Argentine President Javier Milei revolutionized the political scene with an intellectual discourse that combines the ideas of libertarian liberalism with a strong opposition to cultural progressivism, linked to the incipient anti-globalist and conservative movement in Western democracies, led by leaders such as Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán. Although his libertarian economic preaching finds inspiration in various referents of the Austrian school such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Murray Rothbard, a key figure to understand his political thought and "cultural battle" is the American philosopher Robert Nozick, whom Milei himself has publicly mentioned as one of his sources of reference.
In 1974, through the renowned work Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick formulated a defense of the "minimal State" in response to the theory of distributive justice of his Harvard colleague, John Rawls, as well as against the anarcho-capitalists, who advocate the total disappearance of the State (a current with which Milei also shows some sympathy) and the utilitarians, who subordinate justice to "the greatest happiness for the greatest number", by means of the calculation of costs and benefits of actions. Nozick's views on individual freedom, property and the illegitimacy of arbitrary redistribution processes are reflected in the political practice of Milei, who has found in these principles a theoretical underpinning for his rejection of the interventionist policies imposed for decades in Argentina.
The Emergence of the Minimal State
In his work, Nozick argues that the only legitimate justification for the state is the protection of individual rights, limiting its functions to security, justice and the enforcement of contracts. He also argues that the state arises as a natural process, in which property rights, the free market and competition play a fundamental role, which he bases on deontological criteria (oriented to "duty") inspired by the thought of Immanuel Kant. Thus, it is possible to morally justify the existence of the State.
At the beginning of the work, the author identifies a "state of nature" scenario (in the style of John Locke) in which the absence of an "impartial judge" to apply the laws in a just manner is highlighted, given that judicial actions can be undertaken privately. Then, taking Adam Smith's classic concept of the "invisible hand" in a market logic (and discarding Rawls' contractualist model) Nozick postulates that at first the "ultra-minimal state" arises as a result of competition between agencies providing protection services within a territory. Subsequently, through a spontaneous process, one of the agencies definitively imposes itself as dominant by guaranteeing superior protection and legal security, acquiring universality. At this point, it assumes the moral obligation to incorporate the "independents" who were not part of any agency, leading to the consolidation of a "minimum state" without resorting to coercion in the process. The dominant agency, then, ends up exercising de facto as the entity with the monopoly of legitimate force. This is coupled with the idea that political order can emerge without the need for centralized planning or violation of rights, a principle that Milei recurrently claims in his defense of the free market as a mechanism of social organization and cooperation.
Therefore, any state intervention that goes beyond these principles implies a violation of individual freedom. In this sense, Milei not only shares, but also puts this idea into practice with his projects of drastic reduction of the state apparatus, as well as with the reduction or elimination of confiscatory taxes, the already initiated processes of privatization of public companies and the implementation of the brand new "chainsaw" in charge of the Ministry of Deregulation and Transformation of the State, aimed at massively cutting the regulations inherited from previous governments.
A fundamental axis in Nozick's thinking is the opposition to forced redistribution processes. In his theory, any transfer of resources that does not arise from voluntary exchanges or respect for property rights is morally unjustifiable. Milei himself appropriates this critique to reject the welfarist schemes provided by Argentine politics during the last decades, considering that these programs not only distort the market, but also create dependency and restrict individual freedom along with the sense of responsibility.
The rejection of Rawls and the critique of Argentine redistributive policy
In The Theory of Justice (1971), although Rawls prioritizes the "principle of equal liberty" (in which a scheme of maximization of equal civil and political liberties for all citizens is clarified) as the basis of his liberal theory, he also proposes a "principle of difference", according to which economic inequalities are only justifiable if they benefit the most disadvantaged sectors, thus allowing redistribution through state intervention. This premise served as the basis for multiple redistributive policies in Argentina, from subsidies to regulations in pursuit of greater social equity. According to Rawls, to achieve consensus on the principles of justice, citizens, at the time of redistribution, must place a "veil of ignorance" around their position and personal interests, thus entering into an "original position" where they do not know their status, ensuring that in the distribution the less favored ex-ante are in an improved situation ex-post.
In direct response to Rawlsian principles, Nozick elaborates the "retributive theory", which contains three principles: the "justice of acquisition", by which the fruit of a person's labor generates property rights over the good obtained; the "justice of transfer", where every transaction is legitimate as long as it is free and voluntary; and, finally, and foreseeing possible violations of this last rule, the "principle of rectification", which serves to compensate the injured party in case of injustice .
From Nozick's perspective, and in Milei's line of argument, redistributive policies are not only unfair, but erode individual responsibility and the incentive to progress. For Milei, the Argentine political class has instrumentalized the concept of "social justice" (a term that, curiously, Rawls also uses) to justify a corrupt state system that, far from improving the quality of life of the neediest, has deepened poverty and encouraged clientelism.
The centrality of the individual
Although Nozick belonged to the field of philosophy and Milei to the field of economic sciences, both share a strong point in common: the defense of the individual against the State. Nozick's work provides a fundamental theoretical scaffolding for the vision of Milei, who, after years of intellectual dissemination, today finds himself taking these principles to the exercise of power, materializing the vindication of individual sovereignty as the normative foundation of the social order. In line with the Nozickean argument, Milei conceives the State as a structure whose only moral justification lies in its capacity to guarantee the inviolable rights of individuals, without interfering in their life projects or the fruit of their transactions. Its "minarchist" agenda, dedicated to the drastic reduction of the state apparatus and the elimination of corporate privileges, ultimately responds to a deontological conviction: no individual should be instrumentalized as a means to the ends of others, and any expansion of the state beyond its essential functions becomes a vehicle of coercion incompatible with justice.
Thus, the libertarian theoretical framework allowed the president to construct a discourse that, beyond the economic, is projected as a moral struggle against the injustice involved in the forced extraction of resources by the State. Unlike other "neutralist" liberals who avoid cultural confrontation, Milei knew how to integrate his theoretical vision with a broader political narrative, where both the progressive agenda and statism represent twin threats to individual freedom.
The reality of Argentina after the first year of libertarian rule
However, the challenge ahead for Milei remains great. After a first year in office that was approved by a large part of society, despite the costs in terms of recession and unemployment resulting from the largest fiscal adjustment in national history, the initial pessimism about the threat of hyperinflation seems to have dissipated. Instead, a relatively stable economic and social climate can be observed, with the fundamental achievement of having brought inflation down by 2025, the year of legislative elections.
Although the Argentine State is still far from being "minimal" and the measures promoted by La Libertad Avanza face strong opposition resistance, the government has managed to move forward with its reforms, in large part, thanks to the legislative support of Pro and other allies, which facilitated the approval of laws that are fundamental for governability. Moreover, there is considerable public support for the government's course, in a context where the rest of the political spectrum is still immersed in the crisis that was consolidated with the rise of Milei in the political arena.
In any case, it is notorious that Javier Milei has managed to transfer Robert Nozick's main libertarian postulates to the Argentine political debate, formulating a direct response to decades of redistributive policies and their consequences. In his discourse, the struggle against statism and collectivism does not only represent a pro-market stance, but fundamentally a defense of justice in terms of individual rights and legitimate property. His initial success as a political outsider shows that his imprint, with great inspiration in Nozick's philosophical formulations, found a significant echo in a society fed up with the unfulfilled promises of a political class lacking in ideas and completely disconnected from the citizenry's reality.
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