Argentina and the Achilles' heel of the libertarian lion
Javier Milei's greatest vulnerability lies in his own base of support
It was the Argentine middle class that brought Javier Milei to power. It is this class that has defined itself against the parasitism that became rife in our country decades ago. Young, middle-class Argentines gambled on ‘The Chainsaw’, a Hail Mary for little more than a return to normalcy. It is this demographic that is now Milei’s primary point of vulnerability. If they are subject to a prolonged period of fiscal adjustment without an end in sight, the base of support to consolidate the structural changes the country requires will be eroded. Those best able to keep the country on the right track face little choice but their own exit.
The latest INDEC figures (the Consumer Price Index) are unequivocal. The Minimum Vital and Mobile Wage stands between 357,800 and 363,000 pesos (approximately £185–£187), while the Total Basic Basket for a typical family exceeds 1,469,000 pesos (approximately £799). This implies that a minimum wage covers less than 25% of the basic basket, representing a gap of over 310%. Despite liberalisation of labour laws earlier this year, a majority of Argentine workers are now in some form of informal employment, suggesting that these conditions are even worse than meets the eye. The Basic Food Basket has seen year-on-year variations nearing 36%. Although year-on-year inflation has decreased significantly from the hyperinflationary peaks of 2023–2024, it remains at approximately 33.2% in the opening months of 2026. Argentina will record an annual inflation rate of around 30% finishing this year.
Milei did not create this economic and social reality. He inherited a nation scarred by decades of macroeconomic imbalances, Peronist clientelism, and a deeply rooted parasitic statism. His administration has achieved significant milestones: the attainment of a primary surplus — an exceptional feat in recent Argentine history — and a notable reduction in inflation. These advances were considered improbable by much of the political and media establishment at the start of his term. Foreign exchange reserves have been stabilised by interventions from the US Treasury, international banks and the IMF, and the growth outlook, though weak this year, shows tentative signs of long-term promise.
Nevertheless, the political sustainability of the adjustment depends largely on the middle class perceiving a credible path toward the recovery of their purchasing power, stability, and a growing sense of institutional order. Argentines have proved themselves willing to endure ‘necessary pain’ — but the leadership has thrown their project into risk by falling into the same traps that have lured in politicians throughout our history. That these issues are long and storied does not soften the blow to public morale. Rather, an outsider falling into ‘the caste’ only feeds the pervading sense of utter despair. If Argentina is to emerge from her century-long malaise, it will be by the hope and resolve of the middle class.
The rise of the Lion
Javier Milei ascended to power as an atypical outsider, a contemporary Quixote facing the windmills of a consolidated political and economic establishment. His rise was no accident. He connected profoundly with the industrious character of the average Argentine — reflected in his own middle-class origins — and with a rebellious aesthetic that evokes both the tradition of national rock and the generous sideburns of the heroes of the May Revolution, which marked the break with a Spanish Empire then in decline under the Bourbons.
His formative years were shaped by the 1981 economic crisis and the hyperinflation during the final months of Raúl Alfonsín’s government. At university, his personal experience merged with the study of the Austrian School of economics. This classical liberal tradition provided an intellectual foundation that allowed him to identify the State — not without justification, given Argentina’s particular history — as one of the primary obstacles to liberty and prosperity.
Milei built his career as chief economist at Corporación América, the conglomerate owned by businessman Eduardo Eurnekian. Strategic connections, high ratings on television and radio programmes, and his subsequent leap into politics catapulted him forward. Communication coaches helped him channel his natural histrionics into high-impact messages. With effective communication techniques, he capitalised on widespread social exhaustion — especially among young people unburdened by heavy prior ideological inheritances — who embraced change driven by what Max Weber would have described as an ethic of conviction and will. Milei successfully replicated the formulas for translating media success into political success previously employed by figures such as Silvio Berlusconi, Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky.
His first major breakthrough came in 2021, when he was elected deputy for the City of Buenos Aires with La Libertad Avanza, securing 17.04% of the vote and finishing third. During his two years in Congress, he honoured his promise to raffle his deputy’s salary monthly among citizens registered on a web platform — a practice he maintained until assuming the presidency in December 2023. The rest is well-known history. Milei pushed to the limit his discourse against ‘the caste,’ embodied particularly in the Peronist-Kirchnerist left represented by the grotesque figure of Alberto Fernández and the crook Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The exhaustion of that political force and the galloping inflation of Fernández’s final year ultimately propelled him to the presidency.
