Mercenary from Tomorrow by Mack Reynolds

In the lotus-land of People’s Capitalism, Earth circa 21st Century, where telly viewers popped dream-inducing trank pills, what could be wrong?

There were basic staples for everyone. Work was a forgotten pastime. Action was all in the flip of a switch. Nothing could be wrong in this Utopia for which men through the ages had strived. Nothing, that is, but movement. The class system had petrified. You were born a Lower or a Middle ... or if you were one of the lucky few, an Upper, with certain special privileges.

But there’s always an upstart rebel, like Joe Mauser, who’d risk life itself to rise in caste. And in lotus-land that’s how it was. Only by hiring oneself out as a mercenary, to fight in the *prime-time programmed wars that telly viewers craved for their violence and gore, could Joe Mauser move up the social level. That is, if he lived that long...