"Capitalist economies have been an enormous boon to human welfare. But there is also a fundamental sense in which capitalism, as a system of economic action, is profoundly anti-social.

"Societies that allow economic life to be governed by the logic of private profit and market competition are societies at risk. They are prone to rapid undirected change; to socially damaging concentrations of wealth and inequality; to crises of accumulation; and to periodic economic collapse - sometimes on a worldwide scale.

"Chief characteristics of capitalist societies are not stability and equilibrium: these are the unfounded assumptions of economic theory, not facts about real world economies. The chief characteristics of capitalist societies are uncertainty, insecurity, inequality, and undirected change — all of which generate damaging consequences for our social and natural environments.

"But even as it brings social disruption in its wake, profitable capitalist action requires a supportive social environment and an enabling material infrastructure. It needs socialized, educated, healthy worker - and the functioning families, communities, schools, and healthcare systems that produce them.

"Left to their own devices, competitive markets and private profit-seeking tend to destroy these essential social supports. Their tendency is to commodify, to consume, to expand, and to destroy all obstacles that stand in the way of accumulation.

"Market capitalism is an inherently self-destructive social formation which is protected from the dangers it creates by the operation of anti-market and market-moderating processes. The paradoxical — one might even say dialectical - consequence is that capitalism depends vitally on the presence of effective opposition to it."

(From David Garland: "The Welfare State")