The Fable of the Bees: Private vices, public benefits

On Bernard de Mandeville’s 355. Anniversary of his birth

Take Away

Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) is the author of “The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Advantages” (1714). Written in verse, this book is the very foundation of his cultural and social theory. For Mandeville virtuous individuals are not necessarily the source of the “common good” rather egoism and private vices are sufficient to establish public prosperity. Through analytical thinking and relentless observation of human behavior, Mandeville arrived at 2 fundamental insights. First, he realized that we hardly ever know why we do what we do, and second, that the consequences of our decisions hardly ever correspond to our expectations. His interpretation became the well-known Mandeville Paradoxon. His
ideas influenced, among others, Ferdinando Galiani, David Hume, Adam Smith, and almost 300 years later also F.A. von Hayek. His interpretation became a well-known and much-discussed theorem. He died of influenza in London just shy of age 63.

Son of physicians

Despite his undisputed fame, relatively little is known about Bernard de Mandeville’s personality and character. However, it is largely certain that he was born on November 15, 1670, in or near Rotterdam (NL) into a family of physicians. Soon after graduating from the Erasmus School in Rotterdam, Mandeville apparently followed the family tradition and successfully completed his studies in medicine and philosophy at the
University of Leiden in 1691. On Oct. 5, 1690 when a huge crowd of Rotterdam’s outraged citizens began to demolish the house of bailiff Van Zuylen van Nijevelt, the so-called “Costerman Tax Riots” erupted. This incident about unfair taxation led to a chain of violent events in the Netherlands and culminated in a forceful crackdown and the execution of Cornelius Costerman. As it was officially suspected that Mandeville and his father were involved in these unrests, it seems likely that he went into hiding, secretly left the Netherlands and traveled to France, Italy, and finally settled in England around 1694. In any case, in 1696, at just under 26 years of age, he opened a practice in London as a physician specializing in gastric and nervous disorders, where he also began to intensively study psychology. Not only because of his skill and engaging personality, but also because of his satirical humor, he soon enjoyed a certain recognition among the English nobility, as well as among a group of Dutch intellectuals.
In 1699, he married Ruth E. Laurence, became the father of (at least) two children, and, not exactly wealthy, began appearing in public as a writer in 1703, publishing satires and translating some of Jean de La Fontaine’s fables.

However, he only became famous with his major work, “The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Advantages” (1714). Here, he argues that virtuous individuals are not necessarily the source of the “common good” but that personal egoism and private vices are sufficient to establish public prosperity. His ideas influenced, among others, Ferdinando Galiani, David Hume, Adam Smith, and, almost 300 years later also F.A. von Hayek. In economics, his interpretation of how a society works became a well-known and much-discussed theorem. On January 21, 1733, Bernard de Mandeville died of influenza in London at the age of just under age 63.

“Fable of the Bees”

As more and more people moved from the countryside to the cities at the beginning of industrialization in England, and the contrast between a growing proletarianization and the heyday of English culture and art became increasingly acute, satire turned into the preferred literary device.

Bernard de Mandeville also published his first works in this form. His psychological knowledge and deep insights into the workings of the human mind formed the basis for his allegory “The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn’d Honest” published in London in 1705. The success of these satirical poems, printed as a sixpenny pamphlet, was so great that an anonymous pirated edition of these 200 verses was published that same year. However, with this heretical subject, Mandeville soon made enemies of London’s influential political, clerical, and artistic circles. In any case, this situation prompted him to thoroughly revise it and add numerous explanatory notes, so that he didn’t republish his satirical analysis of the basic motives of human action until 1714, when he published his “Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Public Benefits” in London.

The “Fable of the Bees” essentially consists of four parts. In the first, Mandeville describes the “everyday life” of a beehive, drawing parallels to human life, in which power, wealth, art, corruption, depravity, or sheer selfishness, for example, sustain the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and/or goods, and promote progress. In the second part, he illustrates a fundamental dispute among the bees, in which each bee accuses the others of not only seeking their own advantage, but also of cheating each other to gain advantages. The dispute ends with a collective call for a new virtue that applies to all. After the bees reflect on social values ​​such as selflessness or kindness, Mandeville shows us in the third part that the consequences of virtuous behavior are mostly negative and that the suppression of all vices must lead to the collapse of the hive.
Applied to human society, however, the exodus of the wealthy and powerful is only the beginning. In the final part, Mandeville argues that being free of bad qualities is not a utopian ideal. A society needs vices such as luxury, greed, or pride to thrive.

“Mandeville Paradoxon”

Written in verse, this book is the very foundation of Mandeville’s cultural and social theory. By calling everything done with selfish intentions vicious and only allowing virtuous behavior that arises from the obedience of some moral precepts, Mandeville attempts to show that the prosperity of a society is due to those things that, according to a rigorous moral standard, must be considered vicious. Thus, individual evil would lead to overall good, because all participants, with their selfish or altruistic goals, could produce beneficial results for others that they neither intended, foreseen, nor knew about. Thus, what we call civilization and culture is the result of individual striving and not a predetermined goal. Rather, our social behavior has been guided by institutions, habits, and unwritten rules in a way that allows us to serve purposes that were never consciously invented, but rather emerged from the survival of what has proven itself. Mandeville therefore initially addresses the important question of which rules people actually live and act by. He then attempts to analyze how these rules of human behavior came about in the first place. He thus assumes that the reasons that lead individuals to follow social rules are probably different from the reasons that led to these rules in the first place.

Through analytical thinking and relentless observation of human behavior, Mandeville arrived at two fundamental insights. First, he realized that we hardly ever know why we do what we do, and second, that the consequences of our decisions hardly ever correspond to our expectations. These profound insights led him to be the first to clearly formulate the modern theory of social evolution and the theory of spontaneous orders. Mandeville convincingly demonstrates how individual self-interest, neither conceived, designed, nor decreed, spontaneously contributes to social
prosperity. For him, even the ruthless pursuit of self-interest serves the so-called common good far better than any virtuous behavior or public morality. Even vices such as drunkenness, greed, or pure self-interest are, according to him, the engine of prosperity and the continued existence of every society. This argument became known as the “Mandeville Paradoxon” and continues to spark heated debates, especially today,
about the empty, yet politically potent concepts of “the common good”, “public interest” or even “social justice”.
Having since grown almost twenty times the original size, the second edition of The Fable of the Bees in 1723 triggered a long-lasting social and political scandal in England. After the Church launched sharp attacks against the book, a court in Middlesex condemned it as a fabrication that “endangered all religion and civil rule”. Mandeville found himself at odds with the teachings of Berkeley and Hutcheson, who rarely tired of condemning him and the book. Some of his influential opponents even claimed that his name was derived from “man-devil”, the devil in human form. Yet the book persisted and was published five more times until Mandeville’s death, continually expanded and supplemented by him. In 1728, he even added a second volume, further refining his ideas. A German translation first appeared in 1761.

Although Mandeville hardly ever succeeded in developing a coherent system of thought, let alone an independent economic and social theory with his “Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Advantages” he was nevertheless the first to describe the economy as a circular system. Often provocatively articulated, his ideas made him an important pioneer of the European Enlightenment. His famous verse summarizes his thoughts:

“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”.