INTERVIEWER: Do you think the Chile affair damaged your reputation, or more importantly, made it harder for you to get your ideas across?It's amazing to me that Friedman tries to outline his treatment over Chile in this way. Nobody was particularly mad at Friedman for siding with the non-Communist that I am aware of. In fact domestically most of the bickering between the left and Friedman was a case of proponents of one anti-Communist vs. proponents of another anti-Communist.
MILTON FRIEDMAN: That’s a very hard thing to say, because I think it had effects in both directions. It got a lot of publicity. It made a lot of people familiar with the views who would not otherwise have been. On the other hand, in terms of the political side of it, as you realize, most of the intellectual community, the intellectual elite, as it were, were on the side of Allende, not on the side of Pinochet. And so in a sense they regarded me as a traitor for having been willing to talk in Chile. I must say, it’s such a wonderful example of a double standard, because I had spent time in Yugoslavia, which was a communist country. I later gave a series of lectures in China. When I came back from communist China, I wrote a letter to the Stanford Daily newspaper in which I said, “It’s curious. I gave exactly the same lectures in China that I gave in Chile. I have had many demonstrations against me for what I said in Chile. Nobody has made any objections to what I said in China. How come?”
It wasn't Pinochet's anti-Communism that was the concern. It was the murders, the torture, the toppling of a democracy and the establishment of a military dictatorship.
The way to defend against those charges is to just say "Look, I didn't like what the guy was doing but I had his ear so I gave some advice to heal the Chilean economy. I'd do the same for any dictator's ear that I have."
Say that. Don't try to pawn it off on some paranoid double-standard. If he had gone to China in 1951 (he went to Chile two years after Pinochet's consolidation of power) instead of 1980, or Cuba in 1961 the same concerns would have been raised.
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ReplyDelete1. Read the claim more closely.
Delete2. Don't comment anonymously.
Your claim seems to be that Milton Friedman's visit to Chile was controvertial because Pinochet murdered and tortured citizens and established a military dictatorship.
ReplyDeleteAnd that the Milton Friedman's visit to China wasn't controversial when he went because at the time, the Chinese government was not torturing or murdering its citizens. Is this not what you're claiming?
This is why I noted when he went. When you go meet a dictator immediately after he violently establishes power, of course it's going to look like you're somehow endorsing that. I don't think he was. I don't think it's hard to make the case that he wasn't endorsing that. But don't try to pawn it off on some double standard around communism. Of course the Chinese government was problematic in the 80s. But there's a world of difference in perception between rushing to see Mao in 1951 and talking to Deng Xiaoping as he starts to move things in the right direction in 1980.
DeleteI'm not justifying people who make more excessive criticisms of Friedman. I'm saying Friedman is kidding himself if he ascribes that to the fact that Pinochet wasn't communist.
DK, so I get your reference to China - Deng was a good guy who was "moving in the right direction" according to your view. When was the line of demarcation for Cuba? I just want to be sure so I know which leftist intellectuals its okay to treat like the left treats Friedman.
Deletere: "I just want to be sure so I know which leftist intellectuals its okay to treat like the left treats Friedman."
DeleteHuh? Have you missed the multiple points now where I've said that (as it's often argued at least) it's not a good argument against Friedman?
If you find a leftist that went to Cuba two years after the revolution and make a just-as-bad argument against them, my view will be (surprise!) that it's just-as-bad. If they bluster that you are criticizing them because of their anti-fascism I will contend that that is just as ridiculous as Friedman arguing it was his anti-Communism that was at issue.
I did not miss the multiple points where you said that it was not a good argument against Friedman. Rather, I think Friedman has been poorly treated by the Left, for what you note is really the preception of timing rather than the act itself. I just don't agree with you on the issue of timing, which is why I repeated the topic of Cuba. As far as I know, unlike China, there is no real break in the Cuban regime. The same guy who led the revolution and suppression of human rights led the country for a very long time before handing off to his brother. Timing has passed, policies have changed and, if I wanted, I could argue repression has diminished. But how would one know when it was okay to associate with Castro under your criteria?
DeleteLet me try a different question, lets say that Friedman had Pinochet's ear and had something useful to impart that would have made a positive net difference to the Chilean people (this is a hypothetical but surely Friedman had the ego to believe it), should he have waited 5 or 10 years because it would have looked less bad from a personal reputation perspective?
re: "Let me try a different question, lets say that Friedman had Pinochet's ear and had something useful to impart that would have made a positive net difference to the Chilean people (this is a hypothetical but surely Friedman had the ego to believe it), should he have waited 5 or 10 years because it would have looked less bad from a personal reputation perspective?"
DeleteNo in fact it would have been better if he got in there at 1973.
But he shouldn't be surprised if people react even worse to going in in 1973 than in 1975, and he shouldn't dodge the real issue by claiming there was some kind of double standard or that it had to do with Allende's socialism.
"Nobody was particularly mad at Friedman for siding with the non-Communist that I am aware of. In fact domestically most of the bickering between the left and Friedman was a case of proponents of one anti-Communist vs. proponents of another anti-Communist."
