Here we are publishing the article on Milei's government written by our comrades in Lutte Ouvrière for their journal, Lutte de Classe #250 septembre-octobre 2025. It was written before Trump offered Milei a $20bn rescue loan (a currency swap to prop up the almost terminally deflated peso) with another $20bn to come, just under two weeks before Argentina's mid-term elections on 26 October: said Trump, "Victory [for Milei] is very important. Your poll numbers I hear are pretty good. I think they will be better after this" - openly admitting that de facto, he was "helping along" the election chances of his Chainsaw mate. He added that of course, he would only OK the loan if Milei won: "And, you know, our approvals are somewhat subject to who wins the election", because, if "a socialist wins" then the US would feel "a lot differently" about its hand-outs.
For Trump and Milei, the summoning up of the old ghost of anti-communism (in fact it was never actually laid to rest) is useful even against the failed reformist pro-"nice"-capitalism of Argentina's Peronists, US Democrats, the British Labour party (of old) or the French "socialists" and "communists"... As if capitalism by definition can be "nice" - except for its most voracious sharks. Anyway, Trump's currency crutch worked. On 26 October, Milei's coalition, La Libertad Avanza, won 41% of the vote in the mid-term elections, taking 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house seats that were contested.
The media called it a "landslide"... It wasn't one. Despite compulsory voting, many did not vote. Turnout was 67.85% of the 36 million eligible voters - the lowest tally for a national election since the so-called 1983 "return of democracy". Which says a lot about the disillusionment of voters with all parties, but in this instance, certainly with Milei. In fact his coalition only got 26% of the votes cast and only that much, thanks to Trump's help. Which hardly refl ects "popular" support for this caricatural epitome of right-wing populism.
Milei lacks a majority in Congress and his majority in the Senate is fragile: for the time being, he is having to roll back on some of his promised tree-felling policies.
*****
In the nearly two years since he took office, President Javier Milei has won the esteem of financial institutions and the bourgeois media around the world. To reward him for restoring business in Argentina and stabilising inflation and public accounts through a huge transfer of wealth at the expense of the poor, the IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank granted him a new loan of $42 billion (£32bn) in April, on top of the 2018 loan, which has not yet been repaid. But recently, bad news has been piling up for the far-right government.
Looking back at Milei's 2023 victory
Milei's election victory in December 2023 came against the backdrop of the violent economic crisis that has been rocking Argentina since 2018 and the uncontrolled rise in inflation. Since the crash of 2001, a large part of the population has been surviving thanks to more than 40,000 soup kitchens. Debt is strangling the economy of this country of 46 million inhabitants, but this is nothing new. Throughout its history, Argentina has never freed itself from its dependence on its creditors. Its first default dates back to 1890, and eight more have occurred since then! Partially wiped out in 2005 and 2010, the debt has risen again. It doubled under the presidency of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) and stood at $927 billion (£696bn) at the time of Milei's election.
Milei made a name for himself during the 2023 presidential campaign with his violently reactionary rhetoric. Opposed to feminism, abortion rights, sex education, "woke ideology", homophobic and climate sceptic, he denounced "shitty collectivists", the "caste", i.e., mainly Peronist politicians, wrongly presented as socialists, the trade union bureaucracy and trade unionism in general, but also judges, academics, journalists, civil servants... He praised the trade in human organs, the carrying of weapons, and the right of companies to pollute.
His running mate, now his deputy president, Victoria Villarruel, provided the link to the most right-wing sections of the bourgeoisie and the army. Coming from a family of officers involved in repression during the military dictatorship, she unambiguously justified the assassination of activists and torture by personally visiting former torturers who had been tried and imprisoned.
Milei, whose electoral coalition, La Libertad Avanza, won 30% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, owes his victory in the second round against the Peronist candidate to a transfer of votes from the right-wing candidate, Patricia Bullrich (24% of the vote). She was rewarded with the Ministry of Security. While Milei benefited from the votes of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, he also attracted a section of the working classes, who were desperate and angry at the previous Peronist government of Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Kirchner (2019-2023).
Milei spoke of drastically reducing state spending and privatising all public services. These had been in such a state of disrepair for so long, that some people dreamed that privatisation could be a step forward. He denounced corruption, clientelism and state funding of associations, often Peronist, and at the same time... meagre social benefits. He benefited from the ongoing scandals, the six-year prison sentence and lifetime ineligibility for corruption of former Vice-President Cristina Kirchner.
