Milton Friedman and the Making of Our Times (w/ Jennifer Burns)
Added 2023-12-03 14:54:18 +0000 UTCIn this episode, Matt and Sam are joined by Stanford historian Jennifer Burns to discuss her new biography of Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist whose influence would reach far beyond the academy when, during his last decades, he became one of the most effective popularizers of libertarian ideas—in books, columns, and even a ten-part PBS program, Free to Choose. How did the son of Jewish immigrants in New Jersey come to hold the often radical ideas that made him famous? How does Friedman's variety of libertarianism differ from, say, that of Mises or Hayek? What made Friedman, unusually for the times, someone who valued the intellects and work of the women around him? And what should we make of Friedman now, as Trump and elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party supposedly jettison the "fusionism" of which Friedman's free markets were a part?
As mentioned in the episode's introduction, listeners might want to revisit episode 16 with economist Marshall Steinbaum for a broader, and more critical, look at the Chicago school.
Sources:
Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)
Jennifer Burns, Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Market (2009)
Naomi Klein, "40 Years Ago, This Chilean Exile Warned Us About the Shock Doctrine. Then He Was Assassinated." The Nation, Sept 21, 2016.
Tim Barker, "Other People’s Blood," n+1 , Spring 2019.
Pascale Bonnefoy, "50 Years Ago, a Bloody Coup Ended Democracy in Chile," NY Times, Sept 11, 2023.
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Comments
Also, pasting this from one of Marshall Steinbaum's comments: "We desperately need a reconsideration of Maclean six years later or whatever it's been. The coordinated counter-offensive successfully bulldozed the actual follow-on scholarship that shows she was right. It didn't help that in the intervening years liberals decided to make common cause with libertarians, in foolish pursuit of anti-Trump allies." Please do this on the show!!
Nick Tabor
2024-02-06 02:31:49 +0000 UTCWhen this episode aired I was a little taken aback by the way Burns defended Friedman in his work with Pinochet. I remember feeling like “Wait, who am I listening to?” At first I had assumed she was approaching Friedman in the way someone like Nancy MacLean or Kim Phillips-Fein would approach their conservative subjects, but it became clear that this was a very different case. She’s much more of a Friedman apologist. Burns made the same move in an interview Danny Jenkins did for The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/milton-friedman-jennifer-burns-interview/. Her dismissal of the “shock doctrine” takes on the Chicago Boys made me even more skeptical. A big part of her defense seems to be, “But Friedman’s intentions were good!” Sorry, but what kind of historian judges things that way? Imagine a biographer taking the same tack with Kissinger. (Although maybe that’s what Walter Isaacson did; I haven’t read that one.) I mentioned this to a friend and he called my attention to a critique that Tim Barker wrote on Substack: https://ourtime.substack.com/p/the-mighty-wurlitzer-plays-on. I would say that Barker’s treatment was the piece I’d been waiting for, but it’s actually much more than that. He makes some pretty serious charges against Burns, but from what I can tell he has her dead to rights. Worth reading! I’m surprised it hasn’t already been posted on here. Some friends of the show turn up in the comments.
Nick Tabor
2024-02-06 02:28:16 +0000 UTCI agree, 'Old Institutionalism' and New Economic Sociology could easily be the basis of a countervailing intellectual project. Of course, Veblen was influenced by the German Historical School, and I think there is a natural kinship between Institutionalism and the later extended universe of the Historical School-- Weber, Schumpeter, Polanyi. I also want to say that Marxists shouldn't be discounted! I read Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital" last year and got a whole lot out of it! Braverman was following in the footsteps of Paul Sweezy, a Marxist economist who critiqued James Burnham, debated Schumpeter, and was friends with Paul Samuelson.
DC
2023-12-11 00:26:17 +0000 UTCFrom what little I know, it seems like Allende's administration was not merely "moving fast" but "bootstrapping" it by embracing experimental forms of economic management-- Project Cybersyn being a very notable example of applying cybernetic principles to planning.
DC
2023-12-11 00:09:46 +0000 UTCThis article and the tension between Friedman and Hayek stirred up a fact I just recently learned from a Jacobin interview with Quinn Slobodian. That Hayek and his generation of economist didn’t study “economics”. I can’t recall the precise German but what they studied was “statecraft”. Thus economics was related to state-mediated politics. It seems the professor and the Chicago school never posit what they’re doing as part of a larger context. In this sense economic failure is not just the failure of “natural” laws but of political culture and ideas.
Steven Ngo
2023-12-06 20:38:07 +0000 UTCThe absence of a new paradigm to displace the failed paradigms of the past is a really disturbing idea to me. Recently I’ve been thinking about how so much of the 20th c. was the culmination of ideas and trends that originated from the 19th in order to address the total transformation brought on by industrialization. Yet this many decades into 21st I have a really hard time coming up with either social phenomenon or ideas that equal the 20th in terms of consequence. With the climate crisis and these levels of inequality are they actually any new “–isms” floating out there, building momentum, to become movements strong enough to address these new ground conditions? It often seems to me that the decadent aspect of current politics is that death-grasp of an older generation unable to admit their historical insignificance in comparison to the one they admire. Does anyone actually believe the Clintons or Biden or Trump/DeSantis equal either the glories and terrors that came before? Does Silicon Valley actually equal the significance of Vienna or turn-of-the century NYC?
