Profits without productive function expose the bourgeoisie to popular wrath.

Evidence

Only the fortunate coincidence of the rise of a new class of property holders and the industrial revolution had made the bourgeoisie producers and stimulators of production. As long as it fulfilled this basic function in modern society, which is essentially a community of producers, its wealth had an important function for the nation as a whole. The owners of superfluous capital were the first section of the class to want profits without fulfilling some real social function—even if it was the function of an exploiting producer—and whom, consequently, no police could ever have saved from the wrath of the people. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 409

Categorization

• XREF: This pins down why surplus capital owners became structurally vulnerable — the same superfluousness Arendt later centers in the masses/stateless person; also resonates with the reader’s Foundations vocabulary on how modern rationality enables exclusion.