When GM and Ford decided to desert cities like Detroit and Flint for poorer towns and countries, they denied their former workforce any positive freedom to enjoy the industry’s enormous revenues - revenues the workers themselves had created. Capitalism not only fails to provide a “positive freedom” to a fair share of the economy - it fails to preserve “negative freedom” from the power plays of the 1 percent’s corporate property. It fosters a huge buildup of private power by concentrating individual wealth and entrenching corporate control over markets (along with mercilessly destroying environmental systems and thus the freedom of future generations). Many generations of capitalism’s defenders have agreed.īut any realistic review of the market economy reveals a different picture: capitalism limits both positive and negative freedom. This is the view of Friedman and Hayek, and they insist it’s just the right kind of liberty. The traditional philosophical view of capitalism is that while it does not provide a “positive freedom” to a fair share of the world’s production of goods, it provides a “negative freedom” from economic tyranny by leaving consumers and workers free to choose among different options. Instead of asking, “What power centers control me,” positive freedom asks, “What am I free to do with the world’s opportunities and resources?” Berlin also suggested a “positive freedom” - the freedom to do different things, rather than freedom from the choices of others. However you like to spend your time, whoever you love, whatever you like to work on or laugh at, all represent the tremendous value of social freedom.Īccording to John Stuart Mill, the basic principle of freedom was that “the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” The philosopher Isaiah Berlin later described this idea as “negative freedom,” or freedom from coercion by others. Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that “Milton Friedman should be the Bible for young people, or anybody, trying to understand capitalism and free markets.” Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, celebrates Hayek and Friedman in his book, while Ben Shapiro holds up Friedman as a conservative icon in National Review.īut what then are the liberty and freedom that conservatives celebrate? And does capitalism advance or restrain them?įreedom is regarded so highly because in a way it contains all the pleasures of life - it’s the ability to do what you want, within the limits of material conditions and a human lifespan. Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom and Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom are still featured on Breitbart’s online bookstore. For all the changes of the last fifty years, the conservative classics have held their place surprisingly well.

Friedman capitalism and freedom