‘Private Vices, Publick Benefits’ in Permissive Democracies: Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees in the Context of Transgressions by Western Political Classes
- Daniel Morgan
- Nov 22, 2022
- 14 min read
Updated: Mar 12
Introduction
The work of many 17th-18th century thinkers on politics and society continues to shape modern discourse, with notable contributions including Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750). The renown enjoyed by a small number of thinkers should not, however, divert us from more obscure but equally significant works from the period. The Anglo-Dutch critic and satirist Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees (1714, henceforth ‘Fable’) is one such work. Through his central argument that the political class did not need to behave morally in order to establish a well-ordered society—hence the famous dictum ‘Private Vices, Publick Benefits’—Mandeville became one of the most controversial figures of the period.
This piece will provide a brief account of Mandeville’s thought and the fierce criticism it attracted, before looking at cases of political scandals in post-war Western democracies. The legal and philosophical scholar Edward L. Rubin has compellingly outlined how, in our contemporary era, a ‘morality of self-fulfilment’, in which citizens are primarily occupied with personal interests as opposed to wider ethical commitments, has replaced the forms of Christian piety seen in the 18th century.[1] Viewed alongside Rubin, Mandeville’s thought appears almost prophetic. Though his viewpoints on the merits of capitalism and the cynicism of the political classes were radical to his contemporaries, they seem highly applicable to 21st-century society. Exploring instances of dubious moral conduct by members of the governing classes in modern morally permissive societies, the continuing relevance of Mandevillian thought becomes especially apparent.
Morality in a commercial society—Mandeville’s thought
In the work of Mandeville, the lay view of 18th-century Britain as a society dictated by monolithic concepts of decency and piety is quickly problematised. Indeed, these concepts are his primary targets. Humans were not a unique species following a divinely-ordained path. On the contrary, in the Fable he argued that ‘Providence should have no greater regard to our species, than it has to flies’.[2] His relegation of religion to the sidelines of discourse was an important aspect of his most prominent argument. Contrary to a movement of moralising writers who feared that commerce and social change would undermine ethics and values, the central thesis of the Fable was to connect these processes together in the couplet ‘Private Vices, Publick Benefits’.[3] He explained that ‘the skilful management of wary politicians’ regulated society. The hive of ‘bees’, a thinly-disguised metaphor for the vibrant, prosperous metropolis of London he had come to call home, were kept afloat by immorality as ‘their crimes conspired to make them great’.[4] Mandeville argued that, contrary to Biblical notions of a benevolent soul influencing human action, ‘Man centres everything in himself, and neither loves nor hates but for his own sake’.[5] He also reduced the good sense of polite society to a mere façade, as opposed to any form of innate morality, as ‘all good manners consist in flattering the pride of others, and concealing our own’.[6]