Rothbard's shadow behind Milei

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Anatomy of a reactionary anarcho-capitalism

Rothbard's shadow behind Milei

Argentine President Javier Milei often repeats that in 2013 he was struck — almost mystically — by reading Monopoly and Competition, an “article” (as he calls it) by libertarian philosopher Murray Rothbard, which allegedly converted him to the Austrian School and transformed him — from a mainstream economist — into a champion of anarcho-capitalism.

As Orhan Pamuk famously wrote: “I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”

A Founding Myth

Milei, Rothbard, and the Making of an Icon

Now, aside from the fact that Monopoly and Competition is not an article but the tenth chapter of Rothbard’s 1962 volume Man, Economy, and State, Milei’s claim is partly a myth-building exercise — understandable, given his pathologically egocentric and narcissistic personality — and partly true — though not without a few necessary caveats.

Amid a haphazard stew of theoretical references and ideological quotes, the media often link Milei’s thinking to Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, leading figures of the Austrian School and advocates of minimal (or even non-existent) State.

This confusion is deliberately encouraged by Milei himself, who proudly proclaims: “I’m the first to follow Hayek’s ideas”, and frequently invokes The Road to Serfdom, Hayek’s most famous book, published in 1944.

There is reason to suspect that Milei invokes these two Austrian “gurus” not only out of conviction, but also for the sake of respectability. Hayek and Mises serve as his liberal credentials, respectable references that grant him legitimacy in more traditional conservative circles, far less controversial and far less unsettling than his actual intellectual mentor, Murray Rothbard, who,- in his later years - broke with classical libertarianism (accusing it of liberal-progressive drift), embraced paleolibertarianism, aligned himself with the radical, nationalist, conservative right, and openly promoted the use of populist, violent, and reactionary rhetoric.

Many of Milei’s most shocking statements — the ones that spark outrage, make headlines, and turn him into front-page material — aren’t even his own. They’re crude, simplified, and shouted replicas of ideas and claims formulated decades earlier by Rothbard: a thinker who, like it or not, had academic rigour and a solid theoretical framework.

Three Core Concepts

The State, Social Justice, and Taxes

Shall we check?

Let’s start with the basics: the State, social justice, and taxes.

THE STATE

Rothbard writes:

The State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large. (The Ethics of Liberty, 1982, Ch. 22)

Unlike common criminals, the State does not tolerate competition. […] The Mafia has competitors. The State does not. (For a New Liberty, 1973, Ch. 3)

Milei echoes him:

My contempt for the State is infinite. (The Economist, 2024)The State is a criminal organisation. (Madrid Economic Forum speech, 2024)

Between the mafia and the State, I prefer the mafia — at least it has values, keeps its promises, and, most of all, accepts competition. (TVN interview, 2023)

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Rothbard claims:

So-called ‘social justice’ is simply the coercive confiscation of the property of some for the benefit of others. (The Ethics of Liberty, Ch. 29)True charity arises in the heart of the individual; it is not truly charity when it is extorted at gunpoint in the name of redistribution. (For a New Liberty, Ch. 9)

Milei repeats:

Social justice is a brutal and violent method […]  it is theft, a moral aberration, and naturally, it produces terrible results. (IDB speech, 2025)Charity is not something you do at gunpoint. It must arise spontaneously, not through violence. (IDB speech, 2025)

TAXATION

Rothbard argues:

Taxation is theft, pure and simple. (For a New Liberty, Ch. 3)

Taxation punishes success and saving, and rewards dependency and laziness. (Power and Market, 1970, Ch. 6)

[…] what we are saying is that these actions [civil disobedience, nonpayment of taxes, or lying to or theft from the State] are just and morally licit. (The Ethics of Liberty, Ch. 28)

Milei comments:

Taxes are theft. (Quarta repubblica, 2024).

Those who have managed to evade taxes are geniuses. (A24, 2025)

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Negative Freedom and the Absolute Market

By now, the picture is clear. Milei follows Rothbard’s lead and essentially recycles his ideas, almost word for word. Both depict the State as a predatory, morally bankrupt entity built on fiscal coercion and the expropriation of private property. Social justice, in their view, is a violent deception—an ideological cover for forced redistribution that punishes merit and rewards dependency. Taxes are framed as illegitimate tools of oppression, and tax evasion is not condemned as a crime, but praised as an act of heroic defiance.

You could go through Milei’s agenda point by point and find, without exception, that it’s all there already—in Rothbard’s books, spelt out in black and white. Education, healthcare, justice, the military, public services: everything should be handed over to the forces of the free market. Every function becomes a service provided by private actors who sign contracts with individual consumers: they offer, you pay. Laws are replaced by contracts. And for those who break them, justice is privatised and driven by retribution.

A form of “justice” that leaves no room for prevention, let alone rehabilitation. The guilty must pay, immediately and in proportion to the harm done. But in the anarcho-capitalist worldview, “proportion” is purely economic: if you steal, you repay and compensate; if you kill, you may be killed in return—or let off by paying, if that’s what the victim’s family decides; if you rape, you reimburse the “market value” of the violated sexuality… or end up castrated.

Freedom, free markets, individual initiative, and more freedom still.

We’ve heard Milei speak in favour of the buying and selling of human organs, claiming it’s “just another market” and that “state regulation is the real problem.” To most people, it sounded like a grotesque aberration — but on closer inspection, it’s nothing more than the logical extension of a certain idea of individual liberty. A radical form of theoretical consistency, rigorous down to the very last kidney.

