The middle classes for years ignored the plight of people living on run-down council estates and then paid the price when the inner city "came to call" in last month's riots, a senior government minister said.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith drew a direct link between the disorder in London and other English cities and the problems of drugs, gangs and welfare dependency associated with some social housing.
"For years now, too many people have remained unaware of the true nature of life on some of our estates," he wrote in an article for The Times.
"This was because we had ghettoised many of these problems, keeping them out of sight of the middle-class majority. But last month the inner city finally came to call, and the country was shocked by what it saw."
While Mr Duncan Smith stressed there was no excuse for rioting, he drew a line between the disturbances and a wider collapse in social responsibility. A culture of "do what I say" rather than "do what I do" is unsustainable, he warned.
"The distorted morality has permeated our whole society, right to the very top. Whether in the banking crisis, phone hacking or the MPs' expenses scandal, we have seen a failure of responsibility from the leaders of our society," he said.