Book Review of:   Elton Rayack, Not So Free To Choose: The Political Economy of Milton Friedman & Ronald Reagan (Praeger, 1987

Vohra, Ranjit

Virtual Commons - Bridgewater State University

Bridgewater ReviewVolume 5 | Issue 1 Article 15Jun-1987Book Review: Not So Free to ChooseRanjit VohraBridgewater State CollegeThis item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts.Recommended CitationVohra, Ranjit (1987). Book Review: Not So Free to Choose. Bridgewater Review, 5(1), 30.Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol5/iss1/15Book ReviewsNot So Free To Choose:The Political Economy ofMilton Friedman & Ronald Reaganby Elton RayackPraeger, 1987Many of the social thinkers whohave seen grand economic pat-terns in recent history are sobrilliant and controversial that theirtheses continue to generate limitlessamounts of both heat and light. NowProfessor Milton Friedman has stakedhis claim to junior membership in thislofty and illustrious group, which in-cludes the likes of Karl Marx, E.FSchumpeter and Walt Rostow.Mr. Friedman has been a prolificwriter. Aside from professional -often technical - articles aimed atacademic peers [for which he was awardedthe Nobel Prize in Economics], Fried-man, the Political Economist, wroteregularly for Newsweek from the mid-sixties to 1980, and has authored Capital-ism and Freedom, [University ofChicagoPress, 1962], Dollars and Deficits [Pren-tice Hall, 1968], and co-authored -with wife Rose Friedman - Tyranny ofthe Status Quo [Harcourt BraceJovanovich,1984], and Free To Choose, [Avon,1981]Professor Elton Rayack critically exam-ines some of Friedman's theses in hiscarefully researched book, aptly titledNot So Free to Choose [Praeger, 1987],in which Friedman is also unambig-uously identified as the intellectualmentor of the Reagan economicphilosophy.Mr. Rayack - himself a product ofthe "Chicago School" made famous byProfessor Friedman - sets about thetask of achieving two distinct goals:demonstrating that Friedman is indeedthe chiefguru behind the policies of theReagan administration; and showingthat Friedman's bold generalizationsabout the mechanism ofeconomic forcesare empty, unsupported hypotheses.The implications ofMr. Rayack's asser-tions are mind-boggling.That most famous ofall macroecono-mists, Lord Keynes, observed in hisseminal General Theory of Employment,Interest, and Money that "[the] ideasof economists and political philoso-phers, both when they are right andwhen they are wrong, are more power-ful than is commonly understood. Indeedthe world is ruled by little else. Practi-30cal men, who believe themselves to bequite exempt from any intellectual influ-ences, are usually' the slaves of somedefunct economist." To be sure, Mr.Rayack quickly denies that Friedman isdefunct or that Reagan is his slave. Thisdenial appears in the two openingsentences of the very first page of NotSo Free to Choose, leaving the rest of thebook to prove precisely what is denied.Mr. Rayack .. .sets about thetask of achieving two distinctgoals; demonstrating thatFriedman is indeed the chiefguru behind the policies of theReagan administration; andshowing the Friedman's boldgeneralizations about themechanism of economicforces are empty, unsupportedhypotheses.A principal and compelling argu-ment of Mr. Rayack is that Friedman,in his loftiest generalizations about thelaws of motion of economics, treatshistory as a hunting license: that infocusing selectively on circumstancesand events that best fill out his hypo-theses, he perverts the record of"true"historical cause-and-effect. Unfortu-nately, some of Elton Rayack's ownassertions rely on essentially the samemodus operandi. Thus his scrupulouslyresearched parellels between officialpolicy statements such as the Econo-mic Report of the President, and select-ed pieces of Friedman's writings, isitself an example of the culling that hefinds so repugnant in Friedman's histori-cal gymnastics.Mr. Rayack observes that there havebeen issues - for instance the Laffercurve underpinning of the vauntedReagan tax-cut - on which Friedmandiffered sharply from the "supply-side" component ofReaganomics. Suchdifferences notwithstanding, Mr.Rayack contends that the overall socio-economic stance of the President in thecrucial subjective issues of (i) the eco-nomic role of "big" government in amodern capitalist economy, and (ii)the money supply policy of the FederalReserve system, is certainly embodiedin, if indeed not plagiarized from, the po-lemical writings ofProfessor Friedman.It is to the dissection of Friedman thepolitical economist that Mr. Rayackultimately turns. The point of depar-ture is Friedman's well-known claimthat the great Depression of the thir-ties, which is generally regarded as awatershed in capitalist reliance onAdam Smith's "Invisible Hand", wasactually caused by the bungling ofmoney supply by the Federal ReserveBank, and that the elaborate post-warstructure of Keynes' macroeconomicsthat is popularly construed to be thefiscal bulwark against a recurrence ofsuch a depression is irrelevant. TheFriedman prescription calls only for a"sensible" monetary policy by theFederal Reserve Bank, with cruel andunusual economic malaise being theswift fate to befall the unbelievers. Mr.Rayack records cynically that theFederal Reserve Bank strictly followedFriedman's principles from October1979 through 1982, by which time itbecame increasingly clear that this pro-gram was leading the country inexo-rably into deepening recession.Mr. Rayack also finds simplistic theFriedman variation on the classicaltheme of the Smithian Invisible Hand,in regard to the complex and uniquelymodern socioeconomic issue ofchronicunemployment and the responsibilityof the government to act on behalf ofthe economically disadvantaged. Someglaring inconsistencies in Friedman'swritings - as for instance his propen-sity to avoid any criticism of the Depart-ment of Defense, and his somewhatcavalier treatment of historical facts,are grist for Mr. Rayack's mill. Towardsthe end of his book, he finds Friedman- and by intellectual association, Mr.Reagan too - disconnectedfrom "reality".Not So Free to Choose is the product ofcareful research and Mr. Rayack's power-ful assertions cannot be dismissedlightly. It is "must" reading for anyoneeven vaguely interested in the eco-nomics of Friedman or the politics ofReagan. 0Ranjit Vohra, Assistant Professor ofEconomics

Book Review: Not So Free to Choose

http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1678&context=br_rev

Book Review: Not So Free to Choose

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Virtual Commons - Bridgewater State University