Over the past few decades, mankind has watched helplessly as political power has expanded without limits. The aggrandizement of the executive branch, centralized planning, and governments’ habitual resort to purported “emergency” measures have constricted liberty, undermined voluntary cooperation, and brought about a sharp decline in economic prosperity. This trend leads citizens toward ever-greater subjugation to the State’s coercive apparatus—the very road to serfdom that Friedrich von Hayek envisioned in the midst of the Second World War. Regrettably, Murray Rothbard’s bold message in For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto has found little resonance in subsequent events.
More than half a century ago, the father of anarcho-capitalism observed how statism transcends every partisan divide, serving only to bolster the welfare-warfare-regulatory complex through the unholy alliance of big government, big business, and big labor. In such a bleak landscape, one might have assumed that Rothbard’s lesson would remain a dead letter. Yet today liberty appears to be blossoming again in the place where it would least be anticipated. The cradle of this libertarian resurgence is none other than Argentina, long crushed beneath the weight of Peronism and dominated for generations by collectivist doctrines and a suspicion of free markets. Its fortunes, however, have not always been thus.
Following independence in 1816, Argentina attracted successive waves of Italian and Spanish immigrants who could boast strong work ethics and a pioneering spirit. The presence of fertile stretches in the Pampas, a dynamic private sector, and tangible prospects for social advancement drew them away from the austere circumstances of their native lands. These homesteaders committed themselves with diligence, helping shape the character of their adopted nation while playing a pivotal role in catapulting Argentina to the forefront of the world’s richest countries. The zenith of its glory unfolded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, commonly known as the Edad de Oro—an era that parallels the United States’ own Gilded Age.
Buenos Aires’ entrepreneurs, aided by technical expertise and capital from British companies, spearheaded a privately financed infrastructure network that evolved into the largest rail system of the Southern Cone. In doing so, it fostered the urbanization of Argentina’s central provinces and invigorated trade flows between coastal hubs and the hinterland. Massive agricultural exports, modest tariffs, and direct foreign investments joined forces to ignite an economic miracle.
Throughout the years 1870-1914, Argentina’s GDP per capita more than doubled. Starting with fewer than 2 million inhabitants, the Latin American country soared to over 8 million; annual population growth rates averaged 3.4 percent, while annual GDP growth rates averaged around 5 percent. By then, Argentina’s income per capita almost matched that of Canada and Australia, exceeded that of France, Belgium, and Germany, and considerably surpassed the standards of living in Italy and Spain, the principal sources of its new citizens. But this memorable interlude, closely reminiscent of Rothbardian freedom, was coming to an end.
The season of minimal government interference soon gave way to a period in Argentine history known as the Década Infame. The infamous decade began with the military coup of September 6, 1930, which deposed the incumbent president Hipólito Yrigoyen. As the Great Depression caused global demand to collapse, Argentina’s elite sealed off the domestic market in a doomed quest for autarky. They raised protectionist barriers to curb reliance on imported manufactured goods, imposed price and wage controls, and established the Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina in 1935. This institutional shift would deliver the final blow to the remnants of the gold standard, cementing the State’s monopoly on money issuance and credit.
Matters deteriorated further when General Juan Domingo Perón attained power on February 24, 1946. Perón so deeply admired Benito Mussolini’s skill in “reconciling” labor and capital that he sought to adapt key elements of Italian fascism to the Argentine context. His dirigiste aegis marked the onset of sweeping State direction of the economy, along with welfare programs and the nationalization of strategic industries. Peronism exalted trade unions as the bedrock of a corporatist order promising “social justice,” yet eroded the middle class by favoring organized labor to the detriment of self-employed producers. Violations of property rights facilitated tyrannical abuse against anyone unwilling to enlist in the regime’s ranks. Dissidents either faced oppressive, confiscatory taxation or suffered persecution until their voices were silenced.
