Josef Pieper on Socialism

I suppose this could serve as a better warning than any to the creeping dictatorship of Socialism in the western world. The Catholic German philosopher Josef Pieper wrote:

The proletarian is the man who is fettered to the process of work.

The causes may be: the lack of property with life being lived on the exclusive basis of the person's power to work... or due to the coercion of a totalitarian state... or by an inner impoverishment of the individual whose life is completely filled by his work.

These three forms mutually attract one another and in so doing intensify each other. The "total-work" State needs the spiritually impoverished, one-track mind of the "functionary"...
proletarianism, thus understood, is perhaps a symptomatic state o f mind common to all levels of society... A spiritual immunization against the seductive appeal and the power of totalitarian forms must be sought.

By the same token, "deproletarianizing" would mean: enlarging the scope of life beyond the confines of merely useful servile work, and limiting the sp here of servile work to the advantage of the liberal arts. This goal requires three things: giving the wage-earner the opportunity to save and acquire property, limiting the power of the state.