The Fable of the Bees

A book that grew over nearly twenty-five years around a satirical poem, The Grumbling Hive, first printed in 1705. The poem describes a hive that thrives on fraud, luxury, vanity and greed; when the bees pray to become honest and their wish is granted, trade collapses and the hive dwindles. In 1714 Mandeville reissued it as The Fable of the Bees, subtitled Private Vices, Publick Benefits, adding an essay on the origin of moral virtue and a long series of remarks. He argues that virtue was invented by clever politicians who flattered human pride so that people would restrain themselves, and that the luxury, envy and self-love moralists condemn create work and wealth. The 1723 edition added an attack on charity schools, which made the book a public scandal; a Middlesex grand jury presented it as a nuisance. A second part of 1729, a set of dialogues, explores how society and language could have developed without design. Critics from Berkeley and Hutcheson to Adam Smith accused it of excusing vice.

It poses, more sharply than anyone before Adam Smith, the uncomfortable question of whether selfish motives can produce public goods, and economists and moralists still argue over its answer.