If the body is the property of the individual, then—according to this logic—there is nothing to prevent its voluntary alienation, in whole or in part. And it matters little whether the one selling a kidney is desperate, starving, or drowning in debt: the choice remains “free,” and therefore legitimate. No coercion? Then no problem.

This is the essence of anarcho-capitalist thinking: absolute negative freedom, with no room for moral constraints, collective protections, or ethical hesitation.As Rothbard already wrote in The Ethics of Liberty: “[...] every man has an absolute right to the control and ownership of his own body, […]. He also has the right to give away such tangible property […] and to exchange it for the similarly derived properties of others.”

A principle that can be extended to everything: child labour, drugs, weapons, extreme pornography, healthcare, and education. No state intervention, no protection, no limits. Just supply, demand, and private agreements. If someone doesn’t agree, they’re free not to take part. Period.

Long live freedom, carajo! — as Milei would say. But above all, long live negative freedom: freedom from bans, obligations, and interference. A concept that’s anything but new in the liberal tradition, from Locke to Nozick, via Berlin, Hayek, and Mises.

A concept that implies: you want to do drugs? Drink yourself to death? Make a living as a porn star? Drive with your headlights off at night? Not wear a seatbelt or helmet? Eat raw rats, be a white supremacist, build an arsenal at home, refuse a vaccine, shout “fucking negro,” fire someone for being gay, or pay a woman half what you’d pay a man?

Go ahead. No one can stop you, as long as it’s your free choice.

If freedom is understood solely in its negative form, then any form of positive action — whether implemented by the State or by private actors — aimed at correcting social imbalances or protecting the most vulnerable is seen as an abuse, an intolerable interference. Every active policy turns into an act of oppression.

Rothbard puts it bluntly: group rights do not exist; only individual rights do. And he adds: the right to discriminate is, essentially, the right to choose — and this, in turn, is the very foundation of free exchange (For a New Liberty).Tolerance and inclusion, in this logic, cannot be imposed: even intolerance, if freely chosen, becomes a legitimate expression of liberty.

Milei knows this, embraces it, and acts accordingly. Through both words and actions, he is dismantling every redistributive or protective policy, all while waving the banner of the fight against “woke” ideology. He has shut down the Ministry for Women, Genders, and Diversity and put its headquarters up for sale; he is dismantling services against gender-based violence through drastic cuts and the closure of entire facilities; he has proposed eliminating the legal category of “femicide” in the name of “equality”; he has launched a cultural war against LGBTQ+ movements, including banning inclusive language in public documents; and he has slashed disability pensions by around 40%, putting vital support for nearly 200,000 people at risk.He does not shy away from media attacks and cynically exploits the rhetoric of fighting waste and woke dominance to wipe out every last trace of institutional compassion.

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Libertarian populism and reactionary agenda: the final Rothbard, the true Milei

But granted that freedom and the market justify everything-or almost everything-how can this libertarian absolutism be reconciled with repression, prohibitions, moralism, and a war on dissent? How can one, with the same theoretical consistency, defend the trade of human organs and, at the same time, seek to outlaw abortion?

It is once again Rothbard who clears up the apparent contradiction. But not the theoretical Rothbard of individual action and unfettered free markets: rather, the later Rothbard, the one who abandoned part of his original principles to embrace the obscurantism of the radical right.In 1992, he published Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement, a veritable manifesto for the alliance between extreme libertarians and reactionary populists.

The message is clear: you can do whatever you want, as long as you don’t violate another person’s body or property. But that doesn’t mean every choice is morally acceptable. In a stateless society, it will be private communities — built on shared values — that decide what is admissible and what is not. Those who stray from the norm will be excluded, expelled, pushed to the margins. Moral cohesion becomes the only possible glue in a system without public authority.

Diversity, unless aligned, turns into a threat to be eliminated.

This is why — Rothbard argues — a pact between radical libertarians and right-wing populists is needed: it’s the only alliance capable of bringing down the big-government and technocratic elites.Hayek’s gradualist approach — educating the elite — is ineffective: too slow and too naive. The elites must be confronted head-on, with the backing of the masses.Away with the media, away with the bought-and-paid-for intellectuals, away with the bureaucratic caste. Onward with the people.

And so, it takes shape the eight-point program outlined by Rothbard and embraced by Milei, who gives voice — in new and incendiary tones — to an agenda that stirs the appetites of the new right across the Western world.

• Slash taxes. Income tax? Gone. VAT? Gone. Property and business taxes? Gone. Cut them all.

• Slash welfare. If we can’t get rid of it entirely, let’s tear it down, one piece at a time.

• Slash racial and group privileges. Tear down quotas and affirmative action: they trample on property rights and come from a civil rights dogma that’s completely overreached.

• Take back the streets – Part 1. Zero tolerance for real criminals: robbers, rapists, murderers — not white-collar offenders. Let the police act and punish. If they’re wrong, they pay. But let them act.

• Take back the streets – Part 2. Out with bums and vagrants. Again, the police on the front line: evictions, cleanup, order. Where will they go? Who cares? With a bit of luck, they’ll disappear — or move from parasites to productive citizens.

• End the central banks. They print money to rip you off. Enough with legalized inflation! They're a criminal cartel destroying middle-class savings and enriching banksters.

• Nation first! Stop foreign aid, stop international do-goodism, down with globalism. Let every country clean up its own mess.

• Family, community, order. Get the state out of our homes. No more public schools: education must be private, locally run, and free from government control.

  
  

It spells Rothbard, but it reads Milei. Can we all agree on that?

Now the only question is whether the anarcho-capitalist nightmare will fully materialise. And if it does, what kind of damage — and how much of it irreversible — it will inflict on Argentine society.