Milei as a Marxist
Atilio A. BoronAtilio A. Boron
Source: Al Mayadeen English
30 Oct 2024 20:51
5 Min Read
Already there are faint but real signs that the people have begun to realize that Milei’s project is a swindle for the people and will only worsen their economic situation.
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There are many reasons why the Argentine president will enter history through the service door, if he is lucky. Contrary to his delusions of grandeur, to his self-proclaimed mission of being the “redeemer” of a decaying West won by the seven-headed hydra of collectivism, Javier Milei will be remembered instead as the ruler whose administration brought a new, more resounding, and definitive ratification of the truths contained in Karl Marx’s theory of capitalist economy. As a “proven and self-confessed” Marxist I can only thank him, because from now on I will fight the battle of ideas better equipped than ever before.
The author of Capital proved that the capitalist mode of production rests on an irresolvable contradiction between owners and non-owners of the means of production. In other words, it rests on a society in which there is a brutal distributive struggle between rich and poor; a “zero-sum” game in which what some gain, the others lose. And in capitalism, by means of surplus value to which are added a host of other mechanisms of mass plunder, the proprietors “legally” rob the workers of their income and even their modest possessions, thanks to which the capitalists grow richer every day.
At the end of 2021 according to the US Federal Reserve, “the richest 1% of households in the United States [the ideal society, together with ‘Israel’, according to Milei!] owned 30.9% of the country’s wealth, while the poorest 50% owned 2.6%”. And on a worldwide scale Oxfam reported, according to a note published in Página/12 on October 2,2024, that “1% of billionaires accumulate more wealth than 95% of the world’s population.” This is the “good society” that the prophet of the Casa Rosada promises us to achieve in 30 or 40 years of enormous sacrifices. Data which, on the other hand, irrefutably confirm that Marx is right and that Milei’s mentors – the so-called theorists of the Austrian School, the “anarcho-capitalists”, etcetera – are just a group of cunning liars at the service of big capital.
It follows that your government, President, is not only bad, irrational, and inefficient because it promotes neither economic growth nor income distribution. It is also immoral. Nothing else can be said of someone who, despite his libertarian litanies to the contrary, in fact only governs for the rich. Your governing arts are reduced, as you yourself have said, to “enlarging the pockets of the rich” and organizing the large-scale plunder of the poor, sustaining this nefarious project with the help of the media scoundrels, the local oligarchy and its foreign allies and “the embassy” in Buenos Aires. Also collaborating are parliamentarians who shamelessly sell their vote and a Judicial Power that has not the slightest curiosity to know where the three shipments of gold bullion taken abroad ended up and the reasons for such a radical initiative.
That is why your government offers all kinds of concessions, allowances, and privileges to Big Capital while it denies a paltry – and incredibly miserable! – increase in the pension assets of retirees and pensioners, reduces workers’ real wages, causes unemployment, leads to the bankruptcy of small and medium-sized companies, concentrates wealth, financially stifles public universities, scientific research state organizations, national cinema and advances, like a crazed mole, in the destruction of the national state and all the social protection agencies and policies that characterize a civilized society
Your ideological prejudices, mister President, have surely led you to ignore that public spending as a proportion of GDP in advanced capitalist countries is very large and has nothing to do with your rubbish comments in this regard. It reaches 57.0 % in France, 48.40 % in Germany, 44.17 % in the United Kingdom, and 37.84 % in Argentina, almost equal to that of the United States.
Of course, blinded by your fanaticism you will say that these are countries secretly and mischievously governed by communists, but such nonsense only provokes laughter or smirks among the tycoons of developed capitalism who pretend to be your friends. Your project to radically reduce public spending, if successful, will turn our country into the South American replica of some of the poorest nations in the world, such as Afghanistan, with a public spending of 16.89%, or Cameroon, with 17.08%, all with 80 to 90% of their populations living in poverty.
But Milei’s friends and the beneficiaries of his policies, the dominant class, “the power behind the throne” of our flawed democracy, will be more than happy because they will enter the list of the largest fortunes compiled by Forbes. And extreme poverty will be installed in Argentina perhaps reaching apocalyptic proportions. A grim prospect, yes, but this would be until the moment in which the people of Argentina decide to put an end to this malignant economic experiment that is causing so much pain and suffering to our people. Already there are faint but real signs that the people have begun to realize that Milei’s project is a swindle for the people and will only worsen their economic situation. This is why, sooner rather than later, his government could run into some unpleasant political surprises.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
