Accounting historians have attempted to relate their knowledge of the variety of accounting practices at various points of time, and in various places. It is to wider questions of the role of accounting in reflecting and shaping not only business and management practice, but also economic and social organization more generally. Finley's classic ¡§The Ancient Economy¡¨ , which analyzed the embedded-ness of ancient economic activity in the social structure, and in the status concerns of the free citizens, as constituting a brake on the development of profit-focused markets and correspondingly on technology and trade. It saw the state of ancient accounting as itself making impossible sophisticated profit-oriented calculation and rational decision-making. In his monumental ¡§The Class Struggle¡¨ in the Ancient Greek World, Croix rejected Finley's analysis in terms of Weberian 'status' in favor of an explicitly Marxist analysis based on 'class'. But he took up essentially the same......
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