American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power is a book by John Kenneth Galbraith, written in 1952. It contains a critique of the view that markets, left to their own devices, will provide socially optimal solutions. Galbraith agrees with F. A. Hayek as far as the assertion goes that "the price system will fulfil [its] function only if competition prevails, that is, if the individual producer has to adapt to price changes and cannot control them." The book presents Galbraith's account of the inter-relationship between politics and economics which for Galbraith is based on a theory of competition guiding a capitalistic democratic society. Source: Wikipedia (en)