The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits
by Milton Friedman
The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. Copyright @ 1970 by The New York Times Company.
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free en*terprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing em*ployment, eliminating discrimination, avoid*ing pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of re*formers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preach*ing pure and unadulterated socialism. Busi*nessmen who talk this way are unwitting pup*pets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.
The discussions of the "social responsibili*ties of business" are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that "business" has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but "business" as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. ........................"there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."