His arrival at the Casa Rosada was accompanied by an unusual resilience in Argentine public opinion. For months, broad sectors of the electorate tolerated what the government itself termed ‘the largest adjustment in history’ under the promise that it was the necessary toll toward economic normalisation. That patience, however, is proving not to be infinite. It was a blank cheque with an expiry date, which, faced with the initial deterioration of real incomes and the persistence of problems such as economic insecurity, corruption, and a negligible capacity for saving, is showing signs of exhaustion.
A history of Argentina’s middle-class participation and the problem of talent drain
Argentina’s problems do not begin with Perónism. To understand the gravity of the present challenge, it is necessary to look back.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Argentina could count itself amongst the most prosperous nations in the world. Its economy was driven by agricultural exports, with developing secondary and professional sectors that had already produced (and pulled in) a highly literate, European middle class in the country’s metropoles of Mendoza, Córdoba, and Buenos Aires. Argentina’s GDP per capita had become comparable to that of France and Germany. Buenos Aires was a city during these same years that was mirrored with its contemporary Vienna — cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and at its zenith. The country, governed by the liberal-conservative oligarchic National Autonomist Party (PAN), was politically febrile. Despite its relative prosperity, it remained fraught with issues of land ownership and distribution (the inheritance of latifundio from Spanish rule being a problem across Latin America), nationalist demands to assert control over foreign-owned infrastructure and capital (mostly by British investors) and electoral suffrage and political participation.
The oligarchy broke down with the Sáenz Peña Law, which heralded the first elections with universal manhood suffrage held in 1916, bringing the nationalist revolutionary Hipólito Yrigoyen and the Radical Civic Union (UCR) party to power. Yrigoyen led a programme of nationalising foreign assets, social reform and democratisation. The fundamentals of the economic model remained strong alongside broad political participation across social strata. Argentina continued to boom through the ‘radical republic’ — averaging an annual growth rate of 8.1%, and for her newly empowered, burgeoning middle class, the future had never seemed brighter. However, the revolutionary tradition and opposition to the oligarchy also further pronounced the country’s personalistic politics. Yrigoyen lent into the region’s historical caudillo-style leadership and applied it to the same mass democratic personalism that Perón would later perfect.
The democratic order was sent into disarray by the Great Depression and ended by military coup under José Félix Uriburu. The initial Nacionalista regime was a cheap imitation of Mussolinian corporatism, married to the Catholic nationalism of Spain, France and Portugal. Uriburu’s regime would barely last over a year due to his ailing health, and soon gave his blessings to the Concordancia governing alliance made up of old PAN party figures and more conservative ‘antipersonalist’ UCR members who understood themselves as antagonists to the demagoguery of Yrigoyen. The years of the Great Depression in Argentina under the Concordancia were harsh; farmers and rural workers were ruined, flocking to the cities and creating shanty towns. In response, the state experimented with new economic and monetary ideas (particularly import-substitution industrialisation), which ended the old export model and exacerbated the recurring problem of foreign exchange constraints that plagues the country to this day.
In the following ‘decade of imfamy’, the new dirigiste state governed by electoral fraud and its officials were constantly implicated in new political and financial scandals. Corporatism did not go particularly far beyond the wider trends in global economic policymaking — but the state’s involvement in new spheres of economic management entrenched new avenues for corruption in a country already prone to this disease. The infamous decade is perhaps best remembered today in two incidents: the assassination of a Senator, on the floor of the Upper House itself (for investigating malpractice in the meat trade), and the CHADE scandal. The electricity supplier, CHADE’s bribery of government officials had become so widespread that the recipients became known as an identifiable bloc, the ‘chadístas’.
Another coup and another dictatorship would end the Concordancia, from which Juan Domingo Perón emerged out of the Nacionalista milieu. Many Peronists are uncomfortable acknowledging that their old leader was one of the officers who accompanied Félix Uriburu in the overthrow of the democratic Argentine government in 1930. They prefer to focus on 17 October 1945, the foundational act of Peronism, when Perón capitalised on his strong links with the world of labour (forged at the Secretariat of Labour), and thousands of workers marched to the Plaza de Mayo to demand his release from imprisonment on Martín García Island. The Radical Civic Union (a party of various ideological shades, whatever one might think of them) remained a middle-class vehicle in resisting Nacionalismo and then Peronism.
The concept of a self-conscious ‘middle class’ in Argentina was further consolidated during the first Peronist period, in an attempt to bridge the historic divisions between ‘the plebs’ and ‘decent people.’ The University Reform of 1918 gave this sector its own identity, opening the possibility that the son of immigrants could aspire to professional degrees in medicine or law. Perón later capitalised on these aspirations for upward social mobility with his formula of ‘social justice,’ inspired in part by the corporatism he observed during his postings as a military observer in Fascist Italy between 1939 and 1941.
