Is Javier Milei Truly Libertarian?
A discussion with Carlos Rodríguez Braun on The Rasheed Griffith Show
Watch the full episode on YouTube or follow the transcript below.
Show notes
In this no-nonsense conversation, Professor Carlos Rodríguez Braun — author of El Pensamiento de Milei — helps us decipher the often confusing worldview of Argentina’s president, Javier Milei. We go through the philosophical paths that took Milei from admiring Chicago-school thinkers to openly praising Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism, and we examine the often jarring contradictions revealed by his alliances with figures like Bolsonaro, Abascal, and Meloni.
Key Points
Anarcho-Capitalist or Just Radical?
How Milei’s shifting stances on economic policy blur the lines between classical liberalism, minarchism, and outright anarchism.
Bolsonaro, Abascal, & Trump—Strange Bedfellows?
Why a self-styled free trader cozies up to staunch protectionists and far-right politicians in pursuit of a new global “culture war.”
Social Policy Paradoxes
Milei rails against abortion as murder but leans libertarian on marriage (at least on the surface) —yet his conservative circle often contradicts these freedoms.
Culture War Gamble
Will Milei’s aggressive rhetoric on “gender ideology” undercut Argentina’s hard-won social freedoms and destabilize his own economic reforms?
The Future of Liberalism in Argentina
With the nation’s midterm elections looming, can Milei deliver on taming inflation and sparking growth or risk discrediting liberalism for a generation?
Recommended
How Milei Can Fail (Is He Really Libertarian?) - Capitalismo
El Pensamiento De Milei - Carlos Rodríguez Braun
Full Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by AI and lightly edited by our team. We don’t catch every error, so if you spot one, send us a message/email via shem@cpsi.org.
Rasheed: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, I am joined by Carlos Rodriguez Braun, a prolific author and professor of economics and history of economic thought at the Complutense University of Madrid. And we will be discussing mostly his recent book, "El Pensamiento de Milei", of course, that is "The Ideology of Milei".
And thank you so much, Carlos, for joining me on the podcast.
Carlos: Thanks to you. Thanks for having me.
Rasheed: I want to discuss many details in your book. but I remember I listened to a podcast you did at some point. If I believe correctly, you were not favoring Milei to win the election. Is that correct?
That is correct. I only knew Milei from his works, his books, and particularly, through his participation on Twitter or YouTube, all the social networks. He didn't seem to be very trustworthy from my point of view. And being that the alternatives were the Populists, the Peronists, or the Kirchnerists, and on the other hand, the center, people from Macri and particularly Patricia Bullrich, I thought that the lesser evil would be the Macri people. And I didn't think that any case had any chances to win.
What do you think was the central reason why he was able to win? Essentially, he didn't win outright in the first round, but in the second round, he won after the Bulrush supporters pushed their supporters towards him. But in general, why do you think he was able to garner the election?
Carlos: What is the reason you succeed in every aim that you have in life? He's a very talented man when we speak of connecting with people and being capable of understanding was the spirit of the Argentine people. They were really tired and fed up. They were fed up with the populists, the Peronists. And they decided to give a chance to a very strange candidate. I mean, he is very, very strange. He is disruptive in his manners, his style, the words he uses, and the message. This idea that "I will break everything and I will close the central bank and I'm going to dollarize and you are all a gang of thieves!" He is not a very polite man. And the Argentine people decided to vote for him, which was something that I did not anticipate, nor anyone else. I mean, the polls in the first round, as you've just said, didn't think that Milei would be the winner. Argentinians were simply fed up with the government, and with the alternative of Macri, they decided to give a chance to this, this extremely strange man.
Rasheed: So his most characteristic feature that people latch onto the ideology now is this idea of anarcho capitalism. And, of course, this is not the most popular term in social zeitgeist outside academia, for example. How would you characterize what he means by this term relative to someone who would just say, "Oh, he's libertarian or he's liberal in the classical sense."
