Who is Javier Milei, Argentina’s presidential frontrunner?

Javier Milei is not only a former rock star, the owner of five cloned dogs, and a self-described «anarcho-capitalist.» He is also the front-runner in Argentina’s presidential election on October 22, leaving many Western pundits wondering what his candidacy represents.

Some commentators have described Milei as a «right-wing,» «far-right,» or «populist« candidate, and not without good reason. He has loudly supported populist politicians like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, and during a recent interview with the far-right broadcaster Tucker Carlson, he dismissed Black Lives Matter, LGBT ideology, feminism, and climate change as part of a global «socialist agenda.»

Others have argued that Milei is best understood as a principled libertarian, and they, too, have evidence to support their view. After all, he is a trained economist whose approach is grounded in the Austrian School methodology popularized by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. He developed his ideas under the mentorship of Alberto Benegas Lynch, whose Center for Liberty Studies helped to create and maintain Argentina’s tradition of classical liberal thought in the hostile environment of Peronism.

Finally, in contrast to populists like Bolsonaro, who notoriously threatened to use violence if he ever saw two men kissing on the street, Milei takes a live-and-let-live approach to many social issues, supporting both gay marriage and transgender rights.

Both sides of this debate assume that their respective positions are mutually exclusive. Either Milei is an individualist libertarian firebrand in the image of Ayn Rand, or he is a right-wing populist in the mold of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

In fact, Milei is both, and there is nothing particularly unusual or surprising about this combination. As John Tomasi and I document in our recent history of libertarian thought, The Individualists, libertarianism is an inherently flexible ideology, one that has taken both radical and reactionary forms over its nearly 200-year history.

In the nineteenth century, for instance, libertarians like Lysander Spooner and Voltairine de Cleyre were at the vanguard of a number of progressive social movements. Libertarians were radical abolitionists, crusaders for women’s rights, persistent critics of militarism and colonialism, and even, in some cases, opponents of exploitative wage labor and the private ownership of land.

By the mid-twentieth century, however, libertarianism started turning to the right. Faced with the common threat of socialism, libertarians in the United States forged an uneasy alliance with conservatives to fight against the New Deal at home and international communism abroad. The defense of economic liberty took center stage, and radical critiques of state capitalism and social hierarchy were relegated to the margins.

Thus, even if we conclude that Milei is a libertarian, that does not tell us much about how he will govern. While all libertarians are committed to private property, free markets, and limited government, those ideals are subject to an extraordinarily wide range of interpretations, allowing for moves in either a progressive or a reactionary direction.

Milei’s opposition to legal abortion, for example, is probably a minority position among US libertarians, most of whom believe that women have a right to sovereignty over their own bodies. But pro-life libertarians like Milei would argue that the unborn child has rights, too.

Similarly, many libertarians in the US support ending the «war on drugs» and restrictive immigration policies, which they see as examples of coercive state interference with people’s peaceful, voluntary choices. But Milei’s more conservative stance on these issues can also be rationalized on libertarian grounds, because the modern welfare state has ushered in a world where taxpayers sometimes must pay for other people’s choices. What if legalizing drugs and opening the borders means heavier taxes – which libertarians equate with greater coercion – for current citizens?

At the end of the day, it is relatively easy for a clever philosopher – or an opportunistic politician – to find a semi-plausible libertarian justification for almost any policy proposal he happens to favor. In Milei’s case, he has already given us every indication that he would pursue a libertarian agenda with a decidedly populist bent.

In the US, we got a sneak peak of what libertarian populism might look like in the «paleo-libertarianism« of Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. In the early 1990s, this school lent its support to racist politicians like David Duke, to a nativist (highly restrictive) immigration policy, and to the violent police suppression of criminals and «bums.» Such positions have enjoyed a resurgence since Trump’s presidency, even coming to dominate the Libertarian Party of the US.

Those who cherish individual liberty therefore should be cautious before throwing their support behind Milei. Yes, he is a libertarian; and yes, libertarians believe in individual liberty. But the real questions are whose liberty, and what specific policies the defense of that liberty entails. Milei’s answers might not be what many other libertarians (or anyone else) want to hear.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023. www.project-syndicate.org

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