Profiteering by the Exploitation of the Poor and Desperate
The Issue of Poverty in The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
by Penbe Alize Özçalışkan
In The Threepenny Opera written by Bertolt Brecht in 1928, the action takes place in London’s metropolitan and criminal underworld, non-bourgeois milieu. Here beggars, prostitutes and laborers work through the use of their body and perform body labor. The play takes place around the time of the Queen’s coronation celebrations. In this piece, crime and the red-light milieu are presented in the manner of bourgeois business-life. Disciplined work, rules and subordination to organizational and hierarchical principles are the prerequisites for success, regardless of whether you are a beggar or a businessman. The play leads us to think critically about bourgeois values under capitalism, and to see the intertwining of crime and profiteering.
The fears and issues in the society that are seen in the play are varieties of crime and illegitimacy, such as murder, theft, prostitution and a community under the rule of gangsters. However, the main issue that is directly linked with poverty in this work is the ruthless exploitation of the beggars. Peachum, the beggar king of London, who sees himself as a middle-class businessman, organizes beggars as his “business” of human misery by exploiting people’s feelings. He uses traditional moral stances such as making beggars usequotes from the Bible. Here is not only the issue of poverty, but also how some people are profiteering from a poor and corrupted community. Peachum is not the only one that benefits from this desperate state of their community. Macheath, also known as “Mack The Knife”, is considered the burglar king of London. Throughout the play he works his way around the rules and norms of what is known as the bourgeois morality of the time. Similar to Peachum, he presents himself as a legitimate businessman, although he is the head of a criminal organization. What is interesting is, that even though Macheath and Peachum are not so different in their doings, they both would like to turn people’s fear into profit, Macheath is not really hated for it as Peachum is. Both the figures in the play and the audience are charmed by him and do sympathize with him despite his criminal activity, which explains why he is pardoned by the Queen herself at the end.
Amidst all this corruption, immorality and violence we are able to see what is really lacking in terms of values, such as the welfare of a society, law and order, economic legitimacy, morality and safety. The absence of these values immidiately creates an environment for people which is not even safe to live in. Without any law and order that would protect the people, instead of protecting those ones that profit from their fear and despair, one cannot talk about safety. Where there is no law and order that constitutes the conditions of a safe environment in society, there can be no economic legitimacy, because the ones that are profiteering illegitimately are not stopped. Hence without economic legitimacy, there is no chance of having economically independent individuals, which renders the overall welfare of such a society out of question.
