By EMILIO CAFASSI*
Hospitality to capital is complemented by the crudest hostility towards the dispossessed, as a reflection of subtle contemporary power maneuvers
The official Argentine uproar over the legislative approval of the “Law of Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines”, a reduced but no less dangerous version than the February original, echoed in the favorite song of its defenders: “the caste is afraid ”. Successor to another favorite of Javier Milei's party members, “Freedom advances”, exhumed in a forceful way from the largest insurrectionary movement in Argentine history, which was the popular rebellion of December 19 and 20, 2001.
At that time it was chanted “that everyone goes away, that there is no one left alone”. I think it is useful to reflect on the meaning of these revivalist refrains as symptoms of a double movement manipulating popular expectations in the face of the prolonged recessive crisis of more than a decade in Javier Milei's Argentine economy. On the one hand, with Machiavellian mastery, he presents himself as a relentless critic of reality and virtually subversive, at the same time as he proposes and applies the same recipes that led to this crisis and multiplied the current one.
On the other hand, he attributes responsibility for the difficulties to the same people at the time, professional leaders and parties, presenting himself as an outsider. A skillful move that allows him to disguise himself as a political renewer, while at the same time sinking his roots into its worst mud.
The original exclusion of the winning political group, including Vice President Villarruel and a large part of the political entourage that supports them, is indisputable. In just two years as deputies, with little participation, but with a media resonance from Javier Milei when he draws his salary month by month, they accomplished the task before establishing themselves at the apex of the executive power pyramid.
Javier Milei became known for his outbursts as a television columnist, especially on scandalous programs, while she, with a more discreet profile, knew how to gain recognition for the still-living genocidaires and the military institution, glorifying the former cohorts of torturers and murderers. In this context, a relevant parliamentary debater, former makeup artist and hairdresser for the president — shared her free time with the production of videos of textual flat earthing and modeling cosplayer, dressing up as a superhero.[1]
The dizzying rise of the duo to the top of power, of such representative irrelevance and farcical display — in addition to the impostor talent — would require a new Freud to rewrite a “mass psychology and analysis of the self”, to articulate the causes of such an unusual phenomenon of popular support. Burlesque paradoxes of a dance in which the grotesque and the tragic mix, sculpting in the collective imagination the traces of an ethical and political decomposition of still unimaginable scope.
While the First World extreme right excludes itself from violence, attributing failures to a foreign alterity, Argentines — and Rioplatenses in general — adopt a different position. Far from being necessarily refractory to immigration, and even less to the establishment of capital, whatever their origin and category of investment, they imitate the role of “La Malinche” with Hernán Cortés, offering hospitality and gentle mediation to conquering entrepreneurship. In this scenario, they subjugate the unprotected both materially and symbolically.
The discrimination they practice is not based so much on ethnic parameters as on class criteria, although the latter are skillfully disguised by the accusation of the political class disparagingly labeled as “caste”. This rhetorical shift allows the Argentine far right to present itself as someone who renews and protects popular interest, while perpetuating and worsening structural inequalities. In this paradoxical game, hospitality to capital is complemented by the crudest hostility towards the dispossessed, as a reflection of the most complex and subtle contemporary power maneuvers.
The recognition of the privileges held by those who exercise political functions is not new, but, on the contrary, they founded one of the cardinal branches of political philosophy, even before sociology was born and questioned social stratification. However, in antiquity, this recognition lacked the pejorative tone that surrounds it today. Aristotle already conceived a distinction between rulers and ruled, where the polis constituted the highest level of organization, allowing a virtuous and self-sufficient life, unlike civil society which, supporting it, included families and villages.
In the cradle of modernity, to cite a few examples, political society, understood as the State, had the function of avoiding the “all against all” state of nature of civil society and, as in Hobbes' Leviathan, of imposing order. In Locke, the State was conceived as a protector of natural rights or in Hegel as the embodiment of universal ethical will and objective freedom as opposed to the sphere of economic relations and private life. Philosophers who, each with their own emphasis, understood the function of the State and political society as essential for the construction of society, without demonization.
The mechanical and even synonymous association between “caste” and “political society” acquires in Javier Milei the status of a priority propaganda crutch. Certainly this concept, so reiterated and simplified, has been approached in different ways in sociology, where it has traditionally been approached as a form of rigid and hierarchical social stratification. Despite differences in approaches, there is a common concern about how social structures determine the status and opportunities of individuals.
In the classics of sociology, the inevitable original reference is the system of social organization in India, an analogy to which we have already alluded in a previous article. Max Weber, drawing on the sociology of religion, describes castes as closed social groups that determine the status and economic opportunities of individuals. For him, castes are the extreme form of social stratification, where social mobility is practically non-existent, thus consolidating a relentless hierarchy.
In turn, Émile Durkheim, also interested in the study of religion and Indian society, shifts the analysis to social solidarity and the division of labor. He looks in particular at how caste contributes to social cohesion and the stability of the social order. In his opinion, these rigid structures, although restrictive, play a crucial role in maintaining the differentiation and specialization of roles in a kind of balance in society.
Closer in time, although I personally already consider it a classic of sociology, Pierre Bourdieu, by introducing the concept of field, provides us with a sharp tool to analyze more precisely the use of the term caste in Javier Milei's speech. Pierre Bourdieu defines a field as a structured social space of positions and relationships, where agents and their institutions compete for different types of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic) that are specific to that field. In this sense, the political field is an area where various actors fight for power and influence, and where the rules of the game and forms of capital are particular and specific.
In this way, the opposition between caste and outsider that the speech brings, represents the first who already occupy positions of power in the political field, using their resources and capital to maintain their status. Javier Milei, on the contrary, aims to be someone who challenges the norms established in the field and who, therefore, is not contaminated by the corruption and inefficiency attributed to “caste”. The term “caste” is consequently used as a tool for what, for Pierre Bourdieu, is symbolic capital. By discrediting the established political class, as an omnipresent enemy, Javier Milei seeks to accumulate symbolic capital by presenting himself as the bearer of the true and legitimate popular will.
In this way, his speech promises a redistribution of power within the political field, which in fact implies a move to integrate into the same field, reconfiguring it. O habitus of “political caste”, that is, the internalized dispositions and practices that guide their behavior, is portrayed negatively to propose a new habitus, based on the denial and removal of legislative and deliberative functions, the exercise of incendiary and cruel rhetoric, establishing a direct connection with the people, without mediation, through networks. It seeks to break with traditional ways of doing politics, presenting itself as a new, authentic and fundamentally more effective alternative, aware that the lack of effectiveness was a cardinal factor in the erosion of the legitimacy of all its predecessors.
While followers increasingly chant the slogans of the rebellion at the beginning of the century, the government, paradoxically, forges more pacts with the reviled members of the caste and makes commitments to the Realpolitik. As I argued in the last article, the collaboration of the “caste” was invaluable, as were the favors it received. However, far from mitigating the ruin of the social impact, it worsens the situation, as evidenced by the downward curve of all socioeconomic indicators. The gap between incendiary discourse and economic-social reality widens, allowing me to infer the emergence of an explosion, although today it is conceived as impossible. Obviously, the question of when this might occur remains open.
A possible answer could be when the intonation of “que se vayan todos” returns to the original social throats. In this case, the question will no longer be when, but rather what scope this new “all” will have.
*Emilio Cafassi is a professor of sociology at the University of Buenos Aires.
Translation: Arthur Scavone.
Translator's note
[1] The author refers to Lilia Lemoine, an Argentine politician associated with the coalition of center-right parties, known as “La Libertad Avanza”.
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