'The result is a society in which those who get access to pork prosper, and those who don't are left twisting in the wind. Arnold Toynbee, whose monumental study of the rise and fall of empires remains the most detailed examination of the process, calls these latter the 'internal proletariat': those who live within a society but no longer share in its benefits and become increasingly disaffected from its ideals and institutions. In the near term, they are natural fodder for demagogues; in the longer term, they make common cause with the 'external proletariat' - those peoples outside the borders whose labor and resources have become essential to the economy of a dominant state, but who receive no benefits from that economy - and play a key role in bringing the whole system crashing down.'
The Wealth of Nature - John Michael Greer, p182-183, 2011.
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