Before leaving Friedman we should brie fly note his article was written in response to a particular set of circumstances, i.e. the climate of big business in the late 1960s. This was the period characterised by J.K. Galbraith as the 'New Industrial State', 9 a time when large companies seemed to be dominated by managerial elites with little interest in shareholder returns. Many companies experimented with corporate philanthropy, although a cynic may wonder whether they were genuinely concerned about ethical issues, or whether the real agenda was to get the chief executive into the country club in the US or a knighthood in the UK. This was the backdrop to Friedman's article, and I believe that he was quite right to condemn the practice of 'corporate philanthropy'.