The Dark Side of Fairy Tales: Mandeville, the Fable of the Bees and the Hellfire Club

Or When Fairy Tales Go Very Wrong

“Fais ce que tu voudras” (Do as thou whilst)
-—Motto of the Hellfire Club

The magic of a good fairy tale is undeniable. With the charming power of its enchanting conceits, we’re left with the kind of wonder and wisdom that we can reflect on for a lifetime. Indeed, the wonder and magic invoked by the good telling of a good tale, fable or fairy tale is never mere fancy, but the magical wisdom which we must struggle with for the rest of our lives.

How many of us remember the lessons of the tortoise and the hare, which offered us crucial insight at some of the most pivotal or decisive moments of our lives? Or maybe, we forgot those lessons and finally found out true their worth? Indeed, no less than the lover of wisdom himself, Socrates, spent his final days trying to set Aesop’s fables to verse. He did so because believed that the haughty and proud Greeks could benefit from a poetry and drama that was more balanced in its wisdom, that is, less obsessed with outward shows of glory and grandeur, which while compelling, lacked the wisdom necessary to preserve their fruits for future generations.

Arguably, much of our lives may be based on tales we’ve perhaps long since forgotten, and which yet often mirror the twists and turns of our own lives. After all, we live by stories, and societies are always living out some ancient story or memory passed down through poems, epistles and other mnemonic devices afforded to us by the goddess of memory and mother of muses herself—Mnemosyne.

But what if part of the twist in our own tale was that the story we thought we were living was in fact only a distortion of the story we were actually living? What if our own story were no mere tale of enchantment, but a darkly enchanted one? What if its dark charms were not magical wisdom veiled in the kind of Beauty that refreshes and renews in any age, but the dark enchantments of a devilish tale?

Composed in 1705, the Fable of the Bees was a satirical poem by the Anglo-Dutch philosopher Bernard de Mandeville. Mandeville’s fable describes a “grumbling” hive thriving with every sort of virtue and vice—every activity under the sun. In this story of private vice and public benefits, everything goes well, we are told, until the devoted bees of a thriving hive decide to live good and honest lives. At that point, the wealth and economic activity of a once bustling hive dries up; society screeches to a halt. Finally, the honest bees have no need for bustling hives and decide to live out their lives in quiet, hollow trees.

The poem describes the smithies which go out of business once the iron to build jail cells for criminals is no longer necessary. The key-makers go out of business because no one is afraid to keep their doors unlocked. And because only honest preachers are allowed in the Church, most abandon their professions; citizens become honest and no longer need confession; parishes dwindle until the Church vanishes.

The list goes on.

While Mandeville’s fable may be little-known today, that may in large part be because its underlying conceit has become so ubiquitous as to be almost imperceptible in our modern society. For, in a world lulled by the sirens of capitalism and free trade, a once novel fable managed to morph and seep into countless philosophies, policies and isms saturating the intellectual and spiritual life of modern man. In fact, the fable’s conceits would inspire centuries of economic planning and law-making, as we’ll see shortly.

Although conceived as a satirical polemic against the theology and moral institutions of the day, the conceit of Mandeville’s fable would be adopted by the leading economists and philosophers of the day. They would spill over into countless universities, textbooks, and policy debates under the guise of “demand and supply,” “free trade” and “laissez-faire” economics. Among some of the names inspired by this devilish tale were Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek, Jeremy Benthem and a whole list of “Liberal” philosophers.

As even a standard Wikipedia page bio describes:

“Mandeville’s ideas about society and politics were praised by Friedrich Hayek, a proponent of Austrian economics, in his book Law, Legislation and Liberty.^[18][19] But it was above all Keynes who put it back in the spotlight in his Essay on Malthus and in the General Theory. Keynes considers Mandeville as a precursor of the foundation of his own theory of insufficient effective demand.

“Karl Marx, in his seminal work Capital, praised Mandeville as “an honest man with a clear mind” for his conclusion that the wealth of society depended on the relative poverty of workers.”

Given the impressive legacy of the Mandeville model, let us take a closer look at the influence of the Anglo-Dutch philosopher behind the economics used by the British and Anglo-American “Liberal” advocates of globalized “Free Trade” operations for over three centuries. We speak of a system most recently incarnated as the post-Westphalian, post-nation state system of “globalization.” This is the same system which in recent decades pursued its mandate with only the slightest cosmetic rebranding, embodied in institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and other supranational institutions tasked with enforcing economic “freedom” on the world.