Carlos: You know, I wrote a book to try to answer that question. I think I have it here. This is the book. And precisely because the answer to your question, Rasheed, it's difficult. Let us put it very simply. If you have the classical liberals, let's say the people who believe in the constitution, that believe in the state and the rule of law. Classical liberals or the minarchists, the people who believe in the state, but it must be a minimum state. Or in the third place, the radical libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. Which would you say, and everyone say that fits better with Milei? Most people say, "Oh, he's, he's anarcho, he's anarcho." Well, the truth is that he could be classified in any of the three groups. And when he won the election, I started to study more, more seriously his works, all his books in to publish this book on his ideas. And I found it rather complicated because he switches from one field to another. He did so, for instance, in monetary policy. He was a Chicago boy. He was an admirer of Friedman and of Robert Lucas, and then switched to the Austrian school. But as you know, there are schools among the Austrian schools. And there are more libertarian or less libertarian, let's say, it's not the same thing, Hayek and Rothbard. Milei seemed to move closer to the Rothbard variety of libertarian ideas. So this is the last step he took before getting into the Casa Rosada, the presidential house in Argentina. So the answer to your question is, we actually don't know, but he has been moving towards a radical libertarian stance.
Rasheed: So this radical libertarian stance, the Rothbardian aspect of it, feels like it's very centered on economic policy, but doesn't work when it comes to Milei's view on social policy. And it's not the most explicit, but we can get some details. But do you think that the basic characterization, would this still fit in the social view of Milei's policy?
Carlos: Very interesting. And also it shows the complications of Milei's ideas. The first thing I started to study about Milei was his economic policy. I mean, that is pretty obvious. He's a professional economist. And he has written mainly about economics before he jumped into politics. But then he went into politics, and he started to think and to write and to say a lot of things about many subjects. And then we come to things like social policies. This is interesting because on the one hand, he's very opposed to abortion. Extremely opposite. Has repeatedly said, that abortion is a crime. Well, then you would say he can be classified then among the conservative, more religious.
He is a religious man, by the way, he was a Christian. Now he has converted to Judaism. So you would say very easily, he's a conservative. But then go into marriage. And he not only approves the marriage of people of the same sex. He has said- I sympathize with this position. That politics and the state should have had nothing to do with marriage.
That, after all, it's a contract between free people. So you want to be married through your religion, you can do it. If you wish to sign a contract, you can do it. So on the one hand, he can be very conservative. On the other hand, he can be very libertarian, as in the example of marriage that I have just mentioned.
Rasheed: So he's a complicated man.
In your book, you discuss how he would go to the extreme and say, "Oh, the state shouldn't be involved in determining who should get married." But that somehow doesn't ever convince me of anything. Because the rationale for why the state isn't involved in marriage is not the religious aspect, of course. It's because it is the rights attributed to you. The reason why you want to do it in a really real way is because of the state aspect of the contract.
Rasheed: You can get married in church and not have it solidified by the state anytime you want. But the real reason why it's a debate is because of the rights, the taxes, all the other state instruments that you get with marriage.
Carlos: That is very true. The involvement of the state in marriage is relatively a recent phenomenon. It's from the 19th century. And of course, marriage is much older than that. In the Christian tradition, we cherish the first miracle made by our Lord Jesus, and that is in the wedding of Cana where he turned water into wine. I like that miracle very much. I think it is a very politically incorrect miracle. I think we would be put in jail if we did it today. So, of course, marriage is an institution with thousands of years in age and the state involvement is very recent. Let me tell you a little bit of a story of Argentina. In many countries, the state and the church fought when the state started to try to monopolize the institution of marriage. And in Argentina, the fight was so rude that Argentina and the Vatican broke diplomatic relations. And there was a time when there were no diplomatic relations between a Catholic country like Argentina and the state of the Vatican, because precisely of this. So, coming back to Milei. I think that Milei would sympathize with the idea that marriage is an institution between three people of thousands of years of age. You can be religious or not, but he would favor the state not being involved in this institution.
Rasheed: There's always something I find, when you ask people who are libertarian, or say they're libertarian, especially indeed these days, around the melee aspect of this term. When it comes to gay marriage, for example, I find it a very interesting coherence test for thinking about libertarian social philosophy, in the sense that Milei, to my knowledge, has never explicitly said, Yes, I am in support of gay marriage.