Milei also claimed to want to "exterminate" inflation. At the time, inflation was running at over 210% per annum, creating an unbearable situation for the poorest. He seems to have found a receptive audience among some of the workers in the so-called informal sector, which accounts for nearly half of the working population, and among younger people (who can vote from the age of 16) who dreamed of a break with the past. Milei talked about replacing the peso, that "excrement", with the dollar. He promised the moon at the cost of significant sacrifices for a period of time, and some wanted to believe that this would stabilise the economy and that the austerity would be short-lived.
The chainsaw
The 54% devaluation of the peso in the first days of his term was the first shock imposed on the population. This brutal attack was accompanied by lavish gifts aimed at bringing back foreign capitalists and encouraging the bourgeoisie to repatriate their money, some $300 billion hidden in foreign banks to escape taxation and inflation. Above all, it was a matter of reassuring financial institutions worried about a possible new default.
The massive flight of capital had forced his predecessors, right-wing President Macri and then Peronist Fernández, to introduce exchange controls, preventing savers from withdrawing more than $200 per month from a bank, at a rate set by the state, and also to force exporting companies to convert their dollar profits into pesos. But the system was leaking in every direction, due to the rush to parallel currency markets. No fewer than 19 exchange rates existed, following pressure from various sectors, including soybean exporters and multinationals. On 13 December 2023, the day before the devaluation, the dollar was officially worth 366 pesos, but it was trading at 800 pesos in all exchange offices, at the so-called "blue dollar" rate. The devaluation was intended to bring the peso back to its "true value". This immediately caused a spectacular rise in prices. Inflation rose from 210% in December to 292% in April 2024.
At the same time, Milei launched a policy of extreme austerity. He ended price controls on food products, as well as subsidies for water, gas, electricity and transport, which increased bills fivefold. The price of bus and suburban train tickets in the province of Buenos Aires increased sevenfold by the end of 2024. Workers and students could no longer even afford to travel. In March 2024, in the midst of soaring inflation, the small bonus for the poorest pensioners, who did not have enough to eat, was frozen. And access to essential medicines became chargeable again for those affiliated to the social security system.
Milei also launched the dismantling of public services, with the aim of eliminating 70,000 civil service jobs. He began by abolishing or merging 9 out of 18 ministries. Not just any ministries. Those of Culture, Education, Women, Gender and Diversity, created by the previous government, 85% of whose staff were laid off, while aid programmes, such as those for victims of gender-based violence, were called into question. The National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism was closed, as were hundreds of local agencies of ministries and public bodies, and just as many programmes were halted, with thousands of precarious contracts terminated. The National Institute of Indigenous Affairs was taken over and the Télam news agency, the main agency in South America, accused of "leftism", was closed. The budget for universities was cut by a third and that for hospitals by half, with thousands of jobs lost. Programmes to combat HIV, tuberculosis and leprosy, and even the National Cancer Institute itself, are threatened with closure. Many hospitals and even the National Research Council (CONICET), are facing severe budget cuts and job losses.
At the same time, the budget for infrastructure construction and maintenance, including roads, was reduced to almost zero and thousands of construction projects were halted. Even the construction of the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline, the country's largest construction project, designed to connect the huge Vaca Muerta hydrocarbon fi eld in Patagonia to Buenos Aires, was halted.
By these measures taken in the course of 2024, Milei plunged the economy into recession: there were thousands of bankruptcies and nearly 250,000 jobs were lost in the private and public sectors. Construction and trade collapsed. In August, sales at the central market in Buenos Aires had fallen by 40%, and car production, despite an increase in exports to Brazil, had fallen by nearly 20%. Announcements of lay-offs followed one after another. The steel manufacturer Acindar, part of the ArcelorMittal group, which depends on public orders, completely shut down some of its production sites and laid off thousands of workers.
Everywhere, laid-off workers swelled the ranks of the so-called informal sector: street vendors, unofficial taxis, home workers, domestic helpers, etc. Just as happened after the crash of 2001, the squares of Buenos Aires were filled with women and men trying to sell their clothes.
People who could still afford it the previous year, could no longer go to the doctor or dentist. Education has become a luxury with the increase in school fees, the cost of school supplies and transport. In the space of six months, five million Argentinians have fallen into extreme poverty, according to official figures. And in all the poor neighbourhoods and slums of Greater Buenos Aires, children no longer have enough to eat. The queues outside soup kitchens are getting longer.
