Javier Milei's emergence on the Argentine political scene and his rise to the presidency represent, more than a simple reaction to economic statism, a theoretical and philosophical revolution in the conception of the legal and social order. What is at stake in his crusade is not only the size of the State, but the very foundation of law: is law an arbitrary creation of political power or the rational discovery of preexisting norms that must limit power?
This debate is not new. Since the time of Socrates, Western tradition has oscillated between two opposing conceptions of law. On one hand, positive law, which sees legality as the expression of sovereign will, whether of the monarch, the people, or the legislator, without necessary reference to justice. On the other hand, natural law, which holds that there are objective and universal moral principles that precede any human legislation, and that every law must respect in order to be legitimate.
From Platonic Absolutism to the Libertarian Revival
The statist tradition in Plato, who, influenced by the Spartan order, conceives law as an instrument of social engineering intended to shape citizens according to a collective ideal. In The Republic, Plato describes a hierarchical State, where individuals are not ends in themselves, but functional parts of a social body led by an enlightened elite. In this context, law is not limited to protecting rights, but imposes ends, structures social classes, and controls all aspects of life. This rationalist and totalizing vision finds its continuity in authors such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Kelsen, who see the State as the source of legal legitimacy, displacing any notion of natural justice.
Socrates, as he appears in the dialogue Crito written by Plato, adopts a clearly favorable stance toward positive law. Despite having been unjustly condemned, he rejects the proposal to escape from prison, arguing that breaking the law, even an unjust law, would be equivalent to corrupting the soul and harming the polis. According to Socrates, having lived his entire life in Athens and having benefited from its laws, he has entered into a tacit pact with the city. Therefore, disobeying his sentence would violate that implicit contract, weakening the legal order. This defense of unconditional obedience to the established order reflects a conception of law as legitimate authority in itself, independent of its moral content.
But it is with the School of Salamanca, and later with modern libertarian thinkers, that natural law acquires a systematic structure: law is not a decree of the sovereign, but a set of principles deducible from the rational nature of man, centered on life, liberty, and property.
Authors such as Lysander Spooner were radical in this defense. For him, any legislation that contradicts the principles of natural justice is illegitimate, and no social contract can bind anyone who has not explicitly consented. In his critique of the United States Constitution, Spooner argues that voluntary consent and the absence of coercion are the only valid sources of legal obligation, which essentially nullifies the legitimacy of political power as it has been historically exercised.
This tradition is joined by Murray Rothbard, who develops a complete legal ethic based on self-ownership and the original appropriation of scarce resources. In his view, all just law derives from the non-aggression principle, and the State, by exercising systematic violence through taxes, regulations, and monopolies, becomes an illegitimate structure. For Rothbard, law is not created, it is discovered, and its function is not to organize society but to protect individual liberty.
