The island, an empty incubator for a capitalist “experiment,” compels Crusoe to act in his self-interest, and he chooses to further himself through work, bringing himself closer to God. Ian Watt argues that the parameters of the island force Crusoe into a condition devoid of enticements to covet wealth: “On Crusoe’s island, unremitting toil is obligatory; there, and only there, it is instinct with both moral value and calculable personal reward”. When man is left to fend for himself, he tends to work towards his own salvation, typifying the positive aspects of capitalism on the soul. Defoe posits that autonomous capitalism forces Crusoe to metamorphose from a slothful sinner to a religious man guided by a work ethic of self-interest.
While Crusoe initially loathes the money, he ultimately reverses his stance, hypocritically deciding to purloin the coins as if they compelled him to do so. He remarks in a hesitant aside, “However, upon Second Thoughts, I took it away”. A figurative exegesis of the passage with “drug” as a “substance with intoxicating, stimulant, or narcotic effects” exposes that Crusoe has succumbed to a fetish for money. Money has enslaved him, and idolatry compels him to rationalize his change of heart in capitalist terms. Since the money would have exchange value if Crusoe returned to England, he decides that it would behoove him to abscond with it. In mere seconds, the capitalist Crusoe has made opposing decisions, each justified by economic utility. This time, capitalism transfigures Crusoe into a ruthless economic man, whose addiction to money epitomizes what Watt describes as “the shameless and pervasive impact of the cash nexus upon the character and personal relationships of the archetypal economic man”. No longer is capitalism heroic. According to Watt, Crusoe’s transformation “supplied the antidote to the myth” of Crusoe as a triumph of capitalism. Economic reasoning causes Crusoe to claim the worthless gold in the name of self-interest, even though tools would have been more useful. Capitalism lures Crusoe into becoming an irreligious mercenary who abstains from work in order to chase an ethic of greed.
Crusoe’s parallel constitution as both an acquisitive bourgeois and a tireless laborer embodies the paradoxical nature of capitalism. Traditional Christians, of course, preached that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. Crusoe, who hails from a middle-class lineage, epitomizes the capitalistic rat race, one where people see wealth as not the outcome of a well-lived life but the way to experience life itself. When he is free from the exile of the island, he does not work earnestly for his wealth but instead craves riches for their own sake. Defoe acknowledges this damning reality of capitalism, yet he does not oppose it as an institution, for he was assuredly a capitalist himself. He and other Protestants saw wealth as the product of great diligence and faith, a notion that Max Weber appropriated to claim that Protestantism birthed capitalism. 