Trade and Market in the Early Empires; Economies in History and Theory
by: Sweezy, Paul M., Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arsenberg (Editors)

Hardcover. Glencoe IL, The Free Press, 1st, 1957, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth, 382 pages. Dust jacket flaps laid in, name inside front cover. Light pencil marking to about 10 pages. Ancient civilizations and medieval Europe had no "economies" -- no fixed prices for commodities, no production for markets. People have always exchanged goods, of course, but in the pre-modern world, exchange between individuals was most often done through social networks, always with a non-economic motivation. Scarcity, "entrepreneurship", the universal self-regulating market with fixed prices for goods, and the system of trade as we know it, and economics as the fundamental driving sector for all of society --- are all unique to the modern West.