The Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada is in many respects a fairly typical business school. It offers degrees in management, leadership, economics, and so on, and its faculty members are regularly published in well-respected business journals.

One of the things that makes Lang somewhat unique, however, is its focus on environmentalism and sustainability. This will not come as a surprise to Ontario residents. Guelph is one of only two seats in the provincial legislature held by the Green Party of Ontario. The city, you could say, has a reputation for this kind of thing.

Drawing on this environmentalist streak, as well as its commitment to “responsible business” and similar ideas, the Lang school has come up with a thought-provoking tagline, which it proudly displays on its website and around its buildings on campus: “Business as a force for good.”

Though the plain message of these words is clearly positive, there’s an insinuation here that’s hard to miss. It says, in the subtext, that business is often not a force for good, and that it takes a certain intentionality to direct business toward righteous ends.

The tagline, it seems, is designed to address the prevalent anti-business sentiment that exists in our culture. “Don’t worry,” is the message. “We know the reputation that business—especially big business—has, and we’re working on it.”

I’m reminded of a talk given by Ayn Rand in 1961, which was subsequently turned into an essay, titled “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” In the talk, Rand expressed frustration that businessmen, who have been uniquely productive, have also been uniquely scorned by the very society they have so greatly helped. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished. Rand remarked:

“America’s industrial progress, in the short span of a century and a half, has acquired the character of a legend: it has never been equaled anywhere on earth, in any period of history. The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.”

Rand drew particular attention to antitrust laws, and how they are used to punish those who have been most successful in serving the needs of consumers. She notes that, between these and other laws and the prevailing attitudes in society, “every ugly, brutal aspect of injustice toward racial or religious minorities is being practiced toward businessmen.”

Economist Murray Rothbard, in an interesting twist, took great issue with this perspective, and he expressed his disagreement with Rand on this point in various books and articles throughout his career. Here’s how it put it in one piece from the late 1960s:

“Conservatives and libertarians alike suffer from a failure to recognize who is responsible for the accelerating march of this country into statism. Ayn Rand once wrote that big business is ‘America’s most persecuted minority.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. From the turn of the twentieth century, through the New Deal period, and up to the present day, big business has been in the forefront of the shift from a free economy and a free society toward statism. For it saw in the state what the mercantilists—the big businessmen of their day— saw: a golden opportunity to confer upon themselves special privileges through subsidies, monopolies, cartels, contracts, etc.”

Economist Milton Friedman has expressed similar sentiments. “In the main,” he had said, “most businessmen are enemies of free markets.” The virtue of the free market, advised Rothbard and Friedman, is precisely that it restrains big business from using the government to benefit itself at the expense of the ordinary person.

Taking these points together, there seem to be two divergent lines of thinking in the libertarian tradition when it comes to big business. One sees big business as a persecuted hero, the other sees it as an opportunistic villain.

But these are not irreconcilable ideas. What they really amount to is a difference in emphasis. Rand is right that big business in principle is worth celebrating, and that the masses are wrong to scorn the successful businessman as such. At the same time, Rothbard and Friedman are right that historically many big businessmen have successfully lobbied for special privileges, and so we should have a certain amount of contempt for big business as it has often existed in practice.

The task for present-day libertarians is not to pick one or the other of these positions, but to be ready to make either of these points depending on the discussion at hand. When our opponents are bemoaning the incestuous relationship between big business and government, we can agree with them that special privileges for big business are a problem and point out that free markets are the solution. On the other hand, when they suggest that being big and profitable is inherently wicked, even in a free market, that is a perfect opportunity to channel Ayn Rand and defend the noble role of the entrepreneur against those who would paint him as grasping, callous, and exploitative.