Free people are naturally prosperous because they bring home the fruit of their own labor. An unnatural state of serfdom and poverty occurs when government (a small group of other people) forcefully robs and then “collectivizes” the fruit of other people’s labor – in violation of natural law (all men are created with an equal right to the fruit of their own labor in pursuit of happiness). The temptation to pig out on collectivized property and to use it for bribing people and buying votes is an irresistible force for most people in government. Orwell said it best:

“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it [The Socialist Party of Oceania] was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984

Serfdom and poverty are inevitable in a collectivist society because the people comprising collectivist (excessively taxing) government are greedy for property, and so is the so-called proletariat class – the lazy class which depends on collectivist government to rob the working class on their behalf.

Compare Marx to Adams and Jefferson:

“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend… The proletariat [lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled poor] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital [property] from the bourgeoisie [laboring, tax-paying middle class], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state [Marxist Government]… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… and the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois [middle class] individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the [non] working class is to raise the proletariat [lazy class] to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Karl Marx

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams

“The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management… To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association–the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it… The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not… Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Thomas Jefferson