Polanyi concluded that “a market economy can only exist in a market society,” which must be created through “highly artificial stimulants administered to the body social.” This happened in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through what Polanyi calls a double movement; first, a profound institutional reorganization made markets (in particular in labor, land, and finance) into social realities, turning “all transactions . . . into money transactions”; second, over time, a countermovement of compensatory mechanisms emerged to control market relations and make them socially livable. Key developments were the regulation of labor, land markets, and the financial sector.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 364