Endless property accumulation logically requires endless accumulation of political power.

Evidence

Hobbes’s insistence on power as the motor of all things human and divine (even God’s reign over men is “derived not from Creating them …but from the Irresistible Power”) sprang from the theoretically indisputable proposition that a never-ending accumulation of property must be based on a never-ending accumulation of power. The philosophical correlative of the inherent instability of a community founded on power is the image of an endless process of history which, in order to be consistent with the constant growth of power, inexorably catches up with individuals, peoples, and finally all mankind. The limitless process of capital accumulation needs the political structure of so “unlimited a Power” that it can protect growing property by constantly growing more powerful. Granted the fundamental dynamism of the new social class, it is perfectly true that “he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath at present, without the acquisition of more.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 392

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the core mechanism linking bourgeois capital accumulation to unlimited-state power, a foundational causal concept for the module.
• XREF: Foreshadows Arendt’s later argument in this work about imperialism and totalitarianism as outward expressions of domestic accumulation; connects to the field’s concern with how modern state power is built on economic logics.