Steven Ngo
2023-12-06 18:05:06 +0000 UTCthis review essay is also topical: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/11/the-stagnant-science-mainstream-economics-in-america/
Tom Strand
2023-12-06 13:19:40 +0000 UTCthis recent short piece by James K. Galbraith might be of interest: https://www.postneoliberalism.org/articles/a-comment-on-dani-rodriks-new-paradigm-for-economic-policy/
Tom Strand
2023-12-06 13:15:53 +0000 UTCA revival of institutional economics, as at least the historical basis for a whole new paradigm to supersede neoclassicism, is exactly what I was envisioning and, as an outsider, am surprised to see is not already well established. The lane seems so wide open, the theories seem to write themselves, since so much of the ground has been prepared in the various other social sciences that have been fighting an exactly parallel long-term battle to cast off methodological individualism in favor of studying social forms. But maybe the answer is, that work is just happening outside of disciplinary economics, for example in economic sociology? And maybe it follows that the most sophisticated and fair-minded critical perspective on Friedman, the Chicago School, and all the other figures that make up the economistic faction of the postwar right, would come from an economic sociologist.
R. Daniel Smith
2023-12-06 07:26:57 +0000 UTCAlso not an economist but this strikes me as thoughtful! Theoretically some alternate approaches, like institutional economics especially, might have served this purpose. The transition from classical political economy to economics (so the field's origin in the US) was all about scholars rejecting much of what later became the neoclassical approach. But... in practice classical political economy's big philosophical/political assumptions and framing don't go away, and then serve as a foundation later. Economics in my mind has always been defined by a tension between the methodological diversity of empiricism and the political rigidity of pro-capitalist rationalism (in the epistemological sense). While "heterodox" approaches can do a lot within the former, the latter, particularly with the hold its often had on the field, keeps those approaches from easily becoming a broadly developed School of Thought™ on the level of neoclassical stuff. At least, it keeps them from doing that in a way that reaches the broader public and having such influence.
Henry Snow
2023-12-06 04:55:00 +0000 UTCReally great episode. I appreciate her point on him going to Chile, and I think it can be argued is was appropriate for him to go into advise. However, he clearly had opportunities afterwards to separate himself in the regime and could have pointed out that in fact, his economic policies did not require people to be murdered. He did not do this, therefore, I think it’s totally fair that he is “tarred” with this association. On the topic of Allende I can’t recommend this podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-santiago-boys/id1698329658 enough. It takes slightly different approach, it focuses on what was called Cybersen which was Allende’s grand idea to push Chile forward. It gets a lot into the politics on the ground and many problems the regime faced.
Jennifer Reft
2023-12-06 00:44:51 +0000 UTCOverall fantastic. But I thought the gloss on the Chile coup was pretty blithe especially with Kissinger finally croaking. We have no idea how good Allende’s economic plans were. As you yourselves hint, a lot of managerial talent left, a consequence of the century of foreign ownership of copper. That is political, not economic And we have learned in the half century since that the US govt and corporations like ITT were intimately involved not only in encouraging the coup but in tanking the economy in the lead up. Nixon - “ make the economy scream”. Kissinger - “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on—and even precedent value for—other parts of the world, especially in Italy. The imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.” …its ‘model’ effect can be insidious.”
Dan Kolbert
2023-12-05 14:16:39 +0000 UTCWhat an inspiring level of discussion this whole episode is!
David in Brooklyn
2023-12-05 13:20:32 +0000 UTCThank you so much for this! It was genuinely interesting to read and ponder. I try not to speak for Sam too often, ha, but in this case I feel confident in saying neither of us have an answer for you—but maybe another listener does? Anyway, thanks again for listening, and for such a thoughtful comment. (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2023-12-05 05:57:07 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed thinking about the contrast between this episode and the one with Steinbaum, the somewhat sympathetic guest and the archly polemical one, both of which I learned a great deal from. A thought: is it hard to achieve a truly fair and intellectually rigorous critical appraisal of neoclassical economic thought, especially its conservative branch (centered on the Chicago School) but also its liberal one (the Samuelson tradition), because the discipline has not produced a fully-fledged theoretical alternative to it yet? From, at least, this outsider's perspective, it looks like economics is still very much under the hegemony of neoclassical thought, and though a number of individual scholars and local movements have begun to pursue new directions, no new paradigm has yet emerged. A scientific revolution is clearly needed, but hasn't fully taken place yet. Unless I am mistaken, post- and neo-Keynesian thought, behavioral economics, and other "heterodox" approaches (that very term makes my point) are mostly collections of objections to and theoretical grafts onto a neoclassical / marginalist theoretical framework, not altogether different paradigms that might overturn and supersede that framework. It strikes me that this might explain why analysis of neoclassicism and its leading figures would tend to be either sympathetic or polemical: to evaluate an intellectual tradition in a truly thorough and dispassionate way, you need to have the confidence that comes from your own, well developed theoretical position outside of that tradition, from which it can be seen in a wider, more-encompassing context, and shown to fall short. And in economics, nobody has that yet. Anyway, this is a bit off track but it's where the episode led me! I hope any economists reading will forgive me for taking the liberty of generalizing about their discipline, and correct me where I am mistaken. Thanks as always to Matt and Sam for material that is wonderful to think with.