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's difficult to draw the line. When a fellow socialist starts to sound like an communist? It's understandable that a leftist would judge with lower standards a socialist regime, if he really believes that sacrifices (even in terms of lives) made are necessary. So the critique of Friedman advise to Pinochet is an easy way of saying 'you see, the other side murders as well as our side. So we're not that bad and they're not that good'. It's a typical defense of a declining ideology: 'they're as bad as us!'.
It wasn't Pinochet's anti-Communism that was the concern. It was the murders, the torture, the toppling of a democracy and the establishment of a military dictatorship.
ReplyDeleteI think you'll find that all of these things happened in China as well.
Couldn't agree more.
DeleteDaniel,
DeleteSuppose you went up to Naomi Klein or whoever and said "clearly your problem with Friedman going to Chile was that it was only two years after the coup. If he had gone in, say, 1980, you would have had no objection, right?" Do you honestly believe that her answer would be "yes, absolutely"?
I don't think I'd say that to her, Blackadder. Why would I say that?
DeleteI'd say "Friedman had Pinochet's ear and he gave him advice on how to tame inflation and grow the economy. If you think he's endorsing anything Pinochet did to gain power, then you're an idiot".
If I saw Friedman haughtily proclaiming in the background that Klein was criticizing him because he's anti-communist, I'd walk over to Friedman and say "Are you nuts? She's flipping out because Pinochet is a monster and you talked to him when the wounds of his rise to power were fresh. It has nothing to do with your anti-communism".
I don't think I'd say that to her, Blackadder. Why would I say that?
DeleteFirst of all, I didn't say that you would say this to her. I asked what you thought her response would be if you did. If it makes you happy you can imagine I'm the one asking her, instead of you.
Second, the reason I posed the hypothetical is that you seem to have an erroneous notion of what was really motivating the criticism of Friedman, i.e. that it was really about the fact that he visited Pinochet within a couple of years of the coup, rather than that he visited at all. I find that hard to believe, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting you.
Also, I'd say that you are mischaracterizing Friedman by saying that he thought the reason people were criticizing him was that he was anti-communist. His point is that his critics have a double standard when it comes to left-wing vs. right-wing dictatorships. The evidence for the existence of such a double standard in general is pretty overwhelming, so I'm not sure why it shouldn't be invoked to explain the inconsistency here.
So you think if he saw Castro in '61 everyone would think that was grand?
DeleteI disagree.
Obviously these are all abusive regimes. Obviously a lot of the different ways we see them sometimes have more to do with style than substance. The Pinochet abuses were acute in the way that Castro's abuses were. The Soviet or Chinese abuses after their various revolutions were much less acute. Is that a good reason to treat them differently? Probably not. But it's not a "double standard". He's imagining that. It's the acuteness of the abuses of Pinochet, particularly at the time Friedman went.
China in 1990 is different from China in 1988. That might not have been quite as bad as Cuba in '61 or Chile in '75, but it's the same idea. Double standards have little to do with it. The most you might say that the acuteness of the violence leads us to put undue emphasis on it when there are a lot of other regimes that impose a slow grind that is just as dehumanizing.
I'd never even thought of taking into account the year Friedman went to China. There hadn't been an overthrow of the government, as in Chile, so it seems more natural to treat it as continuous. Also we now remember even the post-Mao government for killing people in Tiananmen Square (as well as for forced abortions, charging families for an executioner's bullet).
ReplyDeleteSo you think if he saw Castro in '61 everyone would think that was grand?
ReplyDeleteI think they would've sang songs praising him for it.
I had no idea Worthy advised Castro!
DeleteOh wait...
If you think I am arguing that no one ever anywhere holds double standards you are not understanding what I am saying. The Worthy song was really about his treatment by the U.S. government, right?
I had no idea Worthy advised Castro!
DeleteSo you're saying that if Worthy had told Castro about the importance of political freedom, then he would have been condemned?
Actually, that sounds about right.
Blackadder wrote: "Also, I'd say that you are mischaracterizing Friedman by saying that he thought the reason people were criticizing him was that he was anti-communist."
ReplyDeletevery true. and it incidentally undermines pretty much the whole point of Daniel's post.
"His point is that his critics have a double standard when it comes to left-wing vs. right-wing dictatorships."
ditto.
"The evidence for the existence of such a double standard in general is pretty overwhelming, so I'm not sure why it shouldn't be invoked to explain the inconsistency here."
yup.
Daniel wrote: "Say that. Don't try to pawn it off on some paranoid double-standard. If he had gone to China in 1951 (he went to Chile two years after Pinochet's consolidation of power) instead of 1980, or Cuba in 1961 the same concerns would have been raised."
Perhaps. But likely mostly by other people.
Also, I'd be very much willing to bet that the Chinese government was killing etc. more people at the time Friedman went there than Pinochet was. And i think for the people being killed the problem was as 'acute' in China as it was in Chile.