Bernard Mandeville

Bernard Mandeville was a Dutch-born physician, satirist and philosopher who spent most of his life in London. His verse fable The Grumbling Hive, later expanded with prose commentary as The Fable of the Bees, argued that a thriving, wealthy society depends on the very vices, such as pride, vanity and greed, that moralists condemn. The 1723 edition caused outrage and was presented as a public nuisance by a Middlesex grand jury. Its claim that private vices yield public benefits shaped later debates on luxury, commerce and the division of labour, including Adam Smith's.

Key ideas

• Private vices, public benefits: self-interest, luxury and pride drive trade, employment and prosperity.
• Moral virtue began largely as a political device: rulers flattered human pride to make people restrain their appetites.
• A society cannot be both rich and strictly virtuous; reformers who demand both deceive themselves.
• The division of labour raises productivity, an idea Adam Smith later developed.

Major works

• The Fable of the Bees (1714; expanded 1723)
• The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd Honest (1705)
• An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour (1732)

In the Book corner

• The Fable of the Bees 1714; enlarged 1723; Part II 1729 · Intermediate
  A book that grew over nearly twenty-five years around a satirical poem, The Grumbling Hive, first printed in 1705. The poem describes…

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