R. Daniel Smith
2023-12-05 04:32:35 +0000 UTCThis was an especially terrific episode -- so, yeah, now I can skip reading the book and get back to puzzling through Henry James. Sorry, Jennifer. MF comes across as one of Isaiah Berlin's notorious hedgehogs, especially when it comes to civil rights. That part of the episode was particularly enlightening. Though, aren't most intellectuals who make the leap to mainstream success in the end, drunk on a single powerful idea?
Kent Miller
2023-12-04 20:12:31 +0000 UTCI found Barker's essay compelling, except when it imputes to her a malign motives.
Rick Perlstein
2023-12-04 19:41:29 +0000 UTCI also love how Jennifer stresses his pragmatism and charm, definitely my experience when he invited me to his apartment in San Francisco when I was researching my Goldwater book, and he and Rose told me of their adventures in 1964, and it was just like hanging with bubbe and zedde...
Rick Perlstein
2023-12-04 19:26:55 +0000 UTC(2) When I was hanging out a lot at U of C in the early 2000s Bay Buchanan came to give a (trigger alert) YAF-sponsored lecture. We sparred in the q&a over discrepancies in male pay. Afterward a baby econ major came up to me, and sweetly and earnestly asked me how it was possible companies could get away with paying women less, because that means men would never be able to get jobs!
Rick Perlstein
2023-12-04 19:24:48 +0000 UTCWow, three magnificent episodes in a row. On taking price theory as a conversion experience: (1) Grok this!!!! In 2006, Chris Hayes wrote a piece in ITT as a participant observer in U of C's econ 101 class in which he uses the "red pill" metaphor! https://inthesetimes.com/article/what-we-learn-when-we-learn-economics
Rick Perlstein
2023-12-04 19:21:50 +0000 UTCI quote Rose Friedman being downright bitchy about her neglected contributions while talking to reporters when he wins the Nobel Prize!
Rick Perlstein
2023-12-04 18:12:41 +0000 UTCSam on top form here! (I’m normally much more of a Matt guy) I think it’s really important to remember that Friedman et al saw Chile as a laboratory for their theory testing - a crucial case, perhaps, to indulge in some social science verbiage - and the social/political context that facilitated it simply wasn’t a concern to them.
Dónal Gill
2023-12-04 13:08:21 +0000 UTCI understand the impulse and lord knows I can shit post on the Chicago School for hours but I think as we gain deeper knowledge of the 2nd half of the 20th century that we don’t adopt, to quote Pierre Bourdieu, “the logic of the trial”. For my sins, I plan to read this bio along with the recent 2 part bio on Hayek because the only way we handle the crisis of the 21st century is to understand it’s origins in the shortcomings of the 20th.
Steven Ngo
2023-12-04 05:50:03 +0000 UTCfor sure, but her insistence on the causal ownership -> inflation -> coup causal chain brought home where the author is coming from. It also left me wondering what other parts of the account are unduly sympatetic to mf
JTamames
2023-12-04 05:20:22 +0000 UTCI’ve become really fascinated by how much of the 20th century was an esoteric economic debate amongst small elite economists. The historian Tony Judt argued that a major change in political discourse that occurred through the 70s-90s was the elimination of “state planning” from common discourse. It comes up in the interview and just confirms that part of the struggle now is to revive it as an legitimate option.
Steven Ngo
2023-12-04 04:35:58 +0000 UTCThis podcast and this particular episode has really changed how I understand the 20th century. One common telling is that of the century of grand political illusions. The illusion of communism. The illusion of fascism. But to those two we can add the grand political illusion of the end of all political ideologies in American democratic capitalism or neoliberalism
Steven Ngo
2023-12-04 03:46:38 +0000 UTCI think Sam handled it well
Georges Simenon
2023-12-03 23:17:11 +0000 UTCAs a second aside: neoclassical economics wasn’t “free market” EXCEPT at Chicago and LSE. Everywhere else it was MORE into planning than the institutionalists, who were for the most part soft socdem types. Walrasians were the ones directly contesting Hayek and Mises in the “socialist calculation debate” on the merits of central planning. Neoclassical economics was the backbone of arguments in favor of socialist planning in the 1930s.
Nic Johnson
2023-12-03 22:29:35 +0000 UTCEditors: that’s the wrong Tim Barker link, you meant to include this one https://ourtime.substack.com/p/the-mighty-wurlitzer-plays-on
Nic Johnson
2023-12-03 22:25:16 +0000 UTCwow does this otherwise very good conversation become a train wreck as soon as the author starts equivocating on Chile
JTamames
2023-12-03 20:51:59 +0000 UTCIs it bad that I knew exactly what episode Sam was referring to that would "pair well" with this one before he said what it was? Do I get a prize?
Tim Combes
2023-12-03 20:11:58 +0000 UTC
