“The purpose of economics,” my professor of monetary theory explained, “is to maximize real GDP.” This seems a caricature, and undoubtedly it does not represent the view of every economics professor in American universities, but it is a revealing definition. The statement is a climax of well-educated ignorance. The principal goods of life are never traded in financial exchange, and what is never traded for money is never measured by gross domestic product. From the perspective of this economic myopia, in which the only goods are those which can be measured via the occurrence of their monetary evaluation, it follows that the intangible goods we value the most such as spending time with family and friends imposes a cost on our society. Clearly, something has gone seriously wrong in the line of reasoning which led my professor to this conclusion.

Yet it remains that this is the guiding light to research in economic theory. This isn’t to say such a philosophy is necessarily what guides the financial and monetary discretions of the government, nor even that there isn’t an apparent line of reasoning which reaches such a definition. After all, maximizing real GDP means maximizing the goods and services traded on the market. A higher GDP means there are more goods and services available in society, and if there are more goods and services to go around, that means each person will have more material benefits available. All well and good, in its own way. But not only does it ignore Malthus (increases in productivity are eaten up, literally, by more mouths being born), it approaches society without the least sense of how oikonomia is a part of the greater whole, the polis.

The question is, how does economy relate to society? What is the role of the economy? We sure talk about it a lot, in our media, on our blogs, in our political speeches, and in the classroom. “This will be good for the economy” has become a justification par excellence for whatever particular policy one desires. Better question: What is the economy good for?

Imagine we were seeking to understand the purpose of the heart. We cannot reach an understanding of its rule by cutting it out of the body and analyzing it without reference to how it interacts with the rest of the body. It pumps, not for itself, but in order to push blood throughout the body in order that oxygen can be distributed to muscles. It is even understood that it can be appropriate and fitting to circumvent the heart, to remove and replace it, in the case that it isn’t fulfilling its function and imposing a cost on the body. The heart is understood not by itself, but only in reference to the advantage it provides to the whole body. It is impossible to understand what role the heart plays without seeing how it helps the body.

But this only pushes the question back a step. What is the function of the body? No analysis of the heart, from whether it should be made to beat faster, to pump harder, to have thicker walls, to be larger, and so on, is  possible without subordinating its purpose to the purpose of the whole.

The economy, in other words, can only be properly understood in how it plays a subordinate role to the purpose of society. Without this understanding, attempts to improve the economy are worse than guesswork. The economy does not exhaust the summun bonum of society. Likewise, the economy cannot be disregarded.

How are to find the good of the economy? If the economy is a good provided its proper subordination to the good of the whole, acknowledging its good cannot come by way of economics. Rather, it must be placed into an hierarchy of goods from a perspective with regard specifically to the good of the whole. The answer is in part from its etymology. Oikonomia, which translates to “order of the household.” The economy’s good comes from its being directed to the good of the household, or the family. Regulating an economy without doing so in order to guide the formation and maintenance of families is simply to miss the point. Society does not stand in need of things per se, but things for families. Apart from this, a bunch of things is just a bunch of things. The purpose of the family is not to accumulate goods, but to foster human flourishing.

What we find instead is the subordination of society to economy. For the last 100 years, insofar as policies have been pursued because they would be “good for the economy,” we find the continual subversion of society. Why the suburbs? For their economic efficiency, never mind that they facilitate a crass consumerism and the continual erosion of social integration. Education has been centralized, not because it helps to serve the socialization parents seek to give their children, but merely because it is found more economically efficient to do so. The borders are opened because a straightforward analysis of supply and demand dictates a market is most efficient without immigration restrictions stopping the flow of human capital.

We know how to make a heart beat faster, to pump harder. Should we make a heart beat faster just because we know how to? This is an analogous question to whether unemployment ought to be lower, whether inflation ought to be higher, and so on. Economics cannot answer by itself what the economy should look like, but must be instructed from a more complete perspective. It has some answers, but what answers we need are formulated from a philosophy of the polis and an understanding of its purpose.