There is no reason to think that in emphasizing the maximization of market value Modigliani and Miller saw themselves as acting politically. They (Modigliani in particular) were exercised, rather, by an academic issue: the incoherence of the traditional criterion of profit maximization in a world of uncertainty. If "profit outcome" is "a random variable," they wrote, "its maximization no longer has an operational meaning" (Modigliani and Miller 1958, p. 263). However, as Jack Treynor (for whom this aspect of Modigliani and Miller's work was central) realized, the assertion of the centrality of market-value maximization could be read as a statement of how things ought to be.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 1172