“While Milei’s policy agenda has had a devastating impact for millions in Argentina, he has by no means had it all his own way.”
By Ben Hayes, Labour Outlook
As well as reshaping the Republican Party and wider American politics, one of the major goals of the network around Donald Trump has been to strengthen reactionary right-wing forces across the world. In Europe this has been seen in alliances with the likes of the Alternative für Deutschland party in Germany (with Vice President JD Vance notably meeting leading representative Alice Weidel during his visit last year), the government of Giorgia Meloni in Italy (although relations now seem to be strained over her reluctance to get on board with the US war on Iran), and Reform UK (as well as some elements to its right) in Britain.
This dynamic has also had a highly significant impact in Latin America, with the region’s longstanding status of “our backyard” in the eyes of successive US administrations and a long history of military dictatorships produced by Washington-backed coups making it a particular target for a new wave of reaction. The first major contemporary manifestation of this trend was the election of Jair Bolsonaro as President in Brazil in 2018- he is currently serving a 27-year sentence for his role in an attempted coup following defeat to Lula da Silva four years later. Last year saw open Pinochet supporter (and son of a Nazi Party member) José Antonio Kast become President of Chile. However, perhaps the figure who has most closely replicated Trump’s own combination of the absurd and sinister is Argentina’s Javier Milei.
Taking office towards the end of 2023, he is, in many ways, a walking caricature- infamously joining Elon Musk on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in the US and brandishing a “bureaucracy chainsaw”. Indeed, one of the first major acts of his government was to abolish the departments of Education, Social Development, Culture and Labour and replace them all with a singular ‘Ministry of Human Capital’. He has, in his own words, offered “absolute and total support” to Trump’s military action against Venezuela and Iran, hailed Benjamin Netanyahu as his “dearest friend”, and described the seven-year period in which Argentina was ruled by a military junta as “a war in which some excesses were committed”.
Whilst some of the prominent proponents of this hard-right current in global politics have, at least in terms of presentation, sought to distance themselves from an uncritical embrace of free-market economics, Milei has proudly taken virtually every possible opportunity to demonstrate his neoliberal credentials. The health system, for instance, has seen cuts of more than 50% implemented, and his determination to decimate pensions was so rabid that at one point it led to rows on social media with Victoria Villarruel- his own Vice President.
Even for a man with this track record, the government’s ‘Labour Modernisation Law’ represents a remarkable level of commitment to eliminating any and all barriers to capital getting its way. Particularly notable aspects of the bill include the legalisation of 12-hour working days, an expansion of the number of sectors where minimum service levels during industrial action are 75%, and allowing employers the option to offer housing, food or other goods as a substitute for some wages. General Secretary of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas Rafael Freire has described the legislation as representing “an unprecedented rollback of regulation that violates the principle of progressiveness and would push society back to a pre-constitutional state”.
While Milei’s policy agenda has had a devastating impact for millions in Argentina, he has by no means had it all his own way. There have been 4 general strikes in the country in the first half of his Presidential term, with the country’s largest trade union federation stating that the most recent one in February saw observance rates of 90%. Pensioners have continued to organise weekly demonstrations outside the National Congress for nearly two and a half years. Former President Cristina Kirchner, who served two terms as the candidate of a broad left alliance, had mass rallies of support outside her home last summer as she began her sentence under house arrest for a corruption conviction, which International Trade Union Confederation General Secretary Luc Triangle has argued amounts to “political repression which marks another step in the billionaire-backed coup against democracy.” After gains for this alliance in Buenos Aires’s local elections last September, Milei even announced some modest increases to social spending.
On one level, the case of Argentina represents an important warning for other countries where those tied to the political project of Milei and Trump currently have a serious prospect of taking office at the next opportunity- a showcase of the reality they want to create behind the circus. However, it is also an example of how serious organising on the key political questions can and will make a difference, even in incredibly difficult and demoralising times. That is a lesson worth learning not only for campaigns coming up in the short term, but also for the fights that will follow, whatever their outcome.
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