Mandeville begins the introduction to his celebrated “fable” with a succinct description of the underlying Anglo-Dutch Liberal philosophy that has dominated the world for centuries. This is a philosophy which managed to disguise itself as both mainstream Conservative economic policy and the radical individualism advocated by supposedly modern “Liberalism.” Mandeville describes the philosophy of human nature underlying his poem in the following manner:

“I believe that man is—besides skin, flesh, bones, etc. that are obvious to the eye—a compound of various passions that govern him by turns, whether he will or no, the turns being decided by which passions are provoked and come uppermost at a give time. Though we all claim to be ashamed of these qualities, they are the great support of a flourishing society, this being the subject of the foregoing poem.”

Here, the essence of the modern Anglo-Dutch Liberal philosophy is laid out, which lies at the heart of the notion of man as a blank slate (“tabula rasa”)—first famously articulated by Aristotle and later advanced by “philosophers” like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. In a word: as once put by the Positivist philosopher and “Liberal” imperialist descending from one of the oldest “blue blood” houses of Old Europe, Lord Bertrand Russell, man is a bundle of perceptions.

No less than Adam Smith himself, the British East India Company philosopher of immortal fame, keyed off Mandeville when he adapted the Mandeville model to the British East India Company’s economic system of “Free Trade.” In this spirit, Adam Smith recommended a humbler and more practical lot for man when considering the greater workings of “Nature.”

In the words of Smith himself:

“Hunger, thirst, and the passion which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sake, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.”

Adam Smith – Theory of the Moral Sentiments

This was a philosophy which supposedly recognized man’s pitiful reasoning faculties and limited ability to foresee the future—unlike, say, the insolent and starry-eyed Titan Prometheus.

One notable example of the Anglo-Dutch philosophy used by Mandeville is in respect to the “Benefits of Prostitution.” Mandeville glibly writes the following in the “Remarks” section accompanying his fable and its 1714 introduction:

“I am far from encouraging vice, and think it would be a wonderful thing for a state if the sin of uncleanness could be utterly banished from it. But I am afraid this is impossible: the passions of some people are too violent to be curbed by any law or precept, and it is wisdom in all governments to put up with lesser inconveniences to prevent greater. If courtesans and strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much rigour as some silly people want, what locks or bars would be sufficient to preserve the honour of our wives and daughters? . . . .Where several thousand sailors arrive at once, as often happens in Amsterdam—men who have seen none but their own sex for many months—how could honest women walk the streets unmolested if there were no harlots to be had at reasonable prices? That is why the wise rulers of that well-ordered city allow there to be houses where women are hired as publicly as horses at a livery-stable.”

Considering the countless vices conceivable in a society driven by its irrational desires and pleasure impulses, Mandeville suggests that by trying to curb one kind of natural deviance and vice, the state would only be giving birth to even greater horrors. Thus, by outlawing prostitution, citizens would only be inviting sailors to more aggressively rape their daughters, given there would be “no harlots to be had at reasonable prices.”

Of course, the sleight of hand here is one of omission. Mandeville ultimately holds that men are and can only ever be mere animals driven by a bundle of irrational impulses. Reason has no place in determining the laws or morality that should govern a mature human society. The law’s role is simply to get out of the way as artfully as possible and let “nature” unfold.

Smith would fashion his entire economic doctrine after Mandeville, reborn as the “invisible hand” that would ultimately regulate the economic affairs of society, as long as man simply busied himself with his own self interest and personal pleasures. This theory would lay the foundations for the justification of the British East India Company’s globally extended merchant empire and its many colonial enterprises.

So, Mandeville writes in his poem:

“Vast numbers thronged the fruitful Hive;
Yet those vast Numbers made ’em thrive;
Millions endeavouring to supply
Each Other’s Lust and Vanity…

“Thus every Part was full of Vice,
Yet the whole Mass a Paradise
Flatter’d in Peace, and fear’d in Wars
They were th’ Esteem of Foreigners. …

“Such were the Blessings of that State;
Their Crimes conspired to make ’em Great;
And Virtue, who from Politicks
Had learn’d a thousand Cunning Tricks,
Was, by their happy Influence,
Made Friends with Vice: And ever since
The Worst of all the Multitude
Did Something for the common Good.”

