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The article presents a paper that offers an alternative explanation for the purported inability to make better use of the expanded productive capability which provides the base for an "affluent" life style. It is suggested that inability to understand the ethical questions raised by a high rate of economic growth and failure to make the institutional adjustments that would humanize the contemporary economic process derive in part from neglected but critical developments in economic thought and social philosophy. Now according to those who are critical of the life style of affluent America, it is obvious that economic activity as carried out in contemporary society does not achieve that ideal terminus which, according to the philosophic presuppositions of classical economics, ought to be the end result of such activity. As a matter of historical fact, the economy seems to have been forced into a developmental path which permits economic activity to escape its proper subordination to the "good life" of man. Theologically, one might argue that this tendency for economic activity to degenerate into a process which degrades man is but part of that tragic train of events which entered human history as the consequence of sin.

The article focuses on religious organization and economic process in Indonesia. A major by-product of the analysis of the factors making for, or impeding, economic development in the so-called underdeveloped countries of the world is the discovery of religious or other ideological forms of human motivation that shape the cultural specifics of their concepts of welfare and betterment in the production process. In that part of the world where the advanced features of the modern Western market economy and its industrial and financial ancillaries are still relatively novel imports, types of religio-familistic organization still prevail which, with varying degrees of effectiveness, dominate economic life. This paper seeks to illustrate this contention by three examples from the Indonesian sphere: the village and its various territorial and genealogical affiliations; the Islamic sacred foundations; and the altar associations of the Indonesian Chinese. Although the data are limited to Indonesia, it is believed that they have relevance for a wider area.

This article comments on some of the conclusions drawn by Riley E. Baker in respect to significant causative factors in the economic development of the Great Plains area. The economy of, and the techniques employed within, an area are a part of the aggregate economy, not isolated from it. This situation derives largely from the composite of technological developments associated with improved transportation and increased tendencies toward both individual producer and area specialization. The network of interrelationships is not an easy one to explain. Nevertheless, this difficulty does not warrant simplification merely for ease of explanation. Some passages in Baker's paper explicitly, and others by implication, indicate that he leans toward undue simplification, intentional or otherwise. There has appeared a tendency in recent years to interpret the implications of a vastly expanding technological front in terms of the impacts of a few selected techniques lifted from their functional relationships within the integrated whole. This tendency is probably the inevitable result of preliminary observations of the influences of wide technological advances upon the entire structure of an economy.

The article presents a discussion on the paper titled "Institutionalism and Economic Development," written by Clarence E. Ayres. It is a clear and more or less complete statement of the position taken and emphasis given by a distinguished and influential scholar. The author does not attempt here a detailed appraisal of this article. Once a critic of institutional economics, Benjamin Higgins notes in his introduction that Professor Ayres and his fellows, it is now clear, have long been doing the sort of thing all development economists now find it necessary to do. Perhaps equally important is the observation that Ayres has, in the article which follows, provided the basis for a "reconciliation" of his position with that of his "hostile" critics. Specifically, the author agrees that Professor Ayres' position or approach is economic, a theory of what the economy is and how it works. That is, technically, the job of an economist is to explain, describe, and predict the workings of economic systems and, therefore, Ayres is a practicing economist.