The restoration of democracy in 1983 brought few substantive changes to Argentina’s economy. Peronism and its left-wing variant, Kirchnerism, converged under the broader “socialism of the 21st century” umbrella, which cloaked itself in the guise of “democratic humanism” and “wealth redistribution.” Beyond merely adhering to Perón’s model, Kirchnerism embraced a far more pervasive idolatry of the Leviathan. During their twelve-year tenure, Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) orchestrated seizures of private pension funds, major firms, and household savings. The misdeeds persisted unabated: unrestrained money printing fueled inflation and provoked peso devaluation, official statistics were manipulated to conceal mismanagement, and Argentina forged diplomatic ties with socialist governments across the region.
Prior to the 2023 election cycle, any attempt to outline Argentina’s future would have amounted to an exercise in forecasting disaster. The country was mired in escalating debt and corruption, with no realistic hope of emerging from its prolonged crisis. An unforeseen phenomenon upended pundits’ predictions and reversed a trajectory once thought irreversible. The Austrolibertarian economist Javier Milei, who advocates for a radical rollback of State power, has achieved a significant rise within national politics. What might sound paradoxical has produced outcomes that invite scrutiny through Rothbard’s foundational arguments. Before turning to that analysis, it is necessary to understand Milei’s intellectual background.
The current president of Argentina devoted himself to a rigorous study of libertarian ideas, mastering the writings of Mises, Hayek, Böhm-Bawerk, Kirzner, Hazlitt, Machlup, and numerous others. As Milei recounts in his semi-autobiographical book The Path of the Libertarian, his first encounter with Austrian economics occurred during his teenage years. Engaging with Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics transformed his mindset and revealed the fallacy of strict mathematical constructs applied to human action. Reading Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State strengthened his conviction in praxeology.
Despite residual monetarist imprints, labeling Milei as a neoclassical scholar is at best misleading. In Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap (2024), he dismantled the neoclassical paradigm, arguing that its inherent flaws—such as presuming “equilibrium in perfect competition” and invoking “market failure” to rationalize government meddling—pave the way for collectivism and stifle growth. Similar to Rothbard, Milei’s outlook is rooted in Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy and hinges on methodological individualism.
Milei owes his exhaustive knowledge of Austrian economics to sustained dialogue with mentors like Jesús Huerta de Soto and Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr., who coined the definition of classical liberalism that Milei usually cites in his addresses:
The unrestricted respect for the life project of others, founded on the non-aggression principle and the defense of the rights to life, liberty, and property—whose fundamental institutions are private property, free markets unhampered by State intervention, free competition, the division of labor, and social cooperation, whereby success is possible only by serving others with better-quality goods at better prices.
This corollary overlaps with Rothbard’s libertarian creed as he sets it out in For a New Liberty:
The absolute right of every man to the ownership of his own body; the equally absolute right to own and therefore to control the material resources he has found and transformed; and therefore, the absolute right to exchange or give away the ownership to such titles to whoever is willing to exchange or receive them.
A later section examines the factors that allowed Milei to make libertarianism popular.
When he took office in December 2023, Milei confronted fiscal and monetary imbalances of catastrophic proportions. The Kirchnerist Alberto Fernández left behind a public debt amounting to 156 percent of the country’s GDP, and Argentina was on course for its tenth sovereign default. The Central Bank had negative dollar reserves on its balance sheet. The monthly inflation rate spiked to 25.5 percent, and annualized figures threatened hyperinflationary territory. Moreover, the poverty rate had increased to 55 percent, while 17.5 percent of the population lived in indigence.
Milei, who had campaigned for the presidency on a platform of drastic cuts to public-sector spending, deregulation, and tax reductions, explicitly recognized the dire situation in his inaugural speech, declaring, “There is no money.” He lambasted the political class responsible for the chaos and insisted that there existed no valid “alternative to fiscal adjustment and […] to shock.” Never before had a leader exposed the State’s predatory nature so forthrightly. Indeed, Milei has repeatedly presented himself as an economist offering counter-mainstream prescriptions, not a career politician. He holds politicians in contempt and, more fundamentally, regards the State as a large-scale criminal association that thrives on appropriating private resources and evading accountability—a diagnosis that Rothbard eloquently articulated.
