From The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi:

Let us make our meaning more precise. No society could, naturally, live for any length of time unless it possessed an economy of some sort; but previously to our time no economy has ever existed that, even in principle, was controlled by markets. In spite of the chorus of academic incantations so persistent in the nineteenth century, gain and profit made on exchange never before played an important part in human economy. Though the institution of the market was fairly common since the later Stone Age, its role was no more than incidental to economic life.

Written just before the dawn of the Keynesian revolution (the truce between labor and capital that lasted for over 30s years and is often called The Golden Years of capitalism), The Great Transformation argues that the modern market system was created by and for the nation state. However, the relationship between the two institutions has been marked by a struggle not so much between workers and the owners of the means of production but between the mind of the state (regulation) and the mindlessness of the market (self-regulation). The defining theme of the Great Moderation was indeed that this tension had been resolved once and for all by a market that was liberated from state intervention and planning.

This picture is of bubbles being blown by plastic machines in the Vermillion gallery.