Keyword Paper #1: Money/Wealth
by: Shashank Bhagavatula
The idea of money and wealth is something that has been deeply explored throughout the course
of 18th and 19th century world literature. Several authors of the Enlightenment and Romantic
periods have satirized the theme of wealth in their works, which revolve around the superficial
status boost that excess wealth provides and then later closely examine the flaws of wealthy
people. In particular, the works of Candide by Voltaire, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx,
and An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen are works in these eras that truly showcase the
exaggerated nature of wealth and status.
Candide is a story written by French author Voltaire that depicts the journey of Candide through
the struggles of life in a romantic lens. Candide, eventually in the story, acquires a fortune in El
Dorado – the city of gold – and hopes to use it in a way to find Cunégonde. While there, he and
his friend Cacambo marvel at the immense amount of gold and wealth that people possessed.
Education is focused on the sciences and philosophy. Kids in the playground are playing with
diamonds and gold, which they treat like “pebbles and dirt.” Through these majestic images,
Voltaire has essentially made El Dorado a utopia where nothing seems to go wrong; the
education system is magnificent, the dining is extravagant, and the poverty rate is nonexistent.
However, by creating a “perfect world,” he also expresses his dissatisfaction with the idea of
excessive wealth. Because El Dorado is such a grandiose place, the city residents are to the point
where they believe to be “sheltered from the rapaciousness of European nations” because of the
value of their so-called pebbles and dirt. Even when Candide gets his desirable handfuls of
“pebbles” from El Dorado to take with him to the real world, the wealth gives more
disadvantages for him than benefits. He later becomes the prime target for the Suriname officers
– who leave him with just two sheep – and Vanderdendur, who takes Candide’s remaining
wealth with him on his boat in an elaborate swindling effort. After all these successful attempts
to take Candide’s wealth away from him, he reaches a mental low point; “the villainy of
mankind presented itself to his mind in all its deformity, and his mind dwelt only on gloomy
thoughts.” Overall, Voltaire shows through Candide’s time in El Dorado that as much as living
in poverty and powerlessness is terrible, acquiring money to solve that problem creates more
problems without solving the main problem.
In a more historical lens, Karl Marx, in his work The Communist Manifesto, vividly describes the
class antagonism that he experienced between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy) and the proletariat
(the working class). At the time this work was written, the rise of the Industrial Revolution in
Russia created more mechanized modes of manufacturing, which rewrote the social structure
into the industrial leaders (bourgeoisie) and the workers (proletariat). Marx states that “the place
of manufacture was taken by . . . industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial
armies,” suggesting that there was an opportunity for the wealthy and working class to share this
responsibility, but the wealthy seized it all due to their greed for excess wealth. This want for
more money has also, according to Marx, caused the wealthy to center all human interaction
around exchange of money. In the capitalist system that Russia was running in, the most
important thought of any face-to-face conversation was to find a way to gain money, leaving “no
other nexus between man and man, . . . than callous ‘cash payment’”. Marx emphasizes through
this detrimental interchange between two men that no one in society really cares about how one
