Smith fully acknowledges that the market cannot exist without the state. Indeed, an entire book of The Wealth of Nations details the necessity of the state supplying external defense, internal justice, and even the training and education of workers. Most interestingly, he is disarmingly honest concerning the political effects of capitalism, noting that “wherever there is property there is great inequality,” such that “the acquisition of valuable and extensive property … necessarily requires the establishment of civil government.” A civil government that, “in so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 299