He would usually say, as a disclaimer in my view, "Well, I am in support of any free people doing this and doing that, because marriage should be a contract between people." In the world we live in, it is not the actual reality. It is a very specific state-granted idea. And also, many people around Milei do not favor gay marriage, explicitly.
And these are people whom he had a lot of intellectual salience, like Agustin Laje, for example, Nicolás Márquez, for example. They're explicitly anti gay marriage. Even people in his government, for example. I'm sure you know that very famous quote with Mondino, the former minister of foreign relations, where she likened gay marriage to having lice in your hair.
It's like, "Well, if you want to do it, that's you, that's your thing. I don't like it." But that metaphor is so strong in her worldview. So I do wonder how salient those kinds of things are to Milei.
Carlos: Indeed, he has not been explicit. We are always speaking about Milei before. Okay, because Milei in power, that's a different story. Milei hasn't been very explicit in the sense of saying, "I am in favor of free gay marriage." But I wonder if it is strictly necessary to clarify that. As far as you say, I don't want the state to regulate this. But I think you're right. He should stress the idea that a contract between adults, free people, he didn't mention explicitly, as far as I can remember, the gay marriage.
Rasheed: So, because I always contrast that reality with, for example, someone like Isabel Díaz Ayuso, here in Madrid, where she's very explicitly in favor of those. No disclaimer, no additional commentary behind it, she'll very explicitly say, yes, we're here, very Spanish, it's a thing, let's do it. I always find that contrast quite stark.
Carlos: I think that is true now we are, we are moving on. People they ask me, with what figure of Spanish politics could you compare Javier Milei? And of course, the answer, you've just said it is Isabel Díaz Ayuso, perhaps more than any other Spanish politician. Now you have to keep in mind that, specifically in the case of gay marriage, Spain, I believe, is much ahead of Argentina in terms of legislation. So I think we have to take that matter into consideration.
Rasheed: Okay, so something I glossed over a bit just now, which I want to focus on in this, this is one of the, I find often criticized aspects of Milei, this aspect of his alliances, where he is saying, I am an anarcho capitalist. I am a big supporter of Rothbard. I believe that many times he said Rothbard is his greatest intellectual influence on his political philosophy, at least currently. But at the same time, he has the strong support of like Bolsonaro in Brazil, for example, Kast in Chile, Abascal in Spain, and Meloni in Italy.
It would not seem logically consistent for him to be such a big supporter of these people.
Carlos: Of course, it is not logically consistent if we, minds in the Milei, before politics. Now, once in politics, and once you participate in an election, you win, you have your forces, and there are two extreme positions. One is I don't want to negotiate anything. So I have to leave politics and return to my university chair or my professional activities as an economist. Or I would negotiate everything. So Milei as any other politician, by the way, is in the middle of these two extremes. You keep your principles and you sacrifice your political life.
Or you do everything for your political life, sacrificing all your principles. No. As a matter of fact Milei has done precisely that. He's in the middle. He comes to Spain and he comes hand in hand with Jose Abascal, the extreme right-wing politician, by the way, a friend of Donald Trump, as we've seen recently. And so, what to make about that? When, when Milei came in last summer, there was a meeting in Diario La Razón, and my friend and co-author, Juan Ramón Rallo, whom you know, asked Milei precisely this question. What are you doing with people, Jose Abascal?
Rasheed: What are you doing with like Jose Abascal or Donald Trump? People who aren't liberal? Why are you meeting with this kind of politician?
Carlos: He gave a double, and I think a very wise answer. The first, he said, "he's my friend. When I was alone in the political world. No one paid any attention to me. Abascal was the only politician in Spain who treated me kindly, invited me to Spain, and respected me. He has always treated me as a friend, and I help friends." That's one answer. I think it's a nice answer. The other, the second answer, is a political answer. And he says, he said, he said to Juan Ramon Rallo, listen, " Abascal and me, we do not share many things because I am a more, I'm a free trader, libertarian if you wish, classical liberal, whatever. I believe in liberal ideas. And Abascal does not." But, he added, "we share the same enemy. And he said, our enemy is the left, the socialists, the communists, the populists. We share those friends, those enemies." And so, that was the explanation. He said to Juan Ramon Rallo, you must not, you should not demand from me an extreme identification with all the ideas of the politicians that surround me.
