As an economist, Milton Friedman was one of the early influences as a student of economics.  I had the great fortune of meeting him and Rose in 1983 when I was working at the Fraser Institute in Canada.  We developed a great friendship over the years.  It was such a blessing when I moved from Canada to San Francisco and got to see them on a regular basis. Always gracious, Milton and Rose participated in many PRI events over the years, and even at 90 he showed the lucidity of a scholar in his 20s. 

Milton and Rose called their autobiography Two Lucky People, but we were the lucky ones. While Milton passed away last year, three decades after he won the Nobel Prize in economics, we all learned so much from the two of them. Now, as my dear friend Milton is no longer around to defend himself, I will do so myself in the wake of a cowardly attack by Canadian socialist Naomi Klein.

Her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, charges that Milton Friedman is the head of a global conspiracy to impose capitalism though economic shock therapy and repression. Klein portrays this conspiracy as responsible for practically all the misery in the world, and in her view it's all the doing of Milton Friedman, whom she describes as the "grand guru" of the movement for unfettered capitalism. This movement, Klein writes, is a "fundamentalist faith," whose true believers live in a "closed loop" and are out to oppress the world in suffering at any cost. She describes this Friedmanism as "revolutionary" and also part of a "global counterrevolution" that first struck in Chile.

"The movement that Milton Friedman launched in the 1950s," she explains, "is best understood as an attempt by multinational capital to recapture the highly profitable, lawless frontier that Adam Smith, the intellectual forefather of today's neoliberals so admired — but with a twist." Fundamentalist Friedmanism, she charges, set out systematically to dismantle existing laws and regulations, "to re-create that earlier lawlessness."

I also count Margaret Thatcher among my friends, and, according to Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman also corrupted her. Prime Minister Thatcher "was attempting an English version of Friedmanism by championing what has become known as the 'ownership society’." For Klein, that explains the Falkland Islands war, and a lot more. In fact, the violent imposition of Friedmanism, by the CIA and U.S. military, explains just about everything that has happened over the past three decades, including Tiananmen Square, the fall of the USSR, and even charter schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

There is simply no response to such a wild conspiratorial view in which nobody in the world simply chooses to adopt free-market capitalism based on its merits. There is, however, a response to the attack on this good man.

Milton Friedman was always a gentleman. He never indulged in name-calling or personal attacks, and he never gave credence to conspiracy theories. He fought the battle of ideas with facts, reason, and courage. He wrote thoughtful books such as A Monetary History of the United States, Capitalism and Freedom, and Free to Choose with Rose Friedman, which people under Communism were not. Maybe that is why, as Naomi Klein admits, "the people of the 'evil empire' were also eager to join the Friedmanite revolution." With Naomi Klein, one never knows, but I do know this.

Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and other economists never claimed that the free market would bring about heaven on earth, only that it would work a lot better than socialism at fulfilling human needs and preserving human freedom. That debate is long over and capitalism won. Chile is now a prosperous democracy, headed by a woman. Cuba, which Klein avoids, remains an impoverished dictatorship.

Socialists won't win with a wild and cowardly attack on Milton Friedman. They only confirm that, in addition to being bad economists, they are also bad losers. That would not come as a shock to the Milton Friedman I knew.