The step which makes isolated markets into a market economy, regulated markets into a self-regulating market, is indeed crucial. The nineteenth centu… - Karl Polanyi

It was characteristic of the economic system of the nineteenth century that it was institutionally distinct from the rest of society. In a market economy, the production and distribution of material goods is carried on through a self-regulating system of markets, governed by laws of its own, the so-called laws of supply and demand, moti­vated in the last resort by two simple incentives, fear of hunger and hope of gain. This institutional arrangement is thus separate from the noneconomic institutions of society: its kinship organization and its political and religious systems. Neither the blood tie, nor legal compulsion, nor religious obligation, nor fealty, nor magic created the sociologically defined situations that insured the participation of individuals in the system. They were, rather, the creation of institutions like private property in the means of production and the wage system operating on purely economic incentives.

The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization.

The connection between rural poverty and the impact of world trade was anything but obvious. Contemporaries had no reason to link the number of the village poor with the development of commerce in the Seven Seas. The inexplicable increase in the number of the poor was almost generally put down to the method of Poor Law administration, and not without some good cause. Actually, beneath the surface, the ominous growth of rural pauperism was directly linked with the trend of general economic history. But this connection was still hardly perceptible. Scores of writers probed into the channels by which the poor trickled into the village, and the number as well as the variety of reasons adduced for their appearance was amazing.