Does the success of a society depend on economics or ethics?

One of the most authoritative theories about the constitution of society in the modern world is that economics and economic relationships define the fundamental structure of all social relationships, indeed of society itself. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx, in their very different ways, either erted or implied the primacy of economics and economic relationships as fundamental to the existence and evolution of nations and to the creation of wealth. But these views displaced an older conception of society which considered ethics and ethical codes as the fundamental bedrock of societies. In that older view, the success of a society was judged by its adherence to the ‘good’ rather than to its store of aculated wealth. Ethical codes may have had a religious dimension, but it was the way conduct and behavior were regulated by or referred to ethical judgement that allowed for the stability, maintenance, and success of social relationships and, hence, of society as a whole.