How can a libertarian pursue his goals from the highest level of political authority? The answer is straightforward: he must halt government intrusion by downsizing its operational reach. The chainsaw Milei waves at campaign rallies symbolizes this intent, conveying a determination to break with the statist patterns that have impoverished Argentina. Milei’s first presidential decree authorized the abolition of several ministries, reducing the number from 18 to 9. He targeted the federal bureaucracy by dismissing approximately 37,000 government employees and eliminating nearly 100 secretariats and undersecretariats combined, as well as over 200 lower-tier administrative units. Shortly thereafter, he announced a wide-ranging executive order (the “Megadecreto”) aimed at slashing hundreds of regulations on rent and the labor market to restore economic competitiveness.
Milei trimmed the budget by 35 percent in real terms and balanced it one month after his inauguration. In turn, Argentina registered a fiscal surplus of 625 billion pesos in the first quarter of 2024. This reversal came as a surprise, given that no comparable surplus had been recorded since 2011. As Milei has consistently underscored, a zero-deficit stance is a non-negotiable pillar of his governing agenda. Rothbard himself denounced running deficits as an intergenerational theft and held that public debt ought to be repudiated.
The libertarian administration’s priority was to rein in runaway inflation. The Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, allowed the exchange rate to adjust freely and contained the resulting inflationary pressures by enforcing fiscal discipline, ending monetary expansion, and terminating Treasury-based financing of public expenditure. The specter of hyperinflation was dispelled within a year. By April 2024, monthly inflation had fallen to 8.8 percent; by June, it had dropped to 4.6 percent, and the third week of that month became the first period without a price increase in thirty years. According to the most recent available data, by December 2025, monthly inflation had eased to 2.8 percent.
The repeal of the rent-control law enacted in 2020 would have delighted Rothbard. The regulations previously in place bore more than a passing resemblance to the urban housing policies he criticized in New York. Property owners were subject to asymmetric termination requirements; lease contracts were bound by a mandatory minimum duration of three years; and rent adjustments were permitted only on an annual basis. These constraints limited both landlords’ and prospective tenants’ freedom, preventing economic calculation. The result was misallocation in the housing market and a contraction in the supply of rental units. After removing these provisions, housing availability surged by 195 percent, and rental prices plummeted.
Milei’s first-year reforms are encompassed in the Ley de Bases, approved by Congress in June 2024 and promulgated on July 8 of the same year. The legislation constitutes an omnibus bill introducing structural changes across a range of sectors, designed to promote private initiative. Its title deliberately evokes the intellectual legacy of Juan Bautista Alberdi, the author of the 1853 Constitution and a foundational figure in the Argentine liberal tradition. The Ley de Bases is organized into thematic chapters and emphasizes the privatization of public agencies, capital attraction, and the modernization of the productive system.
Another noteworthy development is the Pacto de Mayo, an agreement proposed to the governors of Argentina’s twenty-three provinces and to the head of government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. The document redefines relations between the presidency and local governments in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity and is built upon ten guidelines: the inviolability of private property, a balanced budget, reductions in public spending, tax reform, the renegotiation of federal revenue-sharing arrangements, provincial autonomy in the exploitation of natural resources, labor-market reform, the transition to private pension funds, political reform, and free trade.
Milei revoked most capital and currency controls, lifting the regulations that had impaired the foreign-exchange market. Of particular significance was the removal of the cepo cambiario, a rigid mechanism of restrictions on the purchase and sale of foreign currency instituted in the aftermath of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s second term. Argentines could purchase no more than 200 US dollars per month at the official exchange rate, leaving them confined in a dual-currency system that pushed millions of people toward the black market.
