Following Javier Milei’s upset in Argentina’s primary election, many publications have run hyperbolic headlines referring to the “far-right” candidate. (See here, here, and here.)
In typical fashion, mainstream reporting fails to delineate between libertarians, conservatives, and other species of right-wingers. (Not all libertarians consider themselves on the right; that’s a topic for another time.)
A more fitting description of Milei is that of a doctrinaire libertarian, albeit one who pays lip service to right-wing populists. After all, four of the man’s five dogs are named Milton (after Friedman), Murray (Rothbard), Robert (Lucas), and Lucas — he likes Robert Lucas, the founder of new classical macroeconomics, so much that he named two of his canines after him.
Neither progressives in the Unión por la Patria party nor conservatives in Juntos por el Cambio are all that pleased about Milei’s electoral success. Some believe that libertarians are ubiquitously ecstatic about Milei’s victory.
While this presumption is not unreasonable, it is not the reality.
Those who refer to themselves as “libertarians” range from classical liberals and freedom conservatives to left-liberals and anarchists; the spectrum of responses to Milei is as varied as those ideologies encompassed under the umbrella of libertarianism.
To assess where libertarians line up on the issue of Milei, I solicited comment from members of Students for Liberty (SFL), the largest international libertarian student organization. (Full disclosure: I hold a leadership position in SFL and have been a member since 2021.)
In the pro camp are those who appreciate Milei for his activation of the youth vote and disruption of the progressive/conservative dichotomy. Lautaro Soza Torrijos, an expatriate Argentinian and SFL’s national coordinator for Hungary, credits Milei with introducing young Argentinians to the “fresh ideas” of Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Friedrich Hayek. Soza Torrijos also applauds Milei for communicating to a broad swath of the electorate that Argentina’s economic troubles are a “consequence of the left-wing faction within his government rather than capitalism itself” — i.e., government failure, not the failure of free-market economics.
Other libertarians are less enthusiastic about Milei’s rhetoric.
César Baez, former SFL national coordinator for Venezuela and an intern at the Cato Institute, has trepidations about Milei’s affinities for certain right-wing leaders. As evidence of the Argentinian’s illiberal bent, Baez cites Milei’s support for Trump and the former president’s fraudulent stolen-election claims in 2020 and again in 2021, and his “full support for the re-election of [Brazil’s] President Jair Bolsonaro” in 2022.
Soza Torrijos regards Milei’s rise to prominence as reflective of the popular embrace of his libertarian ideals; Baez describes Milei’s victory as evidence of “a personalist phenomenon.”
While Baez acknowledges that there are many young libertarians who support Milei, he laments that Milei’s coalition is also full of right-wing populists. Baez points to Lula da Silva’s defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil as evidence that such a libertarian-populist coalition is ineffective to stem the tide of socialism in South America. In short, Baez regards Milei and his political coalition, La Libertad Avanza, as fundamentally reactionary, selling “itself as an alternative to everything the Argentinian knows.”
Keaton Powell, outgoing president of the University of Tennessee Libertarians and North America programs intern for SFL, shared with me a view that sharply contrasts with Baez’s.
Though Powell admits that Milei is “brash and bombastic,” he regards comparisons to Trump as lazy; in Powell’s view, such personality defects should “be largely irrelevant and unimportant in the macro context” of hyperinflation and corruption in Argentina. Powell praises Milei for his three-part policy plan: First, fiscal, labor, trade, and monetary reforms — reduction of public spending, flexible employment contracts, unilateral free trade, dollarization and full-reserve banking; second, pension and welfare reforms — privatization of public employees’ pensions to encourage private-sector employment; third, health-care and education reforms — privatization of health care and establishment of a school-voucher system.
Given Milei’s laissez-faire policy proposals, legislative record in the Chamber of Deputies, and trend toward Austrian economics, Powell believes Milei’s success in the primaries should be “greater cause for joy and hope” among libertarians.
Writing for the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Michael Peterson concurs with Powell: “Despite his populist rhetoric, Milei is a staunch libertarian.” In support of that statement, he references the following quote: “‘Liberalism,’ says Milei, ‘is defending the right to life, liberty, and property. The institutions of liberalism support private property, labor mobility, the division of labor, social cooperation, and free markets with limited state intervention.’”
Still, libertarians of an anarchist strain — Agorism, specifically — assert that political means are inconsistent with libertarian ends. One such Agorist is Ahmed Mlih, local coordinator for SFL at the University of South Florida. Responding to my request for comment, Mlih says that politicians cannot “ideologically change the course of government” because they all must “act in a manner consistent with upholding [state] control.” To Agorists like Mlih, Milei cannot really be an anarcho-capitalist and run for political office because, in their view, the state cannot be dismantled from within.
Clearly, the response from libertarians is a mixed bag. Even among the two camps —those who support Milei and those who oppose him — there are varying opinions. As the general election approaches, it will be interesting to see how libertarians of differing ideological persuasions react.