Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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experience’ (e.g. McCrae and Costa 1987)
7
 are now widely reckoned to correspond 
to the fifth of the ‘big five’  personality factors. And as Oliver P. John (in Pervin 
(ed.) 1990, 76) clarifies, there is as yet no settled agreement concerning how this 
fifth factor domain may be said to involve a constructive interaction between a 
distinct intelligence, artistic creativity, sensitivity, or indeed the very ‘Machiavellian’ 
construct of cultural sophistication. 
4.5 Risk
An individual difference involving varying orientations towards risk is quite clearly 
integral to Pareto’s model of personality. We are told that:
Class I residues predominate among the speculators, class II among the rentiers. The two 
groups fulfil functions of differing utility in society. The speculator category is primarily 
responsible for changes and progress in economic and social affairs. The rentiers, on the 
other hand, are a powerful element making for stability, and in many cases they safeguard 
society against the risky ventures of the speculator class (Pareto 1935, §2235).
More fully, the speculator capitalist is evidently a daring entrepreneur who is quick 
to take advantage of those high risk, high gain opportunities which economic 
prosperity brings. When this willingness to take risks becomes prevalent throughout 
the economic elite, the economic cycle is driven at a greater pace through its phase 
of capital expansion. The rentier capitalist, on the other hand, prefers low risk, 
low gain strategies which are conducive to the process of capital contraction and 
consolidation which inevitably follows once the speculator elite has exhausted levels 
of socially available capital. To stress this point, Pareto clearly believed that the 
speculators and rentiers were distinguishable psychologically. We are told that the 
speculators are ‘usually expansive personalities, eager to take up with anything new’ 
(Pareto 1935, §2313). And Pareto even went so far as to describe the rentiers as 
‘mere savers who are often quiet, timorous souls sitting at all times with their ears 
cocked in apprehension, like rabbits, hoping little and fearing much from any change 
(Pareto 1935, §2232).
Pareto made a further important distinction concerning strategy and tactics. 
The rentiers, he said, are strategic, long term planners who possess the virtue 
of ‘thrift’ (e.g. Pareto 1935, §2228). The speculators, on the other hand, tend to 
neglect the distant future and focus instead upon tactical considerations pertaining 
to their successful functioning in the present. Hence, to sum up, we can say that the 
individual difference to be examined in this section involves a broad contrast between 
the risk-averse long-termist and the risk-tolerant short-termist. Various theoretical 
perspectives will now be used to explore this distinction, and it will become evident 
that it sits comfortably within Pareto’s model of personality. This exercise will begin 
with an investigation of the possibility that this individual difference might have 
some basis in reality when understood to involve self-esteem. First we will consider 
7  For a review of various constructs used by these and other investigators to describe 
this fifth factor domain see Oliver P. John in Pervin (ed.) (1990, 72). 

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Pareto’s Psychology
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research evidence linking low self-esteem to conservative personality. Then we will 
interpret these findings with reference to how psychoanalytic theory relates low self-
esteem to compulsivity.
Some of this evidence is provided by Glenn Wilson (1973), who based his 
theory of conservative personality on research involving the (1968) Wilson-
Patterson Conservatism scale (the C-scale). This measures what Wilson termed the 
‘conservative attitude syndrome’. This syndrome comprises the following elements 
which certainly remind us of Pareto’s ‘lion’:
(1) religious fundamentalism; (2) pro-establishment politics; (3) insistence on strict 
rules and punishments; (4) pro-militarism; (5) preference for conventional art, clothing 
and institutions; (6) anti-hedonistic outlook; (7) intolerance of minority groups; and (8) 
superstitious resistance to science (Joe, Jones and Miller 1981, 225).
The common thread running through these various preferences, Wilson argued, 
was a ‘generalised fear of uncertainty’. This arises, we are told, from feelings of 
‘insecurity and inferiority’ (i.e. low self-esteem) which are likely to result from a 
wide combination of underlying factors. Wilson listed these as follows:   
… certain genetic factors such as anxiety proneness, stimulus aversion (sensitivity to 
strong stimuli), low intelligence, lack of physical attractiveness, old age, and female sex, 
and certain environmental factors such as parental coldness, punitiveness, rigidity, and 
inconsistency, and membership of the lower classes (Wilson 1973, 259).
Wilson’s notion that low self-esteem holds the key to understanding the generalised 
risk-aversion and hence the ‘attitude syndrome’ of the conservative personality 
thus provides us with one highly plausible explanation for that cautiousness which 
Pareto attributed to his lions and his rentiers. However, his suggested link between 
conservatism and low self-esteem is also comprehensible with reference to those 
psychoanalytic theories of compulsivity which have throughout this chapter helped 
explain Pareto’s lions and rentiers. Freud appeared to deal with the subject of self-
esteem rather obliquely by treating it as ‘the feeling of triumph when ego corresponds 
to ego ideal’. He contrasted this with ‘the sense of guilt, as well as the sense of 
inferiority, which expresses tension between the ego and the ego ideal’ (Sniderman 
1975, 39). Hence Paul Sniderman is led to argue that level of self-esteem makes 
most sense in Freudian terms as a reflection of how well the ego manages to meet the 
expectations placed upon it by the two substructures of the superego: the ego ideal 
and the conscience. High self-esteem individuals will tend to have strong ‘records 
of success’ in satisfying the demands made by these two substructures. Low self-
esteem individuals will tend to have records of failure (Sniderman 1975, 66). 
The argument for adding that low self-esteem disproportionately afflicts 
compulsive individuals is as follows. Firstly, because their formative experiences 
involve the introjection of strong superegos, compulsives will find it harder to meet 
the various proscriptions and prescriptions which their superegos demand of them. 
Secondly, because compulsives rely heavily upon repression as a defence mechanism, 
their ids will consist of powerful impulses and conflicts, much of whose force will 
derive from repression. This will often make the demands of the superego harder 

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