Whereas many countries are espousing neo-mercantilist practices, Milei has championed international trade as a sine qua non for prosperity. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 137th Rural Exhibition in Palermo, Milei reaffirmed his commitment to permanently lower retenciones al campo—that is, export tariffs on agricultural and livestock products—before phasing them out. Levies on beef and poultry were reduced from 6.75 percent to 5 percent; those on cereal crops from 12 percent to 9.5 percent; sunflower products from 7 percent to 5.5 percent; soybeans from 33 percent to 26 percent; and soy by-products from 31 percent to 24.5 percent. The enduring character of this policy will give farmers a longer planning horizon when allocating future crops. The move also carries positive implications for the United States, which has decided to expand biodiesel output and, to that end, requires increasing volumes of soybean oil and its main derivative, soybean meal.
The chainsaw has continued to tackle waste and inefficiency. The Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation, headed by Federico Sturzenegger, was tasked with curtailing the scope of government and easing the regulatory burden on businesses. In eighteen months of activity, Sturzenegger conducted 5,000 deregulations. These included the repeal of outdated and inequitable rules, an 11.7 percent reduction in public-sector staffing, and the simplification of administrative procedures.
On December 26, 2025, Argentina ratified the Ley de Inocencia Fiscal, a statute that modifies the Argentine tax system by loosening oversight and increasing the spending threshold below which individuals are no longer required to justify the origin of their funds. The law is based on the constitutional principle of the presumption of innocence (Article 18) and extends its application to the fiscal domain. The new provisions no longer treat taxpayers as presumptive evaders but deem them compliant unless proven otherwise. The Revenue and Customs Control Agency (ARCA) must now demonstrate material inconsistencies before challenging declarations, thereby restraining administrative overreach.
Rothbard believed that taxation was a “theft on a gigantic, unchecked scale,” executed by the monopolist of violence—the State. In his view, every tax distorts voluntary exchange, transfers resources from producers to political dependents, and engenders perverse incentives. Rothbard maintained that tax evasion represents a legitimate form of resistance to State coercion rather than a criminal offense.
By overturning the prevailing presumption of guilt, the reform obliges the State to justify its aggression, aligning with Rothbard’s defense of property rights and circumscribing bureaucratic excesses. The arrangement grants individuals greater latitude to resist fiscal intrusion without immediate exposure to sanctions. In this sense, the reform can be seen as an intermediate stage that lays the groundwork for a voluntarist order, in which taxation and State authority are ultimately replaced by spontaneous systems of private insurance and contractual cooperation.
If one were to summarize the effects of Milei’s reforms, it would be reasonable to conclude that they have contributed to improving Argentina’s economy. The disinflation process has made possible a decline in wholesale interest rates, which stood at 121 percent in 2023 and now fluctuate between 34 and 35 percent nominal annual rate for private banks. The public debt-to-GDP ratio has been halved, settling at 73 percent in January 2026. GDP contracted by 1.5 percent through the second quarter of 2024 as a consequence of austerity measures; the economy then exhibited a solid rebound, driven by export growth and renewed investment. In 2025, GDP expansion approached 5 percent, significantly outpacing the Latin American average.
Rothbard argued that helping the poor entails simply having government “get out of the way.” His assessment has been vindicated by experience. As a result of the reforms implemented in Argentina, the poverty rate was estimated at 31.1 percent by mid-2025, and child poverty fell to its lowest level since 2017. While the process of destatization still demands time and effort, empirical indicators point to a promising direction.