Thus, as long as trade and economic activity were allowed to flourish unhindered and without the “tyranny” of intervention of sovereign nations, including their protective tariffs and legal codes, all would be well. This would also mean the British East India Company’s international opium trade would be allowed to proliferate freely, bringing the Chinese society of that time to a near state of collapse. The East India Company’s textile businesses would also greatly flourish, not least of all thanks to the fact that the fingers of the very skilled Bengal weavers of India were all cut off to guarantee a British monopoly on the international industry.

As one article notes:

“For at least two centuries the handloom weavers of Bengal produced some of the world’s most desirable fabrics, especially the fine muslins, light as “woven air”, that were in such demand for dressmaking and so cheap that Britain’s own cloth manufacturers conspired to cut off the fingers of Bengali weavers and break their looms. Their import was ended, however, by the imposition of duties and a flood of cheap fabric – cheaper even than poorly paid Bengali artisans could provide – from the new steam mills of northern England and lowland Scotland that conquered the Indian as well the British market. India still grew cotton, but Bengal no longer spun or wove much of it. Weavers became beggars, while the population of Dhaka, which was once the great centre of muslin production, fell from several hundred thousand in 1760 to about 50,000 by the 1820s.”

But the list of illustrious intellectuals spawned by the Mandeville model doesn’t stop there. Jeremy Bentham, the father of “Utilitarianism” and the godfather of the idea of a modern surveillance panopticon was another notable member of this school of Anglo-Dutch “Liberal” philosophers. Serving as a chief of intelligence for the British East India Company under the stewardship of Lord Shelburne, Benthem would help oversee the unhindered reach of the British East India Company’s tentacles across the world, making it the most globally extended empire in the history of human civilization.

This most “utilitarian” of “Liberal” philosophers would be one of the first to polemicize against the American Revolution and the notion of Natural Law and God-given human rights:

“This,” he spewed, “they ‘hold to be’ a ‘truth self-evident.’ At the same time, to secure these rights they are satisfied that government should be instituted. They see not … that nothing that was ever called government ever was or ever could be exercised but at the expense of one or another of those rights, that … some one or other of those pretended unalienable rights is alienated …. In these tenets they have outdone the extravagance of all former fanatics.”

Such “utilitarian” philosophers have always recoiled at the thought of any Natural Law and morality that wasn’t simply derivable from immediate sensory experience from man’s animal dimension. Rather than any higher natural order that was discoverable by a man who sought to cultivate his intellect and higher faculties, Benthem and related “Liberal” philosophers have always opted to take the more practical path of the greatest “felicity.”

As Jeffrey Steinberg writes in “The Bestial British Intelligence of Shelburne and Bentham”:

“Bentham categorically rejected any distinction between man and the lower beasts, defining man instead as a creature driven purely by hedonistic impulses. To wit: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. . . . Every effort we make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. The principle of utility-the greatest happiness or greatest felicity principlerecognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation. . . . Systems which attempt to question it deal . . . in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”

“Lord Shelburne was so taken with Bentham that he installed the writer, who fancied himself alternately as the reincarnation of Sir Francis Bacon and as the “Sir Isaac Newton of the moral sciences,” in an apartment at his Bowood estate. Shelburne assigned to Bentham an English and Swiss editor in order to ensure the widest dissemination of Bentham’s works in both the English- and French-speaking worlds. Later, Bentham’s works would be even more widely circulated throughout Latin America during his years of intimate collaboration with the American traitor Aaron Burr, and with revolutionists Gen. Francisco de Miranda-a Venezuelan by birth who played a leading role as a paid agent of the British East India Company in the Jacobin Terror in France-and Simon Bolfvar. Burr, fleeing the United States, took up residence at the home of Bentham, and the two men conspired to establish an empire, first in Mexico, and later in Venezuela.”

Benthem would go so far as to formalize his own personal Mandevillian model of private vice and public benefits in the form of his very own “Hedonistic Calculus,” designed to maximize “felicity” for all. In the same spirit, he would pen polemical essays such as “In Defense of Usury” and “In Defense of Pederasty” (adult males having the legal right to copulate with young boys).

