Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1705): Private Vices, Publick Benefits

September 12, 2023 2:45 PM

Then leave complaints: fools only strive / to make a great an honest hive. Attacked by his critics as the "Man-Devil", Bernard Mandeville, an Anglo-Dutch social philosopher, caused a scandal in 18th-century Europe by arguing that “Bare virtue can’t make nations live...Thus every part was full of Vice / Yet the whole mass a paradise”.

In arguing that thieves are better for the economy than misers, Mandeville anticipated Maynard Keynes' paradox of thrift, and he is said to have anticipated the Invisible Hand, although Adam Smith himself rejected Mandeville's ideas because of the crucial distinction between self-interest and greed.

A modern day critique comes from Julian Baggini, who claims that we can see the wrongness of Mandeville's arguments when we consider the fate of bees today.

"Agriculture is not the only sector to pay the price for Mandevillian cynicism. Just-in-time production methods, razor-thin margins and a lack of savings have created a global economy which is frighteningly fragile. Naive belief in the naturalness of markets leads to extremely unnatural economies which are proving vulnerable to disruption. Mandeville saw in the hive a model of the natural order of things that a market economy would preserve. What actually happened is that we hacked the hive so much as to destroy what made it work."

posted by Tarn (3 comments total)

Interesting that Baggini's argument seems to contain at its core the same argument that Mendeville was making -- a selfish market will thrive until it is hacked and then it starts to collapse.

I am not sure I agree with his assertions. I mean, I guess in a lassies-faire marketplace one could argue that perfect selfishness brings about perfect market forces, but I'm not sure I want to live in that world. It's been proven in countries around the world that a market that is shaped by governmental/societal forces is more efficient at delivering quality-of-life to its participants than a pure market.

Still, the idea that sinning a lot makes for a stronger economy is a nice middle finger at the puritanical free-marketers amongst us.
posted by hippybear at 3:47 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

We're still doing the bee stuff, huh? I'd kinda hoped that was just gonna be a one-day thing. Is it bee week on the site? Sigh. I am not a fan of bees. (As an update to that comment, just recently I was parked in my car and some stupid bee outside started slamming itself against my windows, desperate to sting me. I'd been sitting there for like 10 minutes, I hadn't done shit to this bee. Screw bees, man.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:55 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I sometimes use the "private vices, public benefits" argument on people who argue against a social safety net/UBI because "they'll just spend the money on drugs."

I draw on the approximately 2 seconds I spent studying Mandeville at undergrad, and point out that people spending money on booze and/or drugs still benefits the economy more than if the same money was sitting in someone's offshore account where it can't even be taxed.

It's interesting how, up until Mandeville, a beehive was a metaphor for a harmonious, virtuous, prosperous society under monarchy. Mandeville was attacking a beloved (bee-loved?) metaphor.
posted by Pallas Athena at 8:07 AM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]