telltale sentences, telltale words

The New York Times published a special DealBook section on September 13, 2020, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Milton Friedman's seminal essay in the magazine in September 1970. The essay was entitled "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." The 2020 anniversary section presents short reflections on sentences in the Friedman article, including descriptions of how Friedman's prognosis has played out and what the future might hold as we reflect in a time of reckoning on racial justice, economic imbalance, climate change, and pandemic. I recommend looking at the section but there was one sequence of Friedman sentences that just shouted at me with relevance for something that has been troubling me.

And I quote Friedman:

"The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned 'merely' with profit but also with promoting desirable 'social' ends; that business has a 'social conscience' and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are—or would be if they or any one else took them seriously— preaching pure and unadulterated socialism."

We have been hearing statements, often accusatory, that the Democrats are preaching socialism, as well as communism and Marxism, in this election season. I do not have a problem with socialism and hate to see it as a slam, especially an overly simplistic slam. But it was reading the last sentence in the quotation above that made me realize how bald the accusations are. I grew up in a solid anti-FDR anti-state household. My parents (and their parents, etc.) generally didn't support big government. They lived mostly in small towns and were active in church, relying on neighbors and church members for support when needed.

I worked in the ceramics library during summers and vacations in my undergrad years, the mid-late 1960s, when social-political action and anti-war discussions were common among college kids whether or not they were active protestors or building occupiers. (Of course, now they'd be thugs and terrorists.) In a discussion, one of my coworkers (Lynne Sootheran) said if people don't take care of people, the state has to take care of people. It was a Damascene moment for me, the moment when my socio-political leanings shifted from what I had inherited. Being small town folks, we were mostly oblivious to the world beyond our small worlds.

Reading the sentences from the Friedman article clarified for me how socialism could be a dirty word in some camps. I still wonder how my folks would have reacted to the takeover of the Republican Party by fundamental thinking. They had already suffered the fundamentalist takeover of their beloved Seventh Day Baptist General Conference. It would not surprise me if they had shifted to the Libertarian Party.

I am also very glad that my life since college has mostly been spent in cities. Even in little Alfred, I appreciate the ability to do most of my daily business by walking rather than driving and parking.

P.S. For Brett Stephens's take on traditional conservatism, this article from last week's Sunday Review on "What We've Lost" might be of interest.