The Morality of the Capitalist System

In Bertolt Brecht’s play satire is used to question the morality of the capitalist system. You can’t be good to everyone because people will take advantage of you to advance themselves. For example The family in her shop, her lover, Wong the water man, the barber’s check, the old couple’s loan all are cases where someone had to give, take or loan money in the end making them worse off.
Brecht followed Marxism which influenced the outcomes of the play. His Marxist ideas shows in his criticism of the capitalist system. As Susan mentioned in class Shen Te becomes a capitalist when she owns her own store. The people must give and take because of their financial class. If production was collectively owned like that of the communist system and everyone made the same amount this borrowing and loaning would not happen. People would not have to be mean to each other for their own advancement. In Eric Bentley’s Comments on the Good Woman of Setzuan , he states “It [the play] does presuppose…slave driver capitalist, like those of the factory system in the classic era of capitalism as described by Marx and Engels” (xxi). Shen Te with the help of her bad side Shui Ta becomes a factory owner. Marx and Engels believed that “Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist…They are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself” (Marx and Engels). This view of the factory system only expose the owners of factories in a negative light but Brecht shows the owner from two perspectives. In the court we get the views of Shui Ta from the rich and poor. We know there is a good side for Shui Ta and the reason Shen Te must be bad so the reader has sympathy for her. We can all understand that split in oneself to do what it takes to provide. However all this would not be necessary if the division in classes did not exist.
Shen Te is a prostitute, because people in the capitalist system must sell themselves and expose themselves to the competition of the market. Marx and Engels believe, “These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market” (Marx and Engels). Shen Te goes from prostitute which is representative to the common laborer in the capitalist factory system to a factory owner representative of the Bourgeois class that takes advantage of the poorer classes.
The only way to be good and financially well off is through the communist system which does not leave people behind and instead makes them equal. Shen Te tells herself,
“To let no one perish, not even oneself
To fill everyone with happiness, even oneself
Is so good” (62)

Brecht believes the communist system accomplishes this by ridding of class and making people equal.

















Bibliography

Brecht, Bertolt. The Good Woman of Setzuan. Trans. Eric Bentley. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1999.

Marx, Karl. Frederick, Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Ed. David Fernbach. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973. Www.newlearningonline.com. Web. 19 Apr. 2010.