South African gold-hunters were by-products of capitalism rather than outsiders to it

Evidence

This delusion of an absolute value has made the production of gold since ancient times the business of adventurers, gamblers, criminals, of elements outside the pale of normal, sane society. The new turn in the South African gold rush was that here the luck-hunters were not distinctly outside civilized society but, on the contrary, very clearly a by-product of this society, an inevitable residue of the capitalist system and even the representatives of an economy that relentlessly produced a superfluity of men and capital. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 491

Categorization

• DEFINE: This distinguishes the new imperialist adventurer from the old outlaw — a distinction that matters for Arendt’s account of how superfluity is produced, not chosen.