Selfish Classes
Mandeville's Fable of the Bees had described a hive that prospered by allowing its members to pursue their own self-interest. After Ricardo, however, the bee's honey became a metaphor for economic surplus.
In response to the claim that economic growth meant that everyone was better off, Charles Hall observed that a great store of honey did not mean that the bees from which it had been taken were rich.32 In his Song to the Men of England, Shelley asked why the Bees of England allowed ‘‘these stingless drones to spoil the forced produce of your toil.''33 Capitalists, of course, thought of themselves as bee-keepers, managers and protectors rather than as stingless drones.Malthus and Ricardo made it clear that public policies could affect the distribution of surplus between landlords and capitalists. In the process, they called attention to larger forms of conflict. Capitalists were ascendant, as was free trade. Yet protectionists outside of Britain described her actions as those of a great monopoly, manipulating markets to her own advantage and draining honey from the nations, like India, in her thrall. Vice and virtue were less at issue now than the exploitation of one group by another. Some angry swarms or workers also wanted to reorganize the hive. Their efforts left political economists in both England and France abuzz.