Gain Access Driestuiversroman Drafted By Bertolt Brecht Accessible In Digital Version

تعريفات الجنة الدنيوية بالنسبة لي هي: مكان خال من الهموم والأكدار تتاح للمرء فيه قراءة وايات بمستوى "البنسات الثلاث"

الرواية متقنة في السرد وإدخال الشخصيات وإخراجها على مسرح الأحداث في اللحظات المناسبة أشبعها الكاتب بالكامل بسخرية لاذعة من حياة البشر ومبادئهم بأسلوب الحوار والعظات المتناقضة التي يلقيها أبطال القصة في حديث نفسي أو في مرافعات أمام الآخرين أو أمام قاضي المحكمة

يظهر جميع أبطال بريخت بمظهر المتشككين والمترددين وهي سمة لازمة لا بد للبشر محاولين أقصى جهدهم كل مرة للوصول إلى تبريرات نفسية تتيح لهم التعادل مع أنفسهم وضمائرهم المستيقظة أحيانا والمتماوتة أغلب الوقت .

تصوير درامي كثيف لحياة لطبقات السفلى كالشحاذين والمجرمين واللصوص وربط وثيق ساخر للغاية لعالمهم مع عالم التجارة والأعمال ومقارنات تنتهي دائما بمطابقة العالمين لبعضهم البعض

المرة الثانية التي أقرأ بها هذه الملحمة الأولى كانت قبلسنوات وأظن أن نجوما خمسة هي أقل ما تستحقه! Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, . .

Well, I think there are only a few authors who deserve the rare combination of the adjective "hilarious" with the serious topic "social criticism".
One of them is Kurt Vonnegut, and the other Bertolt Brecht!

Brecht is more commonly known for his plays than for this masterpiece of a novel, and I have postponed rereading it for years, thinking I knew my Brecht and wouldn't need a refresher.
However, just like most really good books, this one grows with the experience of the reader, and I found myself laughing out loud several times reading about the financial crimes and sexual misbehaviours that are so well documented in our own times that it seems almost impossible to think Brecht didn't know anything about Trump and Brexit and the impact of social media on the human species.


Where there is money up for grabs, there won't be any decency that is his theory, and it is a quite convincing one.
But there will be big words to counterbalance the lack of honourable action, Brecht has all the best words, and he uses them freely to follow the development of Polly Peachum, Macheath, and the rest,

Begging is business, just like politics, O tempora o mores! An English translation of my review can be found below,

Der Dreigroschenroman ist eine Kapitalismuskritik, In ihm setzt Bertolt Brecht den Kapitalismus der Kriminalität gleich, Ich finde seine Argumentation allerdings nicht überzeugend, sondern glaube, dass sie nur aus den üblichen marxistischen Vorurteilen besteht, Zunächst einmal sollen Geschäftsleute lauter Gauner und Verbrecher sein,

Zum Beispiel verdanken der Antiheld Macheath und seine Kumpel ihren Erfolg der absoluten Rücksichtslosigkeit gegenüber den Arbeitern und der Konkurrenz.
Die Arbeiter werden ausgebeutet und die Konkurrenz wird mit gestohlenen Waren aus dem Markt vertrieben, Das Geschäft basiert auf massiver Hehlerei, aber die Polizei merkt entweder nichts davon oder wird bestochen, Ausserdem gelingt es den Geschäftsleuten, marode Schiffe an die Britische Marine zu verkaufen, Dadurch ziehen sie aus einem kolonialen Krieg Gewinn, Interessant dabei ist, dass Brecht die Arbeiter und Soldaten auf der gleichen Stufe sieht: beide Gruppen, die gleichmäßig von den Kapitalisten und Kriegstreibern ausgebeutet werden, gehören der unteren Klasse an.


Macheath glaubt an den sozialen Darwinismus: der Schwache sterbe, der Starke fechte, Er meint, dass die Armut die Rückseite des Wohlstands sei, Um erfolgreich zu sein, müsse man in der Lage sein, jemanden auszubeuten, Wer keinen ausbeuten kann, beutet sich selbst aus,

Diese Logik beruht auf der marxistischen Arbeitswerttheorie, die einem Trugschluss unterliegt, Wenn die Arbeiterklasse ausgenutzt wird, wieso gibt es soviel Arbeitslosigkeit Warum beuten die Arbeitgeber nicht möglichst viele aus Warum ersetzen Unternehmen Arbeiter mit Maschinen etwa Robotern oder Rechnern bei jeder Gelegenheit Brechts Antwort ist, dass die Arbeiter bis zur Erschöpfung ausgenutzt werden.
Dann werden sie auf die Straße geworfen,

Die Wirklichkeit sieht etwas anders aus, Ein Arbeitsverhältnis muss für Arbeitgeber und Arbeitnehmer beiderseits nützlich sein, denn beide Parteien gehen darauf freiwillig ein, Außerdem stimmt die Arbeitswerttheorie nicht, denn der Wert eines Produkts wird nicht durch die Arbeit bestimmt, die gebraucht wurde, um es herzustellen, sondern von seinem Grenznutzen.
So lautet die moderne Grenznutzentheorie, die an die Stelle der Arbeitswerttheorie getreten ist,

