Category: Book review

---

Vol. 8, no. 1 (2013)

Category: Book review

Written by Maria Pia Paganelli

The introduction of this edited volume on Vilfredo Pareto opens with the following sentence:

“This volume explores Pareto’s astonishingly varied intellectual contribution from a range of

disciplinary perspectives, the main intention being to show why it remains relevant and should

not simply be consigned to the history of ideas” (p. 1).  I believe the book did fulfill its goal of

showing the intellectual breadth of Pareto and his relevance today.

The volume opens with a jewel introduction. It contextualizes Pareto historically and it offers the

big pictures in which to fit all the pieces of Pareto’s intellectual production. Pareto was an

engineer involved with the running the newly nationalized Italian railroad system, but his claim to

fame is for his sociological work. He wrote hundreds of pamphlets calling for change, free trade,

small government, and pacifism, all of which fell flat. And “his youthful idealism soon gave way

to skepticism, even cynicism, about human potential” (p. 2) so that today he is best known for

his theory of human rigidity and inflexibility which make the world fundamentally unchangeable.

His mathematical training and skills made him a professor of economics at Lausanne University

(1893-1900), but his discontent with the model of a rational homo economicus led to his interest

in and research on human irrationalities. During a time in which disciplines fought to establish

their boundaries, Pareto broke them and refused to be confined in any one. For him

comprehension of the complexity of human behavior came from the complexity of a boundless

knowledge. 

 

The rest of the book reflects the introductory claims. The first chapter, “Pareto and the Elite”,

by John Scott, describes the not always successful balance of an open definition of elite that

Pareto offers us. This analysis smoothly continues in Chapter 2, “Talents and Obstacles:

Pareto’s Morphological Schema and Contemporary Social Stratification” (Francois Nielsen).

Pareto’s empiricism allows him to analyze data from across the world and across time and see

patterns in the wealth elites. Wealth is not distributed normally, but more “like an arrow”.

Regardless of time and place, income inequality seems to be a natural and inevitable pattern:

80 percent of income is distributed among 20 percent of the population. This 80-20 distribution

seems to be a constant pattern in many natural phenomena, from elites to genes, not just

income distribution. This raises a question, not raised by the author, but that any post-2011

reader may ask: does ‘Occupy Wall Street” know about Pareto? And assuming that by some

miracle, Occupy Wall Street is successful in changing the distribution of wealth in rich societies,

will it be a sustainable change? Or will we move back, inevitably, to the arrow-shaped income

distribution that Pareto kept finding in his data? The inability of society to change, to be stuck

with certain patterns or with certain equilibria becomes a major theme in Pareto’s thought.

While some of his contemporary sociologists and political scientists would theorize beneficial

changes in society, Pareto focuses on dysfunctional evolutions and sticky points where

Nordicum-Mediterraneum [nome.unak.is]

Phoca PDF

---

Vol. 8, no. 1 (2013)

Category: Book review

Written by Maria Pia Paganelli

societies may be unable to get out of detrimental conditions. So Chapter 3 is the chapter where

Charles Powers describes “The Role of Sticky Points in Pareto’s Theory of Social Systems”. 

 

The empirical and pessimistic eye of Pareto is also present in his visions of political theory, as

Joseph V. Femia describes in Chapter 4—“Pareto, Machiavelli, and the Critique of Ideal Political

Theory”. A scientific understanding of human behavior requires that we look at human beings

as real and not ideal creatures. This is why Pareto leans on the realism of Machiavelli, rather

than the idealism of Kant, in his theories. And this realism, when combined with modern risk

analysis, allows us to link Pareto to a variety of cultural and psychological patterns widely

recognized and accepted today, as Alasdair Marshall and Marco Guidi demonstrate in Chapter

5—“The Idea of a Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty: Insight from Pareto”.

 

The relevance of Pareto in today’s debates and research agenda is pushed further by John

Higley and Jan Pakulski in their chapter on “Pareto’s Theory of Elite Cycles: A Reconsideration

and Application” (Chap. 6). They apply what may seem a vague theory of elite to the UK and

the US governing elites of the twentieth century. It is unclear whether Pareto works or not when

applied today. This question mark comes at a perfect time in the volume. So far one is exposed

to the marvel of Pareto’s thinking, its correctness and applicability. One may be starting to

question whether Pareto was this infallible intellect, underappreciated in his time and also in

ours, who deserved a much larger role because of his continuous correctness. Higley and

Pakulski remedy that sensation and bring back the fallibility, or at least imperfections, in a

genius’ work. I see their chapter as sort of refreshing watershed, as it is followed by two other

chapters more prone to see some of the deficiencies of Pareto. Alban Bouvier shows how

Pareto may be more indebted to J.S. Mill than he is willing to admit—or than his readers are

willing to admit (Chap. 7: “Pareto, Mill and the Cognitive Explanation of Collective Beliefs:

Unnoticed ‘Middle-range Theories’ in the Trattato”). Similarly, Giorgio Baruchello shows how

Pareto may be more indebted to Aristotle than to Plato in his understanding of the role of

rhetoric.  Interestingly enough, in these two chapters, as well as in some preceding ones, there

is subtle emphasis on the importance of language in communicating effectively and how Pareto

may not have been gifted with it: a possible reason for the fact that his popularity does not

necessarily reflects his contributions. 

 

Nordicum-Mediterraneum [nome.unak.is]

Phoca PDF

---

Vol. 8, no. 1 (2013)

Category: Book review

Written by Maria Pia Paganelli

The breadth of Pareto’s understanding, or his willingness to accept the complexity of human

behavior, is returned to in the last chapter of the volume (“Pareto’s manuscript on Money and

the real Economy”) where Micheal McLure describes how Pareto rejects the quantity theory of

money and is willing to integrate money in the general equilibrium model of Leon Walras,

despite the unwillingness of the discipline to bridge the monetary and the real analysis. 

 

The volume is an impressive and yet balanced testament of the breadth and stature of Pareto.

Pareto does come out as a rounded Renaissance man, who for all that is pessimistic about the

possibility of human improvement. He does come out as a scholar willing to break all

disciplinary barriers and one who, as a consequence, stands alone. And probably today and

more so in the future, when we also realize that many of the existing disciplinary boundaries are

artificial constraints that limit our creativity and intellectual development, we will come to

appreciate Pareto more. This volume is a step in that direction. 

 

Nordicum-Mediterraneum [nome.unak.is]

Phoca PDF