Today, the old meritocratic (or more accurately, pseudo-meritocratic) ideal that was gestated but never fully realised under Yrigoyen, then captured by Perón, is under pressure. ‘The Chainsaw’, much like Trump’s ‘Drain the Swamp’ mantra, was a revolutionary declaration that suggested far more than the rejection of the old policies. In the minds of ordinary Argentines who voted for Milei, it was a rejection of a long and tired history — the old systems of patronage, political rent-seeking, corruption and clientelism which removed avenues to advancement for all but the favoured groups of one ‘caste’ or another. The chainsaw and ‘meritocracy’ were understood in part synonymously.
This was, and always had been, a naive hope. Such is the condition of the nation. Milei, meanwhile, has reduced budgets for public universities and openly criticised their politicisation and low efficiency — a position that does have solid foundations. However, a policy that has been reduced primarily to budgetary asphyxiation without comprehensive reform — including accountability and competition between institutions and rigorous evaluation of their results — now weakens one of the few remaining mechanisms for social mobility. Without an effective social elevator and facing entirely bleak prospects otherwise, many in the middle class see only one visible exit: Ezeiza Airport.
The work of keeping Argentina on sound footing requires a publicly minded demographic base — our history is already one of repeatedly taking the same first step on the road to course-correction. The ‘gradualist’ strategy of President Macri (2015-2019) delicately sought to restructure the economy and modernise the state through the existing institutional frameworks, only for his work to be undone by a second bout of Kirchnerism under Fernández (with Cristina de Kirchner returning to power as his Vice-President). This was a problem understood by Milei himself, who has referenced the need to maintain public support through necessary pain. It was partly this dilemma that led him to reject the gradualist strategy in the first place.
Although there are faint signs of an incipient ‘reverse brain drain’ in certain sectors, the reality is that numerous graduates and professionals end up serving drinks in Ibiza, working as tour guides in Malta, or trying to make their way in Spain, Italy, or the United Kingdom. The flight of human capital remains massive, and its cost for the country’s future is considerable. No democratic Argentine government has managed to tackle this drain structurally. On the other hand, the country’s net migration figures remain slightly positive, drawing large flows of labour to the informal sector from even more unfortunate parts of the continent. The end result is a sociological melancholy that leads many to suicide: suicide rates now exceed the record highs during the 1998-2002 economic depression. Perhaps if they do last, the results of Milei’s reforms will begin to ease the flight of human capital — but nothing has discredited the viability of ‘the chainsaw’ more than his apparent assimilation into the caste itself.
Corruption: the problem of credibility
The reluctance of many young people to ‘fight in the mud’ can be explained largely by a cold assessment of reality: foreign debt, commitments to the IMF, and endemic corruption are inherited burdens that many prefer not to shoulder. Most worrying has been the observation that, in certain cases, the promised chainsaw has been transformed into a tool for the benefit of those close to power. Allegations of preferential procurement processes (which were not necessarily counts of corruption) early in Milei’s premiership, nonetheless, began to take the sheen off the once untouchable President. This is something I observe directly: many of my students over the age of 16 voted enthusiastically for Milei, yet today, disillusioned, they are renewing Spanish or Italian passports with the intention of emigrating.
The $LIBRA scandal, also known as Cryptogate, erupted in February 2025 and proved particularly damaging. From his official account, the president recommended a token that soared to nearly five dollars only to collapse below one within hours. The pump-and-dump scheme is estimated to have generated losses exceeding $100 million for investors. It was not an isolated case: in 2021, he had already recommended CoinX — classified by the CNV as a possible Ponzi scheme — and Vulcano Game ($VULC), whose tokens collapsed shortly after his public endorsement. In the face of criticism, his habitual response has been “I only gave my opinion”, although judicial investigations have uncovered calls and recorded audio suggesting deeper involvement by his inner circle, including his sister Karina.
The case of Manuel Adorni illustrates the contradiction well. A preacher of fiscal austerity, he has turned parts of the State into something resembling a family SME: he appointed his brother, Francisco Adorni, as a Defence advisor with a salary of five million pesos despite a complete lack of relevant experience. The situation has since escalated; in June 2026, prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan requested Francisco’s indictment (indagatoria) for alleged unlawful enrichment and malicious omission in his asset declarations. Investigations revealed that Francisco’s net worth doubled in a single year, reaching 80.5 million pesos — a growth that appears incompatible with his official income. Furthermore, a significant discrepancy has emerged: while Francisco declared an inheritance of 21 million pesos, Manuel claimed to have received $200,000 (roughly 180 million pesos at parallel rates) to justify his own exponential wealth growth and Bitcoin investments. These conflicting versions sit uneasily with previous recordings in which Manuel expressed distrust of volatile cryptocurrencies.
