A bare outline of the objective nature of Fascism thus tends to support our interpretation of its philosophy. The Fascist system has to carry on pers… - Karl Polanyi

Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. The second was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy. The third was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare. The fourth was the liberal state. Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization.
Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. By the time it failed, most of the other institutions had been sacrificed in a vain effort to save it. But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. It was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization.

The countermove against economic liberalism and laissez-faire possessed all the unmistakable characteristics of a spontaneous reaction. At innumerable disconnected points it set in without any traceable links between the interests directly affected or any ideological conformity between them. Even in the settlement of one of the same problem as in the case of workmen's compensation, solutions switched over from individualistic to "collectivistic:' from liberal to antiliberal, from "laissez-faire" to interventionist forms without any change in the economic interest, the ideological influences or political forces in play, merely as a result of the increasing realization of the nature of the problem in question.

The notion that individual acts of exchange were at the root of trade, money, and even of market institutions, is hardly tenable. Foreign trade, as a rule, preceded domestic trade, the exchange use of money originated in the foreign trade sphere, and organized markets were developed first in external trade; in all three cases, action was more of the collective than of the individual kind.