Die Schwäche des Romans liegt zunächst einmal darin, dass er äußerst schablonenhaft ist, Außerdem ist die ökonomische Analyse, die ihm zugrundeliegt, fehlerhaft und irreführend, Brechts Zynismus über die Geschäftswelt ist grenzenlos,

The Three Penny Novel is a critique of capitalism, In it Bertolt Brecht equates capitalism with criminality, However, I do not find his line of argument persuasive, but instead believe that it just consists of the usual Marxist prejudices, First of all, all businesspeople are supposed to be hustlers and criminals,

For example, the antihero Macheath and his buddies owe their success to absolute ruthlessness toward workers and the competition, The workers are exploited and the competition is driven from the market with stolen goods, The business is based on a massive fencing operation, but the police either do not notice anything or are bribed, In addition, the businesspeople succeed in selling nonseaworthy ships to the British Navy so that they can extract profits from a colonialist war, What is interesting here is that Brecht views workers and soldiers as being on the same level: both groups, which are similarly exploited by capitalists and warmongers, belong to the lower class.


Macheath believes in social Darwinism: the weak perish and the strong prevail, He thinks that poverty is the flip side of prosperity, In order to be successful, one must be able to exploit someone, Whoever has no one to exploit is exploited himself,

This logic is based on the Marxist labor theory of value, which is subject to a logical fallacy, If the working class is being exploited, why is there so much unemployment Why dont employers exploit as many employees as possible Why do companies replace workers with machines such as robots or computers at every opportunity Brechts answer is that the workers are abused until they are exhausted.
Then they are thrown onto the street,

Reality looks somewhat different, A work relationship must be mutually beneficial to employers and employees because both parties enter into it voluntarily, Furthermore, the labor theory of value is not valid because the value of a product is not determined by the labor that was used to manufacture it but rather by its marginal utility.
This is according to modern marginal utility theory, which has replaced the labor theory of value,

The weakness of the novel is first of all that it is full of stereotypes, Furthermore, its underlying economic analysis is incorrect and misleading, Brecht's cynicism about the business world is boundless, A three star rating for a novel I abandoned that needs a word or two of explanation, At first I thought this was going to be a great sardonic, sarcastic, mordant, funny evisceration of the dogeatdog life of Victorian capitalism told through three intertwining tales of skullduggery that reveal how this whole thing is a racket from the tippy toppest of Her Majestys government down to the groveling

nolegged beggar on the streets of Shoreditch.


And it is, But it goes completely wrong, And the humour drains away into a small puddle that a oneeyed threelegged cat drinks from,

So first we get a one legged soldier returning from the wars who fails in the retail trade and becomes a beggar, only to find that London beggars are mostly controlled by a certain Mr Peachum.
He runs an establishment that provides all a beggar could need falsebottomed trolleys for men with two legs to be able to pose as nolegged, and thin dogs for the blind beggars.
Thin Thin.

Their feeding was not at all simple they had to look as miserable as possible and therefore had to be maintained on the verge of starvation.
A blind man with a fat dog has very little prospect of exciting real pity, The public naturally reasons quite instinctively, Scarcely anyone looks at a thin dog but if by chance the animal is wellfed, some sort of inner voice warns the giver that he might just as well throw his money down the drain.
It is a fact that these people unconsciously seek a reason to withhold their money, A good dog must scarcely be able to stand up for weakness,

Now thats a brilliant passage, and probably applies today, All of Britains major cities including my own have many beggars huddling in empty shop doorways all with their dogs, These modern beggars are not blind, of course, they are homeless, But their dogs are not thin! They are very wellkept! Our contemporary beggars need to read their Brecht!

Also, our author has some great sly descriptions of his characters.
Heres Polly Peachum :

She looked very pretty in her flimsy dress and was completely at her ease, As a matter of fact she was no doll but a large, wellformed girl, She was a full helping and no half portion,

So with good stuff like that in this novel, what could possibly go wrong

After describing Peachums beggar business, Brecht turns to something called the B Shops a late Victorian version of the Pound Shops we have here in the UK.
These are run by our old friend MacHeath Mack the Knife, You will remember him as a suave lethal gangster

When that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves wears old MacHeath, babe
So there's never, never a trace of red

But in this novel hes a middle aged paunchy businessman.
So theres a whole lot of complicated stuff about how he gets the cheap knockoff to sell in his B shops, and that gets really dull.
Then, in comes the major complication, This is a scheme by a third guy called Coax to defraud the government by selling them three clapped out ships for the ongoing Boer War.
Once Coax has coaxed seven greedy businessmen including Peachum into his defrauding scheme it turns out to be a honeytrap it turns out that the real con is when he blackmails his business partners.


Brecht gets completely lost in the details of all these ever more intertwined and complex business imbroglios and leaves the reader behind.
The sharp observations and wicked humour die away, It becomes ever more abstract, ever more turgid,

It becomes boring, It becomes very clear why Bertholt Brecht didnt write another novel, He didnt know how to, .