Where markets were most highly developed, as under the mercantile system, they throve under the control of a centralized administration which fostere… - Karl Polanyi

The market institution has its origin in two different sets of developments: the one external to the community, the other internal. The external is intimately linked with the acquisition of goods from outside, the internal with the local distribution of food. This latter took two very different forms: the first was general in the irrigational empires and centered on storing and distributing staples; the second is to be found from the earliest times in peasant and bush communities, and focused on the local sale of fresh victuals and prepared food. These varied sources of origin contributed different constituent elements to the institution of the market.

The gold standard was intended to create an integrated global marketplace that reduced the role of national units and national governments, but its consequences were exactly the opposite.23 Polanyi shows that when it was widely adopted in the 1870s, it had the ironic effect of intensifying the importance of the nation as a unified entity. Although market liberals dreamed of a pacified world in which the only international struggles would be those of individuals and firms to outperform their competitors, their efforts to realize these dreams through the gold standard produced two horrific world wars.

By accident only, as we see, was European fascism in the 1920s connected with national and counterrevolutionary tendencies. It was a case of symbiosis between movements of independent origin, which reinforced one another and created the impression of essential similarity, while being actually unrelated.
In reality, the part played by fascism was determined by one factor: the condition of the market system.
During the period 1917–23 governments occasionally sought fascist help to restore law and order: no more was needed to set the market system going. Fascism remained undeveloped.
In the period 1924–29, when the restoration of the market system seemed ensured, fascism faded out as a political force altogether.
After 1930 market economy was in a general crisis. Within a few years fascism was a world power.