Abstract
This article analyses the debate that occurred in England in the second decade of the eighteenth century regarding the possibility of a shortage of demand for commodities in general. It identifies the points of contact of such exchanges with a controversy that, 100 years later, would lead to emergence of the so-called Law of Markets. Initially, it presents the opposite stances respecting parsimony and luxury consumption in the context of the mercantilist thought. Bernard Mandeville’s views about the effects of vice and virtue on the stability of purchasing power are examined afterwards. Following this, the criticisms of Mandeville’s ideas by George Bluet, Francis Hutcheson and George Berkeley are considered. Finally, we evaluate the extent to which the debate anticipated some crucial propositions put forward by the classical school of economics in the early nineteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
In the eighteenth century, the original volume of The Fable had editions in 1724, 1725, 1728 and 1729. In the latter year, Mandeville launched the second part of the book, containing a foreword and six dialogues, published in two separate editions in 1730 and 1733. The two volumes were released together in the years 1733, 1755, 1772 and 1795, and translations into French and German appeared in 1740 and in 1761, respectively (Kaye 1924, xxxii–vii).
- 2.
A compilation of all written material contesting Mandeville’s ideas published throughout the eighteenth century is found in Stafford (1997).
- 3.
Kaye (1924, xciv–ciii) considers the uncompromising defense of luxury spending, free trade and laissez–faire as Mandeville’s main economic legacy. Hayek (1948), in his turn, credits Mandeville as the authentic precursor of individualism. More recently, Jack (1976) and Dumont (1975) situate the originality of The Fable in its ability to identify the contradiction between the moral recommendations of society on the one hand, and the unrestricted pursuit of material wealth on the other. Landreth (1975), following Heckscher (1943, 566–67, 734–35 passim), defines Mandeville as an unconditional mercantilist, interested, first of all, in ensuring the growth of production by the subordination of the individual to the State. The inherent difficulty in such classifications is well illustrated by Chalk, who, in a first article (Chalk 1951), shares with Kaye and Hayek the view of Mandeville as an individualist thinker, a judgment reworked later (Chalk 1966) in favor of the recognition of the mercantilist positions of the Dutch author.
- 4.
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Arthmar, R. (2015). Mandeville and the Markets: An Economic Assessment. In: Balsemão Pires, E., Braga, J. (eds) Bernard de Mandeville's Tropology of Paradoxes. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 40. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19381-6_14
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