Understanding the Commercial Republic – Gregory M. Collins

Understanding the Commercial Republic – Gregory M. Collins

The glittering sheen of commerce masks a Janus-faced enigma, that parent of both war and peace, glory and ruin, freedom and despotism, progress and regress, virtue and hedonism. Accused by thinkers throughout the ages of inducing these wide-ranging and contradictory effects, commerce—and its role in conditioning the character of peoples and nations—is the subject of a delightful new Festschrift, Commerce and Character: The Political Economy of t…