The new labour reform has exacerbated exploitation: increased flexibility, longer trial periods, reduced severance pay and the abolition of fines for undeclared work. On construction sites, workers who were laid off were later rehired, but without employment contracts. In agriculture, 60% of workers are employed illegally.
At the beginning of the year, if the international press was to be believed, Javier Milei had succeeded in his gambling game. Public spending had been cut by almost a third. Inflation was slowing down. Devaluation had led to a trade surplus and enabled agri-food giants to sell off their stocks. The mining sector was thriving, boosted by the global race for access to lithium. An article in Milei's super-decree authorised multinationals to acquire new land, previously protected, in order to appropriate minerals. It was accompanied by new tax, customs and exchange rate advantages, guaranteed for 30 years. The Glencore and Eramet groups rushed in.
Exports increased while imports collapsed. Business was back. Buoyed by certain sectors, the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange index rose by 163% in 2024. Amidst exploding poverty, the twenty or so agri-food companies that control food distribution in the country made huge profits. Among them were two Argentine groups: Arcor, owned by billionaire Luis Pagani, and Molinos, owned by the Companc family, one of the richest in the country. The decline in their sales volume, combined with rising prices, increased their profits tenfold.
Under these conditions, in April the IMF granted Milei a loan to enable him to lift exchange controls and remove all taxes and penalties for tax fraud and money laundering. The bourgeoisie, both small and large, could once again invest and move their money as they saw fi t. Thirty billion dollars invested abroad would thus reappear in Argentine banks.
But recently, financiers' concerns have resurfaced. The peso has resumed its decline against the dollar. The state coffers, emptied by the accumulation of gifts to mining and agri-food groups, are not filling up fast enough. Will the government be able to repay the latest loan? And the one from 2018? To reassure them, Milei is launching the privatisation of AySa, the public water and sanitation company that supplies more than
11 million people in Greater Buenos Aires. Industry and transport bosses are also concerned. The total halt to maintenance work on major roads is causing growing chaos that threatens to paralyse the transport of goods.
Milei had promised workers that after the sacrifices would come the rewards. At the end of 2024, official presidential communiqués proclaimed an unprecedented decline in poverty. This was a blatant lie. The recovery only affected the bourgeoisie. For workers, the fall into the abyss had merely slowed down. Inflation is slowing, but prices continue to rise. According to official statistics, in April 2025, food prices were 40% higher than in April 2024, while housing, electricity and gas prices were 87% higher. For workers with employment contracts, wages are not keeping pace. A female doctor on strike at the Garrahan paediatric hospital in Buenos Aires estimated at the end of May 2025 that she had lost between 40% and 60% of her purchasing power over the past year.
More than half of the country's children now officially live below the poverty line and one in ten is undernourished. This is in a country that is one of the leading producers of meat, wheat, soya and maize. As for the minimum old-age pension, it remains at the same level, that of starvation.
Strong power?
To circumvent parliamentary delays and launch his attacks, Milei first used a National Emergency Decree, comprising no less than 300 articles, applicable immediately, but subject to subsequent approval by Congress, followed a few days later by an Omnibus Law of 664 articles, which he had to submit to both houses for approval. However, as his electoral coalition had only 39 MPs and 7 senators, this bill was rejected in February 2024.
Milei therefore had to turn to the political "caste" he had previously condemned. It took him six months to achieve his goal. Six months of challenging the urgency of the decrees in court, punctuated by two national strikes and street demonstrations, during which he received, unsurprisingly, the support of the right.
As Argentina is a federal state, he also had to reach an agreement with the provincial governors, including Peronists, by negotiating the redistribution of state resources. It was not until June 2024 that the Basic Law, with more than half of its articles shortened, was passed.
Milei then obtained special powers allowing him to push through his measures as he saw fi t in the name of a supposed state of emergency. In May, one of these measures restricted the right to strike and imposed a minimum service of 75% in transport, education and telecommunications, with the threat of sanctions against strikers. Another measure tightened the conditions for immigrants to enter the country and obtain citizenship, facilitated deportations and made access to public services subject to a fee.
