Elegant Tombstones: Milton Friedman’s Theory of Capitalism

Academic political scientists who want their students to think about the problem of liberty and the modern state are properly anxious to have them confront at first hand various contemporary theoretical positions on the relation between freedom and capitalism. The range of positions is wide: at one extreme freedom is held to be incompatible with capitalism; at the other freedom is held to be impossible except in a capitalist society; in between, all sorts of necessary or possible relations are asserted. Different concepts of freedom are involved in some of these positions, similar concepts in others; and different models of capitalism (and of socialism) are sometimes being used. It is clearly important to sort them out. But there is some difficulty in finding adequate theoretical expositions of the second extreme position, which might be called the pure market theory of liberalism. There are very few of them. Probably the most effective, and the one most often cast in this role, is ...