We now arrive at a fault line within libertarian thought: foreign policy. Rothbard was correct to note that many libertarians are uncomfortable with international affairs, preferring to devote their energies to normative theory or domestic concerns. Milei’s geopolitical alignment has aroused animosity among those who depict him as a quasi-Buckleyite, or even as a neoconservative coveting foreign entanglements—an accusation often linked to his support for Israel. Such portrayals misread both his premises and his objectives. Milei neither endorses armed adventurism nor proposes to sacrifice Argentina’s nonbelligerent status by inserting the country into disputes among major powers. No genuine neoconservative would describe the State as an organized racket that violates personal integrity through conscription. Any serious evaluation must also consider Argentina’s negligible leverage in global strategic affairs, which renders anxieties about imperial projection largely speculative.
Milei affirms that Western civilization must preserve its core tenets by upholding Judeo-Christian values and the precepts of natural law. In his account, individual liberty does not emerge in a moral vacuum but derives from a longstanding ethical inheritance. He condemns what he interprets as a progressive culture of self-denigration that has weakened Europe and North America alike.
This diplomatic posture rejects supranational governance and expresses pronounced skepticism toward intergovernmental bodies. In the tradition of 19th-century classical liberal thinkers such as Frédéric Bastiat and Richard Cobden, Milei argues that peaceful coexistence among nations is best guaranteed by the free movement of goods, labor, and capital. He knows that this framework depends on arresting the spread of socialism, which would otherwise foreclose the conditions of exchange he deems indispensable.
Milei’s arrival at the Casa Rosada has led to repercussions beyond Argentina’s borders. In several countries—Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, and Chile—left-leaning parties have incurred decisive electoral defeats at the hands of movements broadly described as conservative or anti-communist. Although the victorious candidates cannot be classified as libertarians, many have incorporated aspects of Milei’s mannerisms and style. The Argentine president has capitalized on this moment by encouraging the formation of a free-market regional bloc as a counterweight to the socialist São Paulo Forum.
Milei’s approach to disseminating libertarianism aligns with the strategy Rothbard outlined in the epilogue of For a New Liberty. Rising to public prominence after 2015, Milei became a frequent guest on television panels and radio broadcasts, where he presented Austrian economics in a simple, accessible manner. Then a professor of macroeconomics at the Universidad de Belgrano, he clarified topics such as the business cycle and marginal utility theory through everyday examples. His flamboyant demeanor and incendiary, occasionally coarse rhetoric—capturing the attention of younger audiences—sparked curiosity about basic economic reasoning. By harnessing young people’s frustration, Milei channeled diffuse resentment into political momentum. Generation Z now accounts for the bulk of La Libertad Avanza’s electoral base.
Milei’s ascent rested on his cross-cutting appeal. Not only did he energize young voters and attract the upper middle class, traditionally sympathetic to classical liberal ideas, but he also penetrated segments of the working class that had long voted for Kirchnerism. Unlike Donald Trump, Milei did not court economically vulnerable groups with grandiose slogans or implausible pledges. Instead, he propounded the moral superiority of laissez-faire capitalism over State-centered collectivism, framing market coordination as an ethical counterpoint rather than a technocratic expedient.
At a strategic crossroads, Milei could either confine himself to a marginal constituency or broaden his reach within Argentine society. He opted for the latter course and prevailed in the presidential runoff against the Peronist Sergio Massa with 55.7 percent of the vote. In 2023, La Libertad Avanza held only 38 of 257 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 7 of 72 in the Senate, yet it managed to promote its agenda thanks to the external confidence of the center-right party Juntos por el Cambio and the Unión Cívica Radical. Nonetheless, parliamentary cooperation was punctuated by tensions. To mitigate legislative fragility, Milei opened negotiations with actors more receptive to his platform, anticipating gains in the midterm elections. Within the Iberosphere, libertarians tend to align with the right on economic and social matters; convergence with conservative forces was therefore largely predictable.
