76. And so the "business principle" has become fundamental to terrestrial mankind's whole instinct of self-preservation. It dominates the entire material world. Everything is business. Nations are trading, political parties are formed on business, citizens are forced to make deals; life itself has become an article of commerce. Life is bought and sold. As the whole of existence, by virtue of cosmic laws, can only be maintained on the basis that every value is balanced by an equivalent value, then the business principle, in its finest analysis, is of a noble and cosmic nature, and only becomes ignoble and antisocial when it reaches the point where large groups of the community's strong and healthy individuals are prevented from being able to pay value for value, or when large groups of individuals are enabled to "buy" themselves out of that said divine reality. Such conditions will always come about in cases where something is paid for by a price that does not reflect its real value. Thus, one can talk about an excess price as well as a cut-price. In both cases there will be a profit, but in the first case it falls to the seller, while in the latter case it obviously falls to the buyer. Such a profit is an unpaid commodity, or a "something" for which there is not a paid "something" in return, and consequently, when this surplus is transferred to the buyer's or seller's "private property" it must create a corresponding deficit in the whole world economy - as we will realize from what follows. The more often that kind of depreciation in world economy takes place, the more outstanding the arrears and the more accumulation of unpaid values there will be. These accumulations are again identical with all that comes under the idea of "private capital". Not included in this is whatever individuals possess of daily vital necessities such as food, clothing and shelter, for these cannot be expressed as capital until they overstep the boundaries of necessity and thereby assume the character of profit. When someone has, for instance, 40 suits of clothes in the cupboard, but the necessary number is only 4, the other 36 suits constitute capital. But as these 36 suits are actually quite unnecessary to the individual in question, they represent something worthless, for being "private capital", they are untouchable for the rest of the community. The same thing is valid when an individual has an annual income of, say 100,000 kr.*, while the necessary income for his healthy, and cosmically seen normal necessities of life in the same period is only 5000 kr. The remaining 95,000 kr. is then, cosmically seen, unnecessary capital for the said individual, at the same time as it constitutes as private capital a corresponding deficit in the "housekeeping accounts" of the general community. Now, objections may very well be raised here to the effect that the private capital of such a person would, after all, benefit the community, as he might give food and work to many of his fellow men, but we must reply to this that anything which benefits the community in such a way would naturally have to be deducted from the private capital, which - when it comes to it - represents useless profit.
      However, it is quite right that a person with a large private capital is able to provide food and work for many of his fellow men but, as it is not yet a general rule that this is the owner's actual intention regarding his property, but on the contrary it is more generally considered by the representative of capital that work power is a "necessary evil" or an unavoidable means for the maintenance and increase of private fortune - an "expense", therefore, which like other expenses must be kept down to the minimum - then that part of private capital from which the community will benefit in the form of food and work will be only a small fraction. Here we give an example. A man has ten individuals in his employment. With the help of the abilities and work power of those ten individuals, he is able to carry out a piece of work which gives him an income of 150,000 kr. a year. From this amount, the workers receive 5000 kr. in wages while 30,000 kr. go in taxes, rents and other working expenses. To the person concerned, only 5000 kr. is necessary (cosmically seen) for his own healthy and natural necessities of life. So the sum total of all his expenses is 85,000 kr. This amount deducted from the income gives a profit of 65,000 kr., which - as the "private capital" of the employer - is lost to the community. This means, therefore, that with the help of ten fellow men, he is able to reduce the capital of the community by 65,000 kr. or to make his fellow men in the community poorer by that amount. To obtain food and work for ten of its members in this way it would have to give 65,000 kr. as a bonus to the employer. When the owners of capital "give food and work to others", it is therefore not free of charge, but costs the community enormous sums, sums so large that sometimes the community is unable to pay them. As we shall see later the result is "destitution". This example shows that everything gained as "profit" and existing as "private capital" is thus identical with "bonuses" the community has had to give to the owners of capital so that people can be permitted to earn a few of the barest necessities for the maintenance of life. The product which gave the employer the profit in the above example, could therefore have been given to the community cheaper by 65,000 kr. Every profit of this kind, whether large or small, will now become a further liability for the community because, just like power, such profit makes it possible for its agent to oppose the payment of his levies such as "wages" and "taxes" due to the community, and to reduce them as much as possible, thereby enriching himself still more, and so the process continues. As this is the general principle in the present business world and thereby the general principle of terrestrial mankind's instinct for self-preservation, it is not so difficult to see that people appear in two sharply defined camps, one made up of those who have appropriated valuable goods as "private wealth" or "private capital" and another made up of those who possess nothing.
      As valuable goods represent power, the camp which has appropriated them will represent the stronger material power and will appear in the world as "money power". Since the camp which possesses nothing is made up of a great multitude of people, it will in reality form the true community. Because of its majority this camp also becomes a power, though much inferior to "money power". This power represents the dawning power of the community or "State power".
 
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* Translator's note: Kr. = Danish currency - kroner.