Is greed no longer good?

Why leading CEOs say creating profits is no longer their only responsibility

Workers protest Google.
(Image credit: Mason Trinca/Getty Images)

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

Pure heresy. Treason! How else can one describe this week's revolutionary revision of "the purpose of a corporation" by the Business Roundtable, a group of 188 CEOs of America's most powerful companies. For 40 years, the corporate world has reverently knelt before libertarian economist Milton Friedman and his famed doctrine: "There is one and only one social responsibility of business," Friedman said, and that is to "engage in activities designed to increase its profits." CEOs worked for stockholders, and no one else. But in a fractious political climate in which populists from Fox News' Tucker Carlson to presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren are questioning how well capitalism is serving Americans, nervous CEOs are having second thoughts. Corporate leaders, they say, should manage their businesses to benefit "all ­stakeholders" — employees, customers, and society itself. In his heyday, the highly influential Friedman dismissed such do-good sentiments as "pure and unadulterated socialism."

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.