Livets Bog, vol. 1
"Proletariat", "lower class" and "upper class". A person's true greatness
106. As the world authority will thus prevent all those types of profit, with the consequence that no special way of accumulating private capital can exist, then that situation will be abolished which today makes it possible for large sections of the population to evade their obligation to work for the community, being able to accept and enjoy their existence without doing any kind of work in return; so, as they contribute nothing towards their existence, it becomes obvious that they live on other people's labour. But while living on other people's labour, these other people will be forced to do without the full benefit of their work. This again means that the working wages of these latter people are reduced, and their natural leisure time shortened. But because of the existence of these two factors, the reality is that there is a corresponding reduction of the same people's access to the spiritual and material goods of life. And as the people in question consequently have been made artificially primitive, worn out, poor and overworked, we can see before us that group of people appearing in life under the concept of "proletariat" or the "lower classes"
      Those people who have not done any work for their existence but have had the possibility to live on profit, have had, on the contrary, too much leisure and too much access to the more or less real pleasures of life. And as they have in this way become used to an unnatural life, they will also appear as unnatural. To a large extent they have accustomed themselves to live in luxury, greed and extravagance. They also appear to have overstrained bodies, but this strain is not due to an excessive amount of work, but to excessive "pleasure". This easy access to life's valuable goods allows them to live in a fixed atmosphere of arrogance which consequently quite distorts their concept of life and makes them adherents of the superstition that the "possession of great wealth" and "to be waited on" are expressions of culture and greatness, and that "working" is degrading or unworthy of "good taste". So they are entirely prevented from coming to realize that life's greatest and most natural hallmark is "work", and that a person's real and true greatness can be determined solely by his unselfish and charitable actions. They do not see that offering one's life for work is the greatest "purple robe" of distinction and "halo" of light in which any living being can be shown. In considering this fact it will be the above-mentioned people themselves who therefore should be identified as constituting a "proletariat". This "proletariat" appears on a large scale within that group of people coming under the category of the "bourgeoisie" or "upper classes".