Quote 5
“We bourgeois
artisans, who work with honest jimmies on the cash boxes of small
shopkeepers, are being swallowed up by large concerns backed by
banks.”
This quote comes from Act III, scene
III. It is Macheath’s—and Brecht’s—swan song. Thinking that he has
only moments left to live, Macheath tells the audience how capitalism—large
conglomerates, banks, wealthy individuals—is destroying the bourgeois,
or middle class, of artisans and poor workers. It is a statement,
in part, that corresponds with the desire to quit his life of crime
in order to adopt a career as a banker. As he did for churches and
universities, Brecht had great contempt for banks. This discussion
of Macheath’s now-abandoned plan to pursue a career in banking illustrates
that the real criminals are banks, big businesses, institutions,
and so on—not petty thieves. Moments after he utters these lines,
however, the very corrupt Brown rides in on a high horse with the
announcement that not only has the queen pardoned Macheath, she
has given him a lifetime pension of ten thousand pounds a year.
Now Macheath will not contribute to society as a banker or thief
but as a nobleman.
