ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Bernard Mandeville and the Foundations of Political Economy
Author: Prendergast Renee
Bernard Mandeville and the Foundations of Political Economy Renee Prendergast Queen’s University Belfast In the introduction to his edition of Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, F B Kaye suggested that it was in the field of economics that Mandeville’s influence was greatest. This evaluation might seem surprising because Mandeville’s writings are not obviously economic in nature. In Kaye’s view, Mandeville’s contributions to economics in increasing order of importance were his conception of the division of labour; his defence of luxury; and his definitive anticipation of the theory of laissez-faire. The paper reviews the controversy to which Kaye’s attribution of a laissez-faire theory to Mandeville gave rise and considers the extent to which it is resolved by the evolutionary interpretations of Rosenberg and Hayek. The importance of Mandeville’s defence of luxury is also considered and it is shown that a consequence of this defence was that it forced political economists to attend to the significance of demand. Moreover, in searching for historical precedents for his General Theory, Keynes found in Mandeville a theory of effective demand and a primitive statement of the fallacy of thrift. The paper also suggests that Kaye underestimates the importance of the division of labour in Mandeville’s system and explores its relevance to Mandeville’s view of society and his theory of social and economic progress. In addition to the issues enumerated above, the paper also considers Mandeville’s foundational methodological contributions. In addition to his consequentialist methodology, it examines his sociological approach to science and his concerns relating to the role of mathematics and scientism more generally.
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