…is from Bernard Mandelville’s 1705 poem, and powder keg that ignited the creative explosion known as the ‘Scottish Revolution’ that saw the publication of the masterworks of Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and all the way to Carl Menger, Hayek, and, in my mind at least, Shackle, Lachmann, and Schutz. That poem is Fable of the Bees:
“The Root of evil Avarice,
That damn ill-natur’d baneful vice,
Was slave to Prodigality,
That Noble Sin; whilst Luxury
Employ’d a Million of the Poor,
And odious Pride a Million more.
Envy it self, and Vanity
Were Ministers of Industry;
Their darling Folly, Fickleness
In Diet, Furniture, and Dress,
That strange ridic’lous Vice, was made
The very Wheel, that turn’d the Trade.”
Mandeville’s poem was considered, in its day, to be a heretical attack on Christian virtues. To serve the myriad “vices” of human nature, markets arose that in turn employed far more than the moral hectoring of the impoverished Church. It is a wonder to read, and can be found in full online. Reading it, it’s easy to see its role as progenitor to the works of Smith, Ferguson, and Hayek.