That would be ridiculous, would be absurd. In politics, remember that wonderful book by Max Weber, " The Politician and the Scientist", in which he divides these two kinds of people. The politician negotiates and makes compromises. The scientist never does that, because the objective of the scientist is the truth.
You don't negotiate the truth, okay? But in politics, it's not the same world.
Rasheed: So that would be Milei’s attempt to rationalize the libertarian populist strategy of Rothbard and the so-called paleo libertarian approach to governance. I share a sympathy where I think, sure, this does make some sense, you do have trade-offs in politics, nothing's ideal.
However, again, from my perspective, why I'm asking this question, it doesn't seem merely as a strategic alliance. It genuinely feels like he goes the extra mile to outright support these kinds of people. For example, Abascal is not in power. It's a very unlikely scenario where he becomes Prime Minister of Spain.
Bolsonaro, for example, is not in power. There are many reasons to question why you even want him to be in power, Even given the reality of Lula. It's somewhat questionable why, you want Bolsnaro in him as a person to be in power. Meloni is in power, which is fair, but he's not simply doing economic policy with Meloni, who is the prime minister of Italy.
It goes to a different extreme in my view. I do question. Why does he go to so much effort into being so close to people that goes, to me, beyond strategic alliances against left-wing media?
Carlos: The short answer always is I don't know. But trying to elaborate a little bit, perhaps his point of view is that the great lines in politics may be changing. The orthodox ideas may be changing. The support by the people of the old, left, or right ideas is diminishing. If you have this long view of a change in the waves of ideas, perhaps it is rational, formulae, to say " if this world is changing, if ideas are changing, perhaps my position should be, try to navigate this, this current, whatever, My possible allies can be and, and whatever the great differences I may have with them, but perhaps, I mean, I should I should follow Trump." Trump is a protectionist. I mean, this idea is as far as Malia's idea of anything anybody could imagine. I mean, he has never backed any other position, but full unilateral free trade. And now you see him in hand with Donald Trump, who is a protectionist and boasts of being a protectionist. So how can we understand this movement? I think. This is the long answer, as I told you. All these people, even Meloni and Bolsonaro, believe that something is going on in the world of ideas. And if they are right and something is moving or is going on in the world of ideas, perhaps the movement is not irrational, though it is very strange, I must admit it.
Rasheed: So in his book that he co authored, "Libertad, Libertad, Libertad", in the introduction, which I think Milei wrote himself, was a reference to Michel Foucault that I was surprised by, where he mentioned that fundamentally, In terms of economic long term policy, political long term policy, the thing you have to do is first you change the people.
That's the Michel Foucault line. And this idea, essentially now of the culture war was kind of embedded in that. But now, post-presidency, his approach to constantly referring to la batalla cultural, the culture war, is just so dominant in his discourse of everything he does. Why do you think Milei has such a strong, strong interest agenda, if you want to call it that way, on the culture war and trying to adjust it in a particular direction?
Carlos: I think that this is because he believes that ideas matter. He believed in that. And I remember many years ago, I interviewed. Hayek in Madrid, he was finishing his last book, The Fatal Conceit. And I mentioned this phrase that Keynes wrote at the end. He said that ideas matter more than interests. And I remember that light illuminated Hayek's face and he said, "Yes, yes, Maynard was right!" Well, I think that that Milei goes along with Hayek and Keynes in this, and he believes that ideas really matter. Now, one thing is to say that ideas matter, another thing is to say that you can shape the world according to your ideas.
That's a very different thing, and that puts us in the field of social engineering. Or as Adam Smith put it, the man of system, who thinks that he can play with the people like they were chess pieces.
I think that he believes the battle of ideas, in the cultural war, if you see. But that puts us in an interesting problem. Milei is not a man of ideas any longer.
