"In Free America a group of ardent American patriots, some influenced by the Southern Agrarians, some influenced by [Henry] George, and all convinced that the American way of life had entered a period of emergency, set out to develop a political philosophy of their own. This philosophy was to be one founded on the self-subsistent home economy. The so-called science of economics had, hey believed, got off to the wrong start by taking ‘exchange-value’ as its primary subject-matter. As a result it measured a country’s wealth in terms of ‘commodities’, and committed itself to an economy in constant motion, as things exchange, accumulate and slip from our grasp. The real wealth of a country, argue [the editors of Free America] in these pages, does not reside in the hectic exchanges on the stock market or the rivers of commodities that flow through every household without belonging there. It resides in local communities, in the work that holds them together, and the deep investment represented by a home, a place and the endowment across generations of human love. In such a community things exchange, but for their use-value rather than their price. And the writers for Free America set out to develop an economics in which use-value, rather than exchange value, would be the primary subject-matter."
-Sir Roger Scruton
Land and Liberty: the Best of Free America
Publisher: Wethersfield Institute, Inc.
Item Weight: 3.3
ISBN: 978-1-644-13-241-8
Type: Hardcover
Pages: 349
Dimensions:11.25 x 1.0 x 8.75