"To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity "labour power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affect also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of man's labor power the system would incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological , and moral entity "man" attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed.......But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill."

The Great Transformation, Polyani, p. 73