Melville's Moby-Dick and the Dawn of Industrial Capitalism

Abstract

Herman Melville says, in a letter, that there are two kinds of labor wielded to produce his literary works: one from the “pocket” and the other from the “heart.” When he divides his labor into the two categories, he reminds us of the classical Marxist argument about the capitalist division of labor and the alienation of commodity fetishism. It was at the dawning of industrial capitalism that Melville created his major work Moby-Dick. That is why it may not be baseless to argue that this masterpiece should be a product of contradiction arising from the disturbing early stage of industrial capitalism. In a way, the novel reflects, into its textual entity, the uncharted dilemma of living under the dominant influences of the newly established market-economy of industrial capitalism. The whaling ship Pequod as a joint‐stock company is also a pioneering outpost to spread industrial capitalism to many coasts around the world. Thus, as an authoritarian manager of the Joint‐stock company, Ahab orchestrates the work of the crew into the systematic division of labor, which unwittingly amounts to the exploitation of natural resource. Unfortunately, the business of the joint‐stock company Pequod ends in a devastating failure. The seed of tragedy lies in the object of Ahab’s quest, Moby Dick. Like what “the doubloon” does to the crew of the Pequod, and then like what a commodity becomes to its producer in Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, so does Moby Dick become “a mysterious thing” to Ahab. While Ahab turns the Pequod into his own private property in the spirit of industrial capitalism, he is also another victim to its inhumane contradiction.