lunes, noviembre 20, 2006

Milton Friedman(+) on Communism

In the almost six decades since the end of World War II, intellectual opinion in the United States about the desirable role of government has undergone a major shift. At the end of the war, opinion was predominantly collectivist. Socialism--defined as government ownership and operation of the means of production--was seen as both feasible and desirable. Those few of us who favored free markets and limited government were a beleaguered minority.
In subsequent decades opinion moved away from collectivism and toward a belief in free markets and limited government. By 1980 opinion had moved enough to enable Ronald Reagan to win the presidency on a quasi-libertarian agenda.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 delivered the final blow to the belief in socialism. Hardly anyone today, from the far left to the far right, regards socialism in the traditional sense of government ownership and operation of the means of production as either feasible or desirable. Those who profess socialism today mean by it a welfare state". -- fragmento de "The Battle's Half Won", publicado en The Wall Street Journal. Diciembre 9, 2004.

ADDENDUM

"...beyond Milton Friedman the economist, there was Milton Friedman the public philosopher. Ask reformers in any one of the countries behind what we used to call the Iron Curtain where they learned to contemplate alternatives to communism during the closed era before the Berlin Wall fell and they will often tell you about reading Milton Friedman and realizing how different their world could be." -- fragmento de "The Great Liberator", publicado en The New York Times. Noviembre 19, 2006.

posted by Roberto A. Juarez-Garza @ 8:34:00 a.m.