitfully consider the Milei phenomenon.
Lesson One: It helps to delegitimize the state. The elements in Milei that lead many to, mostly mistakenly, label him as an Argentinian Trump are things that would almost certainly have delighted Rothbard in broad strokes, if not every specific. (Dressing up as superhero "General Ancap" might have struck Rothbard as a bit goofy and childish.) But that Milei was so willing to loudly and colorfully and angrily condemn leftists as shit and the state as a bunch of parasitic thieves would have seemed just right to Rothbard: He thought that for the masses to fully embrace libertarianism, the state must be demystified, delegitimized, and treated as utterly unworthy of respect and seen as mere organized banditry and slaughter.
Milei's style and behavior that many condemned as clownish, or even worse Trumpian, was right in the main of Rothbardian tactics: The state deserves obloquy, and it is part of the libertarian's task to remind the public of that as often and as firmly as possible. He'd have to tip his hat to Milei for saying on TV that in essence "The state is a pedophile in a kindergarten with the children chained up and bathed in Vaseline."
Lesson two: Politics is important, but it can falter if it gets ahead of mass education in libertarian principles. I am not Argentinian and am not an expert in Argentinian politics and culture. And while watcher of international libertarian movements Rainer Zitelmann writing at Townhall insists he has never "encountered such a strong libertarian movement as in Argentina," and notes that Milei got a majority of voters under 30, many Argentina watchers have some reasonable doubts that Milei's victory is a referendum approving the full set of Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist principles.
It's more likely the case that in an unprecedented crisis situation, the guy who seemed most believably eager to tear the whole dumb corrupt system to the ground had a good chance of winning, regardless of the detailed philosophic specifics of his program. As Juan David Rojas wrote in Compact, "In Latin America, recent right- and left-wing triumphs are more representative of a bias that favors outsider allure and anti-incumbent hostility, rather than a particular political orientation."
The Argentinian crisis is indeed severe; as summed up by Arturo C. Porzecanski in America's Quarterly, the nation is suffering "a dystopian economy undermined by runaway inflation, a deepening recession, widespread poverty and failing fiscal and monetary policies….Economic activity as measured by real gross domestic product will shrink by an estimated 3% this year, with per capita income likely to fall to nearly 15 percent below the level in 2011, the prior peak. The result: more than 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. That number was less than 7% more than a decade ago. At least half the population depends on benefits from government-funded supplemental income and job programs, and it is estimated that 6 out of every 10 Argentine children under the age of 18 live in households classified as poor."
The Washington Post had further grim details: "Argentina has seen 10 years without economic growth. During that decade, poverty rates shot up from 28 percent to more than 40 percent. Now, for the first time ever, even formal workers in Argentina's economy are below the poverty line. Inflation is nearing 150 percent. The peso has plummeted, prices change nearly weekly, and Argentines are forced to carry around large wads of cash just to buy groceries."
Thanks in part to Milei, many Argentinians have come to see that the past seven decades of mostly socialistic Peronism should make them mistrust capital controls, high tariffs, and top-down industrial policy. They remember that Argentinians used to be very rich before Peronism, and are very poor after it.
Milei's plan to manage Argentina, as will delight Rothbardians, includes widespread elimination of government agencies, huge spending and tax cuts, and giving up on the overly-inflated Argentinian peso by killing their central bank in favor of dollarizing the economy. (Economists in the Austrian tradition don't tend to think the Federal Reserve-manipulated dollar is the best-case scenario of sound money, but most would agree it's a better-managed fiat currency than Argentina's peso.) Milei is less of an orthodox Rothbardian in his opposition to legal abortion and some of his foreign policy commitments.
Rothbard believed that libertarian education and activism were needed to help prepare a nation in crisis to see libertarian solutions as a reasonable option. To the extent that the Argentinian people are more on board with Milei as an agent of disruption and less as an avatar of anarcho-capitalism, any short-term failures of his administration will make them turn next to the loudest guy promising change and away from libertarian principles that they likely have not yet fully grasped to begin with.
Lesson Three: One's beliefs about the future of libertarianism should not all be laid on the outcome of Milei's administration. Unlike Lenin or the Marxists in the Soviet Union, Milei is not a dictator. He works within a political and constitutional structure in which his Liberty Advances party has just seven of 72 seats in the Senate and 38 of 257 in the House. His program will face opposition not just in the legislature but likely in the streets from aggrieved labor unions. As explained by Pablo Trujillo Alvarez in National Review, "Milei has emphasized the importance of division of powers and intends to overcome congressional gridlock through nonbinding referenda and other democratic forms of political pressure."
Rothbard insisted libertarians ought to be long-term optimists about the future of liberty, as he believed libertarianism was the only political system that could allow a modern industrialized society to flourish and that people would thus inevitably embrace it. Thus, no specific set of historical circumstances, such as whether Milei succeeds in turning Argentina around quickly with Rothbardian policies, should dictate a libertarian's sense of optimism or pessimism about the future of liberty.
Rothbard's belief in the future of a libertarian revolution (within a properly conceived Rothbardian framework, although retaliatory violence against the state was permitted if done proportionately and without harming innocents, he never in his public statements considered armed revolution a realistic or prudent approach for libertarians in a nation that still had elections) was thus never dependent on any specific historical circumstances, though he insisted libertarian activists needed to be attuned to the specifics of the situation they faced and make intelligent strategic and tactical decisions based on it.
He'd advise American libertarians to cheer Milei when he does the right thing, but not to let their vision of the future of liberty be dependent on his achievements. Regardless of the outcome in Argentina, libertarians, as Rothbard wrote in 1971, "should remain of good cheer. The eventual victory of liberty is inevitable because only liberty is functional for modern man. There is no need, therefore, for libertarians to thirst maniacally for Instant Action and Instant Victory, and then to fall into bleak despair when that Instant Victory is not forthcoming." Milei may prove to be the linchpin of more electoral victories for radical libertarianism, or a premature blip. Neither, Rothbard would insist, settle anything definitive about the future of libertarian ideas.
