A Dutch physician who moved to Britain when he was 29, Bernard de Mandeville nonetheless quickly honed his skills in the English language by hack translations of La Fontaine and Scarron (into which he inserted two of his own compositions, the "Nightingale and the Owl" and "the Carp"). He also acquired a taste for British satire and, in his adopted language, outdid the locals with his famous poem Grumbling Hive (1705), later incorporated in and elaborated upon in his legendary Fable of the Bees (1714). In the second edition of 1723, he enlarged the Fable by incorporating two essays, "On Charity and Charity-Schools" and "Search into the Nature of Society".
In his Fable of the Bees, subtitled "private vices, publick benefits", Mandeville recounts how evil vices such as luxury, greed, envy, etc., all lead to public benefits by encouraging enterprise. For instance:
| "The Root of evil, Avarice, That damn'd ill-natur'd baneful Vice, Was Slave to Prodigality, That Noble Sin; whilst Luxury Employ'd a Million of the Poor, And odious Pride a Million more." Envy it self, and Vanity Were Ministers of Industry" |
| (B. Mandeville, Grumbling Hive: p.34) |
Although apparently often treated as a defense of laissez- faire - "Thus every Part was full of Vice/Yet the whole Mass a Paradice" - the Fable can also be seen as a presentation of early underconsumption theory. Anticipating Keynes's paradox of thrift, Mandeville argued that the "moral" activity of saving was actually the cause of recessions whereas luxurious consumption (a "vice") was a stimulus. Indeed, Mandeville argued for government intervention, including the Mercantilist policy of protection to promote internal consumption (see Remarks L, Q and Y). Thus "private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilled Politician may be turned into publick benefits" (Mandeville, 1714).
When Mandeville published the second edition of the Fable (1723), a public storm ensued as one moralist after another lined up to attack him. Mandeville replied with a "Vindication of the Book", adding it to the 1724 edition of the Fable and then a whole new volume, Fable of the Bees, Part II in 1729. But the assault continued: Francis Hutcheson attacked Mandeville in a series of letters in 1726 and published an entire book against it. The empiricist philosopher, Bishop George Berkeley, directed his Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1730) and his Discourses Addressed to Magistrates (1736) largely against Mandeville. Mandeville's responses to his critics (he is particularly polemical against Berkeley) are found in his 1732 Letter to Dion and his Vindication (1734).
Nonetheless, in spite of all the abuse heaved upon him -- even when "Mandeville could prate no more" (A.Pope, Dunciad, II:414) -- he remained an optimist about contemporary society and the advent of commercial capitalism. In the midst of all the turbulence, his provocative works were read with much interest in his day -- being particularly influential upon Hutcheson's talented student, Adam Smith.
Major Works of Bernard de Mandeville
Resources on Bernard de Mandeville