This article is a transcript of the interview with a journalist on Argentine radio about Milei’s current policy in that country, conducted on Thursday, June 27, 2024. It is interesting in the sense that it is in line with our analyses of the evolution of our societies dictated by the imperatives of capitalist valorization and anticipates what could happen very soon in Europe and in France in particular, whatever the election results. Not that the extreme right is the same as other political parties. The latter is more to be feared because of the speed with which it would implement its economic program and its reactionary measures of all kinds. But Argentina shows us what awaits us in the more or less long term if we persist in not tackling the real problem that underlies all the others: political economy, whatever guise it adopts, at the center, on the left, on the right or at its extremes, because crazy capitalism is in dire straits. In France, has it not clearly demonstrated this with the brutal repression of the Gilets Jaunes, that of the Earth Uprisings and of the opponents of the A69? “Order, order, order” is now the obsessive watchword of leaders of all stripes. But what order are they talking about, they who are primarily responsible for social and climate chaos? Faced with the “process of de-civilization”, the soldier Macron has urged us to set about “re-civilizing”, citing in particular “the work of the family”, “the place of the school”, “integration through the economy and employment” but also “the regulation of screens”.
Everything is therefore already in place at the very heart of the State, a major tool of capitalism. It is therefore high time to move beyond partisan quarrels and their distressing spectacle and turn away from the statist logic of political economy. We must resolutely aim for autonomy in all areas of our lives in order to truly overcome capitalism and its control by the nation-state. And thus collectively take back control of our destiny; this is the essence of the communalist proposal.
L’Atelier – June 30, 2024
Author: Fernando Rosso
https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Libertarianismo-de-Estado?utm_source=lid&utm_medium=wp&utm_campaign=article-social-actions
The fiction of libertarian anti-statism. They don’t want “less state”, they want a strong state that guarantees the market order. Editorial of “El Círculo Rojo”, a program of La Izquierda Diario broadcast every Thursday from 10 p.m. to midnight on Radio Con Vos 89.9. (In Argentina)
“I am the one who destroys the state from within,” Javier Milei told a reporter from a liberal website in the United States in this interview that had us all laughing when he said, with a rather high-pitched squeak, ‘I love… being the mole’ who can do subversive work against the state from the heart of the state itself.
Well, that is one of the greatest fallacies of Milei and libertarians in general, and over the course of these seven months, it has been more than demonstrated.
Beyond the current situation, which always brings something new (today the treatment of the Ley Bases, the first law passed by the government; the conflict with the IMF; the crisis of the economic plan; etc.), it is good from time to time to take a step back and try to decipher or unmask the major political-ideological operations in the public debate. And the big lie about the relationship between libertarianism and the state is one such operation.
Why? Because, well, Milei (and libertarians in general) have sold the idea that they are against the “oppression” of citizens by the state. That all they want is a “minimal state”, a “weak state” that stops intervening in people’s lives so that they can develop their activities “freely”.
They rely on real elements: the crisis of the “welfare state” and the crisis of this type of “soft state” which claims to be an alternative to neoliberalism but continually fails because it does not substantially alter the foundations of neoliberalism; it is based on the fact that regressive tax systems have been in place for a long time and generate the real perception that the state imposes obstacles or demands obligations that it does not then repay with quality services. And more generally, all of this stems from the “double discourse” that “the State will save you” when in reality it is leaving more and more people to fend for themselves. This is the real aspect of the elaborations of the book coordinated by Pablo Semán.
However, both from a “theoretical” and historical and practical point of view, it is a big lie that libertarians do not want the state.
From an ideological or theoretical point of view, in a work entitled “Human Action: A Treatise on Economics”, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, one of Javier Milei’s main intellectual references, writes: “The state, that is to say the social apparatus of force and coercion, does not intervene in its functioning (in the functioning of the market, Ed.). The state thus creates and maintains a social environment that allows the market economy to develop peacefully. He wrote this shortly after serving as an advisor to a fascist-type government in Austria in the 1930s. And the excellent book “The Choice of Civil War. Another History of Neoliberalism” by Pierre Dardot, Christian Laval and others, recently published by Tinta Limón, contains numerous statements of this kind from all the leading figures of libertarianism that Milei keeps mentioning.
From a historical point of view, it is well known that the application of shock doctrines took place in Chile between 1974 and 1976, that is to say under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and with the personal advice of Milton Friedman, who visited the country in 1975 and who believed that a “free society” could be built through one of the bloodiest dictatorships.
With all this evidence, what these ultra-liberals cannot explain is why, if organised society or market-driven society is almost the “natural” form of functioning that any modern society should have, they need a strong state that intervenes permanently (with the use of coercion and force) to ” guarantee” that it functions because it is challenged by trade unions, collective organizations or simply by public opinion. In other words, if it is the most ‘harmonious’ society that can exist, why is it constantly contested?
I’ll give you a clue, fellow libertarians: it is likely that the society you propose is a completely anarchic and irrational form of organization of production, which generates permanent crises, indescribable inequalities and an insane waste of human labor, and it is precisely for this reason that it is constantly being called into question. This is undoubtedly why you always feel in danger, a little paranoid (you are so paranoid because you are made in its image) and why you look to the State to guarantee order.
Finally, from a practical point of view, what we have witnessed over the course of these almost seven months is not a “withdrawal of the State”, but a ferocious intervention by the State, by a strong State in favor of the most powerful.
What is the incentive scheme for large investments (RIGI) if not that? The other day, I was listening to Carlos Cachanosky (look who I’m quoting, a counter-liberal economist) on Radio Con Vos, in a program with Ernesto Tenembaum and Reynaldo Sietecase, saying that the RIGI proposal, which provides tax and other benefits only for investments of more than 200 million dollars, violates the basic liberal principle of “equality before the law” because it “discriminates” against potential smaller investors. This is true for businessmen, but let’s also think about ordinary people.
But it is not just RIGI, a large part of the policies contained in the current DNU (Emergency Necessity Decree) or the economic roadmap have the same characteristic. What is the liquefaction of pension assets to generate tax resources that are then translated into phenomenal benefits for companies or into debt payments to usurious banks? What is the restitution of payroll taxes and the reduction of taxes for those who have more?
Obviously, all this is reflected in the repression and the attempt to create a dependent judicial system (with its own court), i.e. more state intervention in this case to generate a “special regime” against the protests that these measures logically generate.
But beware, the policy against protest is not only repressive, it is also co-optive, with arrangements with trade union leaders, allowing joint agreements for some and denying them to others, with the flow of funds for social works and measures of this type with material or institutional resources. And who is manipulating all this? Well, you guessed it, it’s the State. All of this to prevent mass mobilization from limiting their project, which until now, with the help of certain large unions, they have achieved.
In short, what we have witnessed over the past seven months is not the mole against the state, the destroyer of the state from within, the minarchist with a liberal credo; what we have witnessed so far is pure and simple state libertarianism.
Rebound:
Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.