In a little-known text first published in 1705, Bernard Mandeville set out some of the central themes of what would become economic liberalism. Diving into The Fable of the Bees.
We're all familiar with La Fontaine's fables and their morals. Less well known are The Fable of the Bees, composed in the early 18th centuryth century by a Dutch-born physician, descendant of a Huguenot, who nevertheless spent most of his life in England: Bernard Mandeville. The heart of the collection of texts published under the title of Fable of the bees is a poem entitled «La ruche murmurante ou les fripons devenus honnêtes».
It evokes a prosperous beehive, whose bees live in «happy abundance». Only, in this astonishing society, the filthiest vice is omnipresent: selfishness, gluttony, corruption, etc. «Doctors,» we read, «preferred reputation to science and riches to the recovery of their patients.» And the narrator adds a few lines later: "Who could detail all the frauds that were committed in this hive?"
What's most astonishing here is that Mandeville's poem is very clear about the origin of the hive's prosperity. It is not in spite of the bees« vices, but thanks to them: »The vices of individuals contributed to public felicity. As soon as virtue, instructed by cunning politicians, learned a thousand happy tricks of finesse and befriended vice, the most scoundrels did something for the common good."
Only one day, by divine decree, are all the bees made virtuous. And as vice deserts the hive, the entire pre-existing order that had brought wealth and bliss collapses. The once prosperous hive ends up poor and miserable.
The interest in this text is justified by the fact that many of the central themes of economic liberalism can be recognized in its literary and caricatural form. In Mandeville's beehive, vicious behaviors harmonize to produce a new order that no one has planned, but which emerges spontaneously. The connection with Adam Smith's «invisible hand» is not hard to make, nor even with his idea of self-love (self-love), central to his analysis of human behavior.
Read also | Adam Smith, between selfishness and altruism
More generally, it's a kind of spontaneous order, a concept dear to the heart of many liberals, that illustrates The Fable of the Bees. Hence the particular interest shown by Friedrich Hayek, in the XXth century, to Mandeville's work.
Write to the author: antoine.bernhard@leregardlibre.com
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Bernard Mandeville
The Fable of the Bees. Part One
Translated from the English by Lucien Carrive and Paulette Carrive
Vrin, «Bibliothèque des Textes Philosophiques» series»
December 1998 [1714]
288 pages
French 
German 
English