What is the Austrian School that indoctrinated the economic thinking of Javier Milei and that he will apply as president of Argentina
One of the staunch phrases of Javier Milei’s campaign in his fight for the presidency of Argentina was: “I consider the State as an enemy”. And this is what was heard in each of the presidential debates regarding the control and figure of the State, especially in economic matters. A radical indication of what the leader of La Libertad Avanza wanted to tell us about his ‘anarcho-capitalist’ thinking that comes from the hand of the Austrian School.
The second round or ‘balotaje’ (as the countries of the RÃo de la Plata call it) of the presidential elections in Argentina had a great winner. Javier Milei, of the Libertarian Party, won the Argentine elections with almost 56% of the votesversus the 44% achieved by the Unión por la Patria candidate, Sergio Massa.
With the triumph of self-determined “libertarian” there is an expectation about application of the “disruptive” economic roadmap Honey based on ‘Chainsaw Plan‘, where he houses all the ideology and assembly of the Austrian School that he will apply as president of Argentina.
We are talking about that all the measures that imply a “radical” turn in the politics and economy of a country in crisis, as in this case, Argentina, have an intellectual and academic origin such as that proposed by the Austrian School, which has built the ideological backbone of Javier Milei’s thought.
And the thing is that, among others, Milei’s promises, based on the principles of this school, are to drastically cut public spending, dollarize the economysimplify the tax system, privatizations to eliminate public companies and the closure of the Central Bank And ultimately, “erase the foundations of the Argentine economic system.” All as a slogan that seeks to make Argentina once again an economic “power” worldwide as in 1895.
“The end of Argentine decadence”
Milei has been called a “market anarchist.” And in addition to “hating” the traditional political “caste” (as it refers to the politicians who have governed Argentina), “hates” the devalued Argentine peso as he has pointed out on several occasions. Therefore, it aims apply dollarization in your countrywhich has brought thousands of controversies over what these types of measures that other Latin American countries such as Ecuador have applied could mean for the local and regional economy.
“Today begins the end of Argentine decline. The impoverishing model of the omnipresent State is ending,” said Milei in the celebration of his victory over Sergio Massa, the so-called “super minister” and staunch defender of the figure of the State, quite the opposite of the thoughts of the “libertarian” candidate.
For Milei, the culprits of the current crisis that the Latin American country is experiencing are the State and the Central Bank. “When I talk about burning the Central Bank it is not a metaphor, I want to dynamit it, but this is literal. That is, make it implode and leave all the rubble behind,” said the economist during his campaign. But all this ideology has an origin.
The origin of Milei’s economic thought
Milei has a line of economic thought anchored to the postulates of the Austrian School. We are referring to a school of heterodox economic thought based on “methodological individualism” created in 1871 with the Carl Menger’s principles of economics.
However, it was not until 1974, when Friedrich Hayek, an economist from the Austrian School, won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974, that this school gained strength and marked the ideological reference for the defenders of economics. “free market” and “private property” where the figure of Javier Milei enters as one of the followers.
infected by Murray Rothbardone of the great exponents of this current and who coined the term ‘anarchocapitalism’ in the 1950s (which proposed the “abolition of the state in favor of individual sovereignty”), Milei took this reference to build the core of his thinking and his country project as the new president of Argentina.