He sits in the Pink House in Buenos Aires. And when you are in politics and you make compromises, then you have problems. Because people who were convinced and who share your ideas can now raise their hands and say, "Listen, what about the ideas that you had two years ago?" "What about, what about dollarizing the economy?"
"What about closing the central bank? What about, what about, what about?" This is a very delicate point. We are going to see the political result of that this year. In October, we're going to have the midterm elections in Argentina. The polls say that the people are keeping the support for Milei, but I don't know. In any case, you have problems.
You are a politician, then you say "Yes, the battle of ideas", and you keep changing ideas or you keep making mistakes. The last one, of course, is Milei's support of this crypto token, the Libra, which I think is terrible, terrible. Even in the best possible scenario, that is, that he made a mistake, there's nothing more than that, which is very serious.
You and I can discuss Bitcoin or Libra or whatever. But if we are presidents, heads of state, you know what we have to say about cryptocurrencies? Not a word.
a single word. Not a single word. So that is the list of political costs that Milei, of course, will have to bear.
Rasheed: So, again, sticking to this idea point, if Milei is interested in ideas, then you have to take seriously when he starts discussing ideas, or when he shifts his, call it, set of ideas to different dimensions. So, for example, again, when you read your book, when you listen to Milei from three years ago, four years ago, you know you see a lot more influence of ideas. For example, like your ideas are liberal, liberalism, you have Alberto Benítez Lynch, you have Jesús Huerta de Soto, you see those kinds of people really kind of flowing through the thoughts of Milei. But now, ,post-presidency even explicitly, for example, you have him quoting, citing, sharing stages with, for example, like Agustin Laje, who calls himself somehow libertarian.
I don't think in a very sophisticated way you can think of him as a libertarian thinker. Milei always, for example, pushed him on Twitter. His books, for example, Milei, give endorsements on the book jacket. For example, the book La Batalla Cultural by Laje. The four people who endorsed the book are Milei, Bolsonaro's son, and Ben Shapiro.
That's an instant combination itself. When you read people like Laje, there is very little strong libertarian philosophy in it. But it feels like Milei is just pushing that substantially more than Huerta de Soto, for example, these days.
Carlos: That is because you're right. I think that is because Laje is influential among the right-wingers in Argentina in a way that my good friends Jesús Huerta de Soto or Alberto Benegas Lynch are not. They are influential in the world of the intellect of ideas, university, whatever. But when you, when you speak of fighting the battle of ideas in Argentina, I think that is much more influential again. You have a problem. You have a problem. People will raise their hands and say, “Listen, what are you doing with people who are not libertarians?” By the way, in the libertarian family, not everyone agrees with Milei. I have to tell you a story. You know, the story of this book. Friends of Milei, they haven't liked it because I don't speak well of him. But the enemies of Milei don't like it either because they think I don't criticize him enough. And among the liberals, there are discussions about Milei. I mention in my book, to give you just one name, economist and journalist named Roberto Cachanosky, a very well-known figure in economics in Argentina and a very old liberal. He criticizes Milei's ideas and politics as well, but in any case, in what you said about Laje, you're right.
Rasheed: Do you think, from your perspective, on average, or let's say, on net, the discourse on liberalism has shifted in a good way in Argentina now that Milei is president?
Carlos: You know something? This is the only thing that matters to me. I don't care. I don't care who the president of Argentina is. I don't care about politics. There exists a shift in the ideas of the Argentinians towards a more liberal standpoint. I think, I hope, but perhaps it's just wishful thinking. I think that is a real phenomenon. Perhaps it's wishful thinking because just imagine if Milei fails.
He can, I mean, things can go wrong. In Argentina, they have been going wrong for a century, so they can keep on going wrong.
If things go wrong, people will say it's not only Milei's fault, it's also liberalism's fault.
It's a very serious point you've touched. I think it's the point. The point is not Milei, it's the liberal ideas. Let me tell you why I think the shift is a reality. Milei has taken some measures, some liberal measures with very good results. For instance, he has freed the housing market, the rent market. Argentina has like many other countries, has a long tradition of rent controls with the usual consequences. There are no rooms for rent. No flats, no houses for rent.
