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I tend to be on Perelman's side of this debate. Market is one thing, 
market society is another, quite different one. In the market society,the 
economic realm got its autonomy from the political realm, as Louis Dumont 
tells us in his book _From Mandeville to Marx_. 
 
No doubt there were markets before, in Babylonia or elsewhere, but I tend 
to look at the Market Society as a modern age phenomenum. Perhaps this 
happens because I was formely trained  as a sociologist, before deciding 
to study economics. This means that I tend to see discontinuities and 
taxonomies where economists see continous lines.  
 
The pervasiveness of market forces in our society, which grew in the last 
decades as Perelman mentioned, has no equivalence in ancient times. 
However, I would not infer from this observation that one should not 
study market transactions in ancient societies, quite the opposite:  this 
seems to be a fascinating topic for a research. 
 
Ana Maria Bianchi 
Universidade de Sao Paulo 
Departamento de Economia 
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