Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without ann… - Karl Polanyi

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.

Barter, truck, and exchange is a principle of economic behavior dependent for its effectiveness upon the market pattern. A market is a meeting place for the purpose of barter or buying and selling. Unless such a pattern is present, at least in patches, the propensity to barter will find but insufficient scope: it cannot produce prices.

Both the personnel and the motives of this singular body invested it with a status the roots of which were securely grounded in the private sphere of strictly commercial interest.