Putting Uncle Milton to Bed

Almost four decades ago Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman published an essay on the social responsibility of business in the New York Times Magazine that has since reached legendary status. Friedman's argument—that essentially firms had no social responsibility beyond making profits—was not unknown among fellow pioneers of what has become known as neoliberalism, the “Chicago School,” or Austrian economics. Yet while the thesis was known to those specialists familiar with the work of F. A. Hayek or Ludwig von Mises, Friedman's exposition did much to popularize what had previously and largely been considered a form of rightist economic extremism. After three decades of actual neoliberal experimentation in Washington and London, the present essay looks again at what Friedman wrote. This essay finds Friedman's work to be profoundly unpersuasive—indeed much of it illogical, sophistic, and potentially foundational for a form of economic and social callousness.