Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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close to the history of the discipline; but it is a history which has theoretical and 
practical ‘pay-off’.
Another reason for engaging with classical sociology is the continuity in the 
type of questions that occur ‘naturally’ to the sociological imagination. Whilst it is 
obvious that societies have altered since the period when the classical authors were 
writing (and often we are conscious of those alterations precisely because of the 
contrast between the worlds they were analysing and the worlds we are analysing), 
and that their horizons and ours can hardly meet wily nily, there is still a continuity 
of sociological questioning of human behaviour and the nature of societies that 
transcends these specific situations. Even in a post-holocaust, post-Cold war, 
nuclear world where our social problems and cultural challenges include global 
warming, Aids, the digital revolution, globalisation and so on, concerns central to 
the sociological imagination serve to connect us. (It should not be forgotten that the 
classical writers saