"Markets are usually discussed in abstract terms, as an economic organizing principle, a generalized alternative to government planning, or even as powerful actors in their own right, able to shape local and national economic destinies. But markets are not abstract. Even as the idea of the...

"Commodities of one type or other have been produced, transferred and consumed in the economic life of humanity through every epoch of its development and forms of sociocultural organization, but are pervasive in the varieties of capitalism dominating contemporary world economies. Even labor, a...