Milei wants a strong Stateand this aspiration is not exclusive to the Argentine president. It is a characteristic that it shares with all the projects of the different variants of the libertarianism internationally.
In the last episode of the conversation cycle “Argentina, you will understand” (which we are doing in La Izquierda Diario) I was talking with Veronica Gago on this question: on the one hand, the intimate relationship between neoliberalism and authoritarianism (and ultimately neoliberalism and violence); on the other hand, the link between neoliberalism and the State.
Against him libertarian self-story that assures that they want less and less Statea State that withdraws more and more from the different spheres and becomes “extinct” to let the harmonious regulation of the market order economic and social life (that is the way in which they present their utopia), which in reality happens is that They need a strong State to guarantee that order.
The market order (more precise it would be to say the “market disorder”) generates so many contradictions, unleashes so many crisesis so “unnatural”—let me understand what I mean, in the social or political there is nothing “natural,” but it is so arbitrary—that Only a “strong State” can sustain it in the face of the threats it constantly receives.above all, of social mobilization, collective or mass action on public life.
Neoliberalism, renamed libertarianism, I mean, that of the founding fathers admired by Milei (Hayek, Von Misses, Milton Friedman) is not an economic project that seeks less and less State and less politics; It is a political project that aims a strong State to protect the market order which would otherwise blow up society.
Ojo, “statist” projects or who fight for some form of “state dirigisme” They are looking for something similar, but by other means. If the market wants order, it must give something because if not, it can lose everything. The crisis of those projects that paved the way for the right in many countries of the world and for Milei in Argentina, is based on or responds to a crisis of capitalism in generalof a wild competition at an international level in which Capital no longer even admits these “concessions” and empties the Statesdismantles them, deprives them of even those minimal instruments of containment. That is why trying to return to those projects is not understanding that not only are they too condescending to an increasingly wild and concentrated Capital, but they are also impossible.
The close link between libertarianism and “strong state” offers a perspective that allows us to understand some measures that the Government took in recent days in two areas: tax and communication.
On the one hand, with the announcement of dismemberment (and dismantling) of the AFIP (the Federal Administration of Public Revenue) in charge of tax collection (now it will be called “ARCA”, National Customs Collection and Control Agency). At the same time, it will be divided into two: a General Customs Directorate and a General Tax Directorate. Aside from the formal changes, what is important is the personnel who would be in charge, and who respond to Santiago Caputoin addition to being linked to a whole world of intelligence services.
On the other hand, in the area of communications, the most bombastic announcement was that they will seek to eliminate the VAT exemption for newspapers, magazines and digital media, in addition to tendering the mobile spectrum reserved for ARSAT or in the hands of ENaCom to boost the 5G deployment. The provision of connectivity to 16,000 schools will also be reactivated through a new bidding process and the rules governing the ordering of signals in the pay TV content grid will be repealed (this could be to the detriment of news signals). In this area, Milei would be starting a battle to install a new, more structural relationship of forces in which the weight (already degraded) of traditional media decreases with respect to targeted social networks. and taken over by the businessmen who support the extreme right, starting with Elon Musk. We must continue this framework and this dispute in which there can be strong confrontations, for example, Martín Becerra (specialist in communication and cultural industries) considers that it is almost a declaration of war against Clarín (and The Nation).
If you look at the entire picture of these announcements that were made known simultaneously, on the one hand, the measures intended unify the intelligence apparatus and the apparatus that manages sensitive information from the accounts of companies or natural and legal persons (a kind of multifunction “crypto-State”); and on the other; intends limit the public voice of media outlets that may be criticalthe objectives of the Government are understood: a coercion and coercion, via extortion and blackmail of opponents. Let us remember that Caputo already controls the escrachistas and spreaders of fake news from the “digital gangs” that operate on social networks.
Why at this time? Well, because due to the decline in the image of the Governmentfor the end of the honeymoon, the beginning of a social unrest (today focused on the university), this whole climate had begun to have replicas in some media that had been very condescending and critical voices began to be heard. This change in climate can also push some business sectors to support other political projects, because they feel like losers in this one.
Therefore, the reinforcement of a control apparatus with intelligence information and the attempt to limit the capacity of some communication companies, It is a product not of the strength, but of the weakness into which the Government is entering.
Given all this, the street (with the unconditional accompaniment of the left) is being erected as the true oppositiontoday with its axis in the “sounding box” that is the university. Because the entire opposition political system (especially in Peronism, but also in radicalism) It is governed by a temporality that is not what the urgency of the hour demands. But that of armed with electoral proposals that today unleash early and incomprehensible internal fights towards 2025 or even towards the very distant 2027.
Among other things because they don’t trust the street, They only take the street as data when it is imposed on them. They consider that the street occurs when politics fails and not that the street opens the way to another political imagination. That is why, looking back, they consider 2001 a terrible drama and the 70s, a tragedy. Not as events that opened up multiple possibilities.
Now, if you look closely, they are slowing down. Because they were composing the “new songs” with a melody that tried to amalgamate his failed recipes with some chords of hardcore capitalism that Milei plays. The new recipe seemed like a synthesis between a little bit of “necessary” adjustment from Milei, but the damage control that Milei doesn’t have.
However, The real new songs are beginning to be composed elsewhere and give birth to another policy, against the police state that seeks to found a weakened Milei, there the music of the future sounds.
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