Economists call these basic agents "factors of production." They include a fourth factor — management, which plans, coordinates, and directs production, although some economists label this factor a specialized high-level form of labor.
The market system involves a high degree of economic activity, revolving around the production of goods and services. It is significant that the basic agents of production — land, labor, and capital — did not exist as abstract ideas until the Economic Revolution. Of course, there was land used for agriculture, and labor in the form of human workers doing physical tasks, and capital that provided funds for buying tools and maintaining the land. However, society as a whole did not consider these terms as impersonal ideas in the modern sense of "Let's start a business — we need land for the location of the factory, we need a labor force to do the work, and we must have the capital to finance our efforts."
During the Middle Ages, land existed in the form of estates, manors, and principalities, but it was not "for sale" in the modern sense. Instead, the ownership of land provided the prestige and status around which social life revolved. There were serfs, apprentices, and journeymen who worked, but there was no labor market — that is, people who were looking for jobs. The serfs were bound to the land of their masters, the lords. The apprentices and journeymen served the master and were rigidly controlled by guild regulations. Capital funds in the sense of private wealth existed, but not with any idea of investing, expanding, or taking risks. The goal of medieval landholders was to stabilize and protect the nation by financing wars and conquests and by underwriting the household expenses of kings. A good example is the Fugger banking family of Bavaria, which failed to pursue the amassing of wealth begun by their patriarch, Anton Fugger. Under the medieval system, advertising was unheard of; the basis of price was the just price. People lived as their ancestors had lived — off the output of the family land.
