The inherently unstable capitalist economic system affects the livelihood of the bourgeoisie and proletariat in different ways. Though both classes are in harness to it, the bourgeois is unlikely to see its constraints as irksome: indeed he stands most to gain from maintaining the overall framework and from attempting to control and stabilise its oscillations. With the system of production weighted against him, the proletariat, too, wants economic security but is rarely satisfied with or secure in achieving it. Inasmuch as he feels himself likely to benefit from existing economic relations, or is likely to avoid increased discomfort by conformity, he will accept the status quo. But this support cannot be guaranteed: if conditions worsen or fail to fill expectations, alternative economic relations may promise much more. As the effects of capitalism are uneven, subversive responses to it may be differentially distributed throughout the population.

Responses may be individual or collective, supportive or disruptive of the status quo, involve different levels of organisation and degrees of development of institutions, and take coercive or persuasive forms. The threat to social stability or primary responses to the economic structure has resulted in a secondary response of control, institutionalised in the form of the state.

The state, then, is a secondary, organisational reflex evolving in part from the fear of insecurity generated by primary responses to economic opportunities unevenly distributed among the population.