“How Wealth Accumulates and Men Decay” by G.B. Shaw is a comment on the evils of capitalism. This essay centers on the theme of whether wealth is more important or skill. In pursuit of profit, human values are vanished. Shaw gives the example of pins and woolen garments to show that now workers have no control over what they produce.
There was a time when a pin-maker would do everything from buying the material to shaping it and finally selling it. However, now one worker does only one thing and he is unable to produce a pin. Similarly, in the olden times from sheep shearing to making clothes everything was done by women but now there is separate worker for every step of production. This according to Shaw has turned capable workers into machines who are doing the work without intelligence.
Although, the capitalist system promoted speed and cheap production, the human skills have disappeared. It produces universal ignorance of how things are made and done. Books, according to Shaw, fail to convey useful knowledge because it is written by those who do not do the work. Moreover, we neither have time nor want to read. And therefore, we need cinema to take our minds off it and feed our imagination. The Capitalism has helped in the promotion of the cinema and other such modes of entertainment. Shaw has argued that 'savage' communities are most intelligent because they are involved in making everything for themselves. He has concluded the essay by saying that this capitalist system has left us like dangerous lunatics in this real world.
