Tomorrow, Argentina will have a new government headed by a man who is evidently determined to make a far cleaner break with the past than two previous presidents he greatly respects, Carlos Menem and Mauricio Macri, ever dared to contemplate. Insiders say that Javier Milei will begin by thinning out the bureaucracy that has the country in its clammy grip by closing down dozens of departments, booting out large numbers of superfluous employees who were hired for exclusively political reasons, scrapping thousands of red-tape requirements that serve no purpose and selling off loss-making publically-owned enterprises to anyone who wants to buy them.
Though such measures will enjoy much popular support, they will be strongly resisted by those who will be cast aside, by aggressive “social” organisations that make a habit of staging processions in the centre of Buenos Aires and by the uniformly Peronist trade unions which make no bones about their desire to cut short Milei’s term in office.
While unseating Milei by staging violent street riots is something they could quite conceivably succeed in doing, unless Patricia Bullrich gets the police and the Border Guard to stop them in their tracks, neither they nor anyone else are in a position to save Argentina from the period of extreme austerity which is about to start. The sad truth is that the new government will have to slash public spending not because an admirer of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek thinks it should but because, as Milei continually underlines, there is simply no money left.
By fighting against this unfortunate fact, all the defenders of the old order can do is ensure that the austerity policies they insist are wicked and anti-social will continue to be applied for far longer than would otherwise be the case. Needless to say, this is something they are reluctant to admit, just as they refuse to recognise that it is in large measure thanks to their relentless efforts that Argentina has become poor even by the standards set by neighbouring Latin American countries such as Uruguay and Chile.
Several months ago, when it suddenly dawned on Milei that he really could become Argentina’s next president, he started doing his best to behave like a relatively normal politician, a statesman whose many eccentricities should be considered endearing rather than symptoms of insanity. So, was all that stuff about communing with cloned dogs and Conan, their deceased progenitor, going in for tantric sex, indulging in furious outbursts of rage against a parasitical “political caste” and the like merely his way of drawing attention to himself and his desire to put into practice economic policies recommended by long-departed Austrian thinkers?
If it was just an act, it certainly worked by winning him first the enthusiastic allegiance of large numbers of young people fed up with their lot and then the support of most of the electorate. Under the Kirchnerites, who for 20-odd years have either ruled the country outright or been in a position to prevent others from doing what they said was needed, Argentina got herself into such an appalling mess that being radically different from other politicians gave Milei an advantage which eventually made him unbeatable. However, as many have pointed out, easy as it may have been for him to win an election against the representative of a quite extraordinarily incompetent regime, he will soon find that completely reshaping a long-established political and economic order is sure to be a terribly difficult undertaking. What is more, he will have to go about it without overstepping constitutional rules designed to make it hard for presidents to do anything considered rash.
In Milei’s favour is the widespread awareness that Argentina has reached the end of a long road she should never have taken and therefore has no choice but to go back to basics and try another which, unlike the dictatorial alternatives, would have to be the one that has been followed for many decades by the wealthier countries of North America, Europe, East Asia and Oceania.
Though this may seem obvious enough, both here and elsewhere there are plenty of people who take it for granted that, since capitalism has failed, something entirely different should be tried. What the academics and intellectuals who speak this way mean when they say capitalism’s days are numbered is hard to say because, with the exception of those of North Korea, Cuba and, presumably, Afghanistan, all national economies can be described as capitalistic; nonetheless, the dream of finding a radically different and therefore better way of doing things continues to attract many throughout the world who, it would appear, would like to abolish all restrictions on public spending.
There are those that say that populism is an Argentine invention. This may be an exaggeration (since the days of ancient Greece, there have always been politicians, demagogues, who have won power by giving people what they wanted without worrying about the long-term consequence), but it is undeniable that for many years Juan Domingo Perón was the world’s most notorious representative of the breed. In political terms, the system he put together has worked marvellously well, which is why it is still with us, but economically it has proved disastrous.
However, as Adam Smith once remarked, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” by which he meant that most could survive for a very long time despite the misguided economic policies pursued by their rulers. Until the Peronist trio of Alberto Fernández, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Sergio Massa came to power, Argentina did succeed in doddering along, but they soon used up what little was left and are now leaving behind a bankrupt country battered by sky-high inflation and an international financial reputation that could hardly be worse. Milei was chosen by the populace because he looks utterly unlike the people who brought about this catastrophe. Will he be able to fix it? Only if he receives the unstinted help of many members of the “caste” he despises and if most people understand that it would be foolish, even suicidal, to blame him for the hard times they will have to endure.
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