Private Vices, Public Benefits

An Angel Leading a Soul into Hell. Follower of Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450 –1516). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Whether the Fable of the Bees, a surveillance Panopticon, or Benthamite defenses of usury and paedophilia, the stated goal of all such arguments was always the same: maximizing pleasure and freedom for the empire’s control of populations while guarding against the supposed “tyranny” of nation states or laws that might impinge upon the sacredness of fully actualizing one’s “divine will”—Aleister Crowley’s “Thelema” (Thelema originating from the Greek, meaning “divine will).”

Couched in clever allusions to divine will and providence, these sophisticated arguments, so eloquent they may as well have been uttered by the angel of light himself, were always rooted in one and the same conceit: the empire pursuing its own interest and dominating all other civilizations. This was not only the only true law and divine will, we are told, but the most beneficial. For rule by the British East India Company was still better than, say, the Indians or Africans having the freedom to govern or manage their own affairs; or nations restricting the use of cheap labor, unbridled usury and slave policies promulgated under the guise of imperial “free trade.” Such a practical philosophy ensured no civilization or nation adopted any kind of protective measures or safeguards to protect its own local industries and maintain the infrastructure and technologies necessary to act in its own sovereign interest.

But alas, the enchantments of a seemingly benign “Fable of the Bees” cast a spell of dark enchantment over the West, for years lulling generations into blindly pursuing their own personal self-interest and gratification in the name of “freedom” against “tyranny.”

Mesmerized by the sirens of usurious capitalism and the unbridled abundance which policies like “Free Trade” temporarily yielded, an outlook of unbridled personal gain and selfish self-interest was adopted by generations of Western denizens as the basis of supposedly “free” and thriving societies. This “fable” would guarantee that virtually no citizen would have either the moral or intellectual capacity to zoom out and consider the nuances of the bigger picture. A supposedly simple tale that made all the grumbling hives of the world thrive, it was a story disguised in countless “theories” and preached to generations and believed by generations. And why wouldn’t they? It gave everyone the personal license to act in the image of selfish, clever calculating beasts who were simply looking to get what’s theirs, right? In a word: the empire sought to make man in its own self-image.

Surely, a Pygmalion effect par excellence!

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Mandeville model perfectly complemented the “Fais ce que tu voudras” (Do as thou whilst) maxim of the day’s British Hellfire Club, founded by then British Chancelor of the Exchequer, Sir Francis Dashwood. Couched at the heart of the British Empire’s elite, this overtly Satanic “club” would oversee a model of “private vice and public benefit” advocated by Mandeville, his followers like Adam Smith and Jeremy Benthem, and the many advocates of an “invisible hand” guiding the affairs of an otherwise irrational, bestial race.

Conclusion

As cautioned by Plato—a passionate lover of poetry and art if ever there was one—being able to distinguish between pleasing imitations and the real thing will ultimately determine the fate of any republic. For, something simply being “art” never exempts or lifts it above the requirements of, say, Beauty, Truth and Goodness—and not one without the other. In fact, even in his time, Plato recognized that precisely because it was art its ideas could be even more charming and fool even those who thought themselves genuinely wise. This made the requirements of great art all the more pressing and necessary. Alas, Plato already recognized over 2000 years ago that politics really was downstream from culture.

Indeed, since the time of Babylon, Persia and the Roman Empire, oligarchies and their magicians have always used stories and superstition to govern the imaginations of people—whether through pagan gods, occult belief, or the clever re-telling of myths and fables from generation to generation. They did so knowing full-well that managing the inner lives and spiritual world of a people would always be more beneficial for an empire than any external use of force to enforce its ideology. As in the case of all intelligence operations, whether ancient or modern, the target must always believe that they have come to their ideas themselves and that they are simply acting according to their own sacred “will.” Such means were understood to be more effective in managing empires than what could be accomplished with standing armies and policemen alone.

Of course, such stories work only as long as their magic lasts, that is, as long as the luxuries of abundance and illusions of freedom can be supplied—ideally made as long-lasting and as enjoyable as possible by an unlimited supply of drugs, ephemeral pleasures and entertaining distractions.

The good news is that our fairytale-turned-nightmare is finally ending.

Originally published by The Rising Tide Foundation

David Gosselin is a poet, writer, and translator based in Montreal, Canada. He is the founding editor of The Chained Muse and New Lyre Magazine. His epic in blank verse, Athena, appears in the latest issue of New Lyre Magazine.