Purely competitive markets are fragile

When Adam Smith says the extent of the market determines the division of labor what he is really saying is that the efficiency the market imposes carries with it a corresponding increase in complexity, and with that complexity comes a corresponding increase in the brittleness of the social order and an attendant fragility. 

Purely competitive markets are fragile. 

To get around that fragility free markets almost always resolve into some sort of oligopolistic 'soft competition.' Inevitably the oligopolies concentrate wealth and power and begin to go after the society's fertile core by altering the rules of engagement in their favor. They re-define the tax and property laws, which in turn then allow them to re-shape first the political culture and finally the general culture. 

The conundrum facing progressive forces is that you need to change the laws at the same time as you're changing the culture. The laws need to change in concert with the culture's changing, slowly and methodically in a gentle evolution not unlike the way the Europeans are undertaking it. 

Again, we must fashion a coterie of intellectuals to disseminate the message.