There are all these kinds of negative consequences. And he freed the market just like the Germans did after the Second World War, overnight. Overnight, he said, "This market is free and anyone can make any kind of contract with any conditions you wish." And it worked, and people saw that it worked. I think that is a very positive measure and really thinking of the long term prospects of the ideas of liberty. This is the thing that people can see that liberty works, that it is good for them, not for the great companies or the banks or whatever, for them, for the ordinary people. Another thing. Imagine that inflation could be controlled. That would be an extraordinary sign. It's very difficult, and that puts us in another technical, difficult question of the exchange rate and the use of the overvalued peso to control inflation or whatever. If inflation comes into control, microeconomic freedoms with good results and extremely important, growth.
If Argentina started with these three blessings, then you could solve even the public finance problem, even the debt problem. But you have these three things, micro reforms in the liberal sense, control of inflation, and economic growth. You're not having the three in a full sense, but I think we are moving in the right direction.
Rasheed: So, my final question before I ask that again, I recommend people to read Carlos' book, it's very, very important to read. Final question, there is some discussion in Argentina, in the politics and society and journalist circles right now that given Milei's very hard focus, or at least intellectual focus on the culture war in Argentina, but also globally and coming off the heels of his, call it controversial, to put it mildly, controversial speech in Davos last month.
It had a really strong social backlash in Argentina. There are many people now saying, but is it the state of Argentina, in terms of social libertarianism, social liberal policy, liberal social policy, that is actually what you do want to have? You do want to have these people with their, you know, different sexualities, different female things, all these different concepts that Argentina already has, at least in Buenos Aires. There is this risk of Milei trying to push so much into the, call it, counter direction of what he calls the virus of woke, or gender ideology. That there is a risk of even trying to unsettle the liberalism of Argentina that came, that come to a point after years and years and decades of social struggle and so on, and that then would kind of make his economic policy at risk because, as I said, if people go backlash against, Milei, particularly, ironically, this is unexpected, ironically for the social things that he says, it could unseat the economic progress that his government could have made or probably, definitely is making. How risky do you think this gambit is of Milei to be pushing so hard?
It's kind of like what the philosopher René Girard, he says: “Be careful what enemies you choose because you will become them.” And how risky do you think this gambit of Milei is that his social policies or social ideas, in you know, the world of my days that we talk about many times, can unseat his economic progress in government?
Carlos: Rasheed, my friend, I think you have to ask me questions that I'm able to answer.
Again, the short answer is, I don't know. But yes, we have to admit the risk is there. Of course, of course it is risky and as I told you, things can go wrong. Allow me to end this very nice discussion, with a view of the past. We old people tend to look at the past, not like you, these insolent youngsters. But
Rasheed: Mm-hmm
Carlos: Argentina has a recent liberal, prosperous past. Not many countries have that. Of course, the Egyptians were rich 4000 years ago, but they have forgotten that.
Or Italians or Greeks, or of course the Spaniards. But Argentina was a very rich and prosperous country about a century ago. That is when my grandparents were born, and I spoke with them, and the images of the rich past are present. You can walk in Argentinian cities, particularly Buenos Aires. People are amazed by what they see, and they believe that there's something wrong with the extraordinary beauties of the of the buildings that you have, and you go to the Teatro Colón, one of the first opera theatres in the world. That is where Enrico Caruso wanted to go to sing, there, there! And Arturo Toscanini, the great, the great artist. And you can see that. And of course, that is a contrast with what happened since the time of my grandparents to our times. Which is a continual decline. The decline and fall decade after decade and generation after generation. And if you look at the ideas that Milei was pushing when he presented in the election and he won, he continually was repeating this idea of the past. And I think that is a very good point to try to make the Argentinians believe that if they were able to build that, those buildings, that wonderful country which attracted millions of immigrants from all around the world, which had one of the greatest income per capita in the world. If they were able to do that, not very long ago, just a century ago, perhaps they can do it again.
Rasheed: Thank you, Carlos. This has been a very insightful conversation, and thank you again. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Carlos: Thanks to you.