Since June and the end of the special powers, the opposition has been back on the offensive in Parliament. Several presidential decrees have been rejected. To reassure the financial sector, Milei had to use his veto to block a law increasing pensions, then another increasing funding for people with disabilities, just before certain newspapers revealed a whole system of corruption surrounding the National Disability Agency aimed at favouring one company: bribes were being taken, at the expense of disabled people, by several of Milei's close
associates, including his sister, Karina, whom he had placed in the Presidential Secretariat. This caused some turmoil for a government elected on promises to eradicate corruption!
So anger has risen a notch, as Milei himself discovered when he was recently chased out of the street with stones in the middle of the election campaign. In the metro, at concerts and in stadiums, to the tune of the Cuban song Guantanamera, people sing Alta coïmera (the great corrupt one), referring to Karina. This was followed by a slap in the face in the Buenos Aires provincial elections on 7 September. Libertad Avanza, allied with the right, with 33% of the vote, lost a large part of its 2023 electorate, particularly in working-class neighbourhoods. This result does not bode well for the future: the mid-term national legislative elections, which will take place on 26 October.
What opposition?
The 7 September election saw the strong comeback of the Peronist political movement. With 47% of the vote, Fuerza Patria (formerly the Patriotic Union), the coalition formed around the so-called "Justicialist" party founded by Perón in 1946, has just established itself as the main opposition to Milei. Peronism, a uniquely Argentine phenomenon, has provided political and trade union leadership for the working class and popular movements since the end of the Second World War. From the outset, it has been made up of a bizarre mix of right-wing tendencies, originally even fascist, and left-wing, even extreme left-wing, tendencies, at one time even guerrilla-movements. Despite the enormous discredit associated with previous Peronist governments, many militant popular associations, unemployed movements, and piqueteros (protesters who mount "pickets") in particular, are still Peronist today. The CGT, long the sole trade union, is officially Peronist, and several of its leaders are also members of parliament for the Justicialist Party.
It is, of course, a dog-eat-dog world where various cliques of corrupt politicians clash. Sergio Massa, the defeated candidate in the 2023 presidential election, joined an American financial institution that speculates on debt. Others have rallied behind Milei. Daniel Scioli, former governor of the province of Buenos Aires, former party president and former vice-president of the Republic under Peronist Néstor Kirchner, has become secretary for tourism and sports. Dozens of MPs, under various pretexts, have voted for the laws Milei needed.
Various Peronist clans are also clashing within the CGT trade union confederation. The latter had not called for a single mobilisation during the four years of the previous government. Faced with Milei and the scale of his attacks, confronted with the discontent of its base, it did only the bare minimum: three calls for 24-hour national strikes. After those of 9 May 2024, it took a year for a new call to be made, on 10 April this year. A year during which the trade union leaders simply declared a "truce"! It was a policy so conciliatory that discontent reached the top. In February, the secretary of the automotive industry union, who is also a Peronist MP close to Cristina Kirchner, declared that the CGT "no longer represents workers".
Aided by the passivity of the CGT bureaucracy, the government has been able to crack down more easily on those who resist. One of the first decrees issued by the Minister of Security made road blockades, a method of protest often used by piqueteros and strikers, punishable by imprisonment. Since then, police violence has been used, even against pensioners who demonstrate on Wednesdays to denounce the starvation to which they are condemned. All gatherings on public roads are effectively banned, but this has not put an end to them.
Since the 2000s, public food aid has been distributed through associations that are often Peronist and militant. Restaurants serving soup to the poor are now organised by the residents themselves and sometimes turn into places of resistance. The government has invented embezzlement charges to attack these associations, increasing the number of searches and seizures of telephones. The press has gone so far as to publish the addresses of activists. Then the government suspended food aid, and thousands of tonnes of food rotted without being distributed. The same indiscriminate repression is being used against strike movements. A public telephone number allows people to report "unions that force you to strike" or specific activists, in order to trigger legal proceedings. But all these measures have not quelled the protests.
Workers' struggles
Since Milei's arrival, there has been no shortage of reactions from workers. Those in the health sector, particularly at the Garrahan Hospital in Buenos Aires, as well as those in education and research, have mobilised on several occasions against job cuts, closures, and reductions in salaries and student grants. Transport workers brought the country to a standstill for 24 hours in October 2024. Workers in various branches of industry also mobilised. During the last national strike day on 10 April, the press focused mainly on the Constitución station in Buenos Aires, the largest in the country, which was completely shut down, as were the airports, but the call was followed by workers in many factories in Greater Buenos Aires and the interior.