The turning point has been his recent resignation and immediate appointment to the board of directors of YPF, the nation’s most significant state-majority-owned enterprise and its crown jewel. This move represents a ‘revolving door’ practice typical of democracies with weak institutions, where high-ranking officials jump from public service to key positions in strategic companies without a sufficient cooling-off period. This practice reinforces the perception of a ‘patrimonial state’ that has not rid itself of the inner-circle privileges that Milei himself promised to eradicate.
Unfortunately, these episodes add to other scandals in the National Disability Agency (ANDIS) and the Ministry of Human Capital, where alleged bribes and irregular contracts are currently under investigation. Compromising audio recordings involve figures close to Milei, such as Diego Spagnuolo, Milei’s sister (Karina Milei), and ‘Lule’ Menem, in alleged bribe solicitations. In the Ministry of Human Capital, withheld food and irregular contracts through the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) have fuelled new investigations.
Corruption in Argentina is not a detail; it is a structural problem tied to the customary practices of politics and the State. This corruption is systemic rather than incidental. Despite the massive Italian immigration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the mafia never managed to control the streets of Buenos Aires as they did elsewhere. This suggests that the ‘cake’ of corruption already had a historical owner: a patrimonialist State which, although formally emancipated from Spain, never fully freed itself from the corrupt practices of Bourbon political culture. Unfortunately, this land, like many, lives in twilight morality and invincible corruption.
Prognosis
From a European perspective, Milei constitutes a political phenomenon of great interest: the first serious and radical attempt to apply libertarian principles in a major Latin American country. Notwithstanding the drama and gesticulation, he has proven it is possible to break the statist consensus and survive electorally, for now.
However, he also illustrates the limits of purely economic minarchism when it collides with deep cultural, institutional, and anthropological realities: low social trust, a historical preference for a protective state, combined with chronic failures to exercise state power judiciously. Milei has just abolished the Ministry of the Interior, but he will find it difficult to abolish the internal problems of his ministries.
Milei is not an infallible messiah. His greatest virtue has been his disruptive drive and political realism in a country that desperately needed both. Yet that virtue can easily become a vice if it is not accompanied by ironclad institutional discipline, far more rigorous and less indulgent selection of political cadres, and a compelling narrative capable of convincing the middle class that today’s sacrifices will ultimately build a future of genuine prosperity — not merely endless austerity.
Not even a strong footballing result in the World Cup — that reliable placebo for so many national frustrations — will be able to mask this underlying pathology forever. The crowds in the stadiums can quickly become crowds in the streets. Milei is only one part of the story; even as president, he does not — and cannot — pretend to be ‘everyone.’ In this sense, the apocryphal Platonic insight does ring true: the first act of corruption by an official is to accept a position for which one is not prepared.
The opposition remains divided, lacking convincing core ideas and burdened by figures such as the convicted Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wearing an electronic ankle tag and playing a self-referential farce as a new Evita Perón. An immediate mass return to Kirchnerism is unlikely, but an increase in the ‘blank vote’ — that tremendously political vote with incalculable effects explored by José Saramago in Seeing (Ensayo sobre la lucidez) — is probable. In reality, many of those who lived through the Argentine collapse of 2001 feel despair when they see they are still governed by people who played leading roles in that institutional collapse, such as Patricia Bullrich (former Minister of the Interior and now current Leader of the Libertad Avanza bloc), Federico Sturzenegger (Minister of Deregulation), Luis Caputo (Minister of Economy), or Diego Santilli (recently appointed as Chief of Cabinet to replace Manuel Adorni). A period of just over a quarter of a century only serves to certify a kind of ‘eternal return’ by other means.
Julio Cortázar, the celebrated Argentine writer, left in Historias de cronopios y de famas (1962) countless delightful instructions for everyday actions, yet unfortunately included none for governing Argentina, stabilising its economy, or strengthening its middle class. However, the message from Argentina is clear: we want no more poverty, and do not need populism. Instead, we require a solvent and bold middle class with a clear future.
This article was written by Francesc-Xavier Soria Jofra, a Pimlico Journal contributor. He is a historian and lecturer in Córdoba, Argentina. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.
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