Introduction

Every age has its own spectres. In the nineteenth century, there was the spectre of communism; in the twenty-first century, there was the spectre of a digital global market community. Every age fantasises its own way. We all now go virtual: we pretend we can fulfil any necessity (from essentials to sexual desires) via click-through. Enclosed, unlinked yet everlastingly connected customers and providers exchange anything for money unbrokenly. On the market platform, “all the humane” might be done or given for money. Montesquieu’s dreadful nightmare seems to have eventually been realised before our eyes. The market and the marketplace – two different things ¹ – have reportedly grown to be a despatialised platform in which any commodity, no matter its remotest origin or its nature, might be bought and sold all day long. A spectre was haunting Europe in the eighteenth century as well. Precisely, such anxiety is the underlying theme of this book. A dream existed that “a universal intercourse of traffic as is desired” might finally come of age. The utopia chased many enlightened minds who devoted endlessly to conjecture the successful path for its concretisation.