Faced with the employers' offensive, encouraged by the government, with wage cuts, partial unemployment, job losses and increased precariousness, the struggles are defensive and tough. In October 2024, workers at Petroquímica Río Tercero, near Córdoba, fought for three months against the loss of a third of their jobs; In January 2025, workers at Pilkington, an automotive subcontractor, mobilised for the same reason, as did workers at several sites of the multinational Linde-Praxair (manufacturer of industrial and medical gases), from December 2024 to March 2025. Since the end of August, hundreds of workers at subcontractors of the Techint group's steel plant in San Nicolás de los Arroyos have been on indefinite strike, again against job cuts and precarious working conditions.
The automotive industry has passed the cost of its decline to workers. Over the past year, the Scania factories in Tucuman, General Motors near Rosario, Toyota in Zárate, Renault, Fiat, Iveco and Volkswagen in Córdoba and General Pacheco (Greater Buenos Aires) have imposed partial unemployment and laid off hundreds of workers. Hundreds of workers at the three tyre manufacturers Fate, Bridgestone and Pirelli in Greater Buenos Aires have also been laid off. The single tyre workers' union has called for several demonstrations and road blockades, with some success.
Identical attacks are affecting all industrial sectors. Since 25 February, in Buenos Aires, the 250 workers at the Morvillo printing plant, which has been slated for closure, have been occupying the building. Workers at the Ledesma agro-industrial complex, plantations and sugar factories in the province of Jujuy, have mobilised several times against layoffs and precarious working conditions.
The working class remains the key to the solution. It remains largely under the thumb of the trade union bureaucracy, but its central place in the economy gives it unquestionable strength. Thus, workers in the oilseed sector made their strength felt by leading a week-long total strike in August 2024 for wage increases and their indexation to inflation, and then again last March, following a violent intervention by the naval prefecture against strikers in Puerto San Martin, near Rosario. A call for strike action brought all ports on the Paraná River, from which all soybean oil and meal is exported, to a standstill. This was cause for concern among capitalists. These struggles forced employers to grant wage increases above inflation.
This is not the only asset of the working class. It can serve as a rallying point for the entire poor population. This happened last February in the town of Concepción del Uruguay, in the province of Entre Ríos. A thousand workers went on strike at the La China meatpacking plant, owned by the Granja Tres Arroyos group, the country's leading chicken producer, owned by Joaquín de Grazia, a close associate of Milei. Although its turnover was on the rise, the group took advantage of a "preventive crisis procedure" to impose a 20% wage cut, increased flexibility and the dismissal of 700 of its 7,000 workers in the country, including 80 at the La China factory. The lockout which management imposed in order to break the strike had the opposite effect. It sparked a massive and impressive mobilisation throughout the city on 23 February, which was seen by the rest of the country. Recently, the nine-day mobilisation of thousands of workers at the electronics factories in Tierra del Fuego also garnered active support from a large section of the territory's workers, rendering the Security Minister's threats to send in police forces under the anti-picket law null and void.
Present in all regions of the country, the working class would have the strength to rally all the exploited around it and send Milei and his chainsaw to the scrap heap.
9 September 2025/11 December 2025
A note on "Peronism"
Juan Perón, a career military officer inspired by the regimes of Mussolini and Franco, was Minister of Labour in a government which came to power via a military coup in 1943 and then Vice President of the Republic in 1944. He was himself ousted by a coup, but returned to power with widespread popular backing, and created the Justicialist Party.
The war had enabled strong industrial growth, ensuring prosperity thanks to exports to Europe and the US. Perón managed to secure the support of union leaders until he controlled the CGT, which later became the sole union. It was able to impose certain workers' demands on the recalcitrant landowning oligarchy and employers (rights for agricultural workers, collective bargaining between employers and unions leading to wage increases, retirement insurance, women's right to vote...).
Perón, and even more so, his wife Eva, gained broad sympathy from the working class despite their fervent defence of the bosses. Ousted from power in 1955, Perón came back in 1973. During the 18 years of absence, extremely diverse political currents claimed his legacy. In the factories, a Peronist union bureaucracy with gangster methods was challenged by grassroots unions, also often Peronist; an armed struggle developed, involving a Peronist guerrilla far left. The various "Peronist" governments that followed (after the years of military dictatorship) all pursued policies serving capitalists, but Peronism long retained influence over the Argentine working class, even though this movement was linked neither to the social democratic movement nor to the communist movement.