Among Milei’s most steadfast allies was Patricia Bullrich, Minister of Security and now Senator for Buenos Aires. A seasoned political figure, she supported the president when Vice President Victoria Villarruel convened the Senate without his knowledge, enabling Kirchnerists to pass legislation reinstating a pension moratorium and increasing disability benefits. A presidential veto promptly ensued. In a February 2025 interview with foreign media, Bullrich confessed feeling “more libertarian than conservative.” Soon afterward, she defected from Juntos por el Cambio and joined La Libertad Avanza. Whether motivated by conviction or not, it is of secondary importance. Milei exerts a powerful influence and has persuaded millions of Argentines—even lifelong politicians—to reconsider the case for liberty.
The Argentine president succeeded in uniting libertarians, religious conservatives, liberal reformers, law-and-order hawks, and politically unaffiliated voters animated by anti-establishment sentiment. This coalition embodies Rothbard’s right-wing populism more faithfully than any previous experiment. In less than five years, La Libertad Avanza emerged as the country’s leading political force. In the 2025 midterm elections, it secured a resounding victory with 40.8 percent of the vote, and—for the first time—the libertarian caucus in the Chamber of Deputies outnumbered the Kirchnerists, holding 95 seats against 93. Under these conditions, obstructing libertarian reforms will become increasingly difficult.
Milei has remarked that politics is a negative-sum game. Yet it can be exploited as a tool to dismantle the State from within and compel it “to perform one final, swift, glorious act of self-immolation, after which it vanishes from the scene,” as Rothbard wrote in How and How Not to Desocialize. Milei defines himself as a “minarchist in the short term and an anarcho-capitalist in the long term,” fully aware that lasting transformations require sequences of incremental advances over time. Had he pursued minarchism as a theoretical goal, he would not have achieved the practical results now evident. More likely, he would have worsened existing conditions by entrenching the status quo. That course would have led him to what Rothbard termed “right-wing opportunism.” Conversely, reckless action would have degenerated into “left-wing sectarianism.”
Some libertarians fault Milei for entering politics, fearing that participation would dilute—or even betray—libertarian principles. Despite substantial obstacles, Milei has thus far acted with notable consistency. Rothbard rejected gradualism as a justificatory doctrine of endless compromise; Milei shares that view, which helps explain his ability to translate theory into practice. No defense of individual liberty can prove effective if confined to an abstract level while disregarding the practical dimension. Libertarians would be better served by a realistic strategy than by clinging to ideological purism or obstinacy. That does not mean surrendering to a utilitarian perspective, but rather seeking pragmatic adjustment guided by ultimate aims. Every step toward liberty should be praised because, as Rothbard explained, “whatever the transitional demands, the ultimate end of liberty should be always held aloft as the desired goal;” and “no steps or means ever explicitly or implicitly contradict the ultimate goal.”
Viewed in this light, the $20 billion financial swap concluded last October between Argentina and US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent takes on a different meaning. Though the arrangement may depart from libertarian orthodoxy, it sustained Milei’s reforms amid heightened volatility. Where earlier administrations accumulated liabilities without a credible repayment path, the current government has discharged the obligation in full, including interest, within the agreed schedule.
Multiple questions remain unresolved. It is uncertain whether Milei will fulfill his campaign pledge to shut down the Central Bank or will stop short of that objective. The feasibility of denationalizing currency and moving away from fiat money is also unclear. Domestic and international pressures may narrow his room for maneuver, restricting the scope of reform and impeding any further progress along the path of liberty. While it is premature to draw definitive conclusions, it is plausible that the most ambitious parts of Milei’s agenda could be implemented in a second term, should the political climate prove favorable.
Libertarians should neither revere Milei nor accept his decisions uncritically. A more sensible response is to learn from his experience while acknowledging possible errors, rather than lapsing into prejudiced opposition. It is worth recalling that libertarianism is not a dogma used to remold human nature by political means; it functions instead as a remedy for the pathologies of the modern world. Milei demonstrates that the cultural battle against collectivism remains winnable. His “chainsaw revolution” suggests that liberty is the sole principle capable of respecting human dignity, safeguarding individual uniqueness, and emancipating society from one of its most pernicious misconceptions: the belief that the State is a benevolent actor.
