The Economic Role of the State
By William Aylott Orton | Introduction by J. Daniel Hammond, Ph.D.
The Economic Role of the State explores and explicates those fundamental principles of a government in liberal society which run deeper than supply-and-demand or any other economic theories. These principles are philosophical and anthropological in nature, concerning what humans are and what human lives are about, both individually and socially. Much of economics has lost vital connections with important realities of economic life; namely, that economics are but a portion of the life of man, that man is more than the sum of his production and consumption, and that the affairs of the human family are subject to forces more elemental than those of supply and demand.
As J. Daniel Hammond, Ph.D., states in his Introduction: “What is needed today for all of us, economists, students of economics, and educated adults, is a return to a former understanding of man and the role of the state. It is this return that William Aylott Orton provides in The Economic Role of the State.”
No free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. (Virginia Declaration of Rights)
William Aylott Orton (1899–1952) was a soldier, scholar, and author of numerous books and essays. Orton spent the bulk of his teaching career at Smith College, and he held degrees from Christ’s College, Cambridge, University of London, Boston University, and Georgetown University.
J. Daniel Hammond is Hultquist Family Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Paperback: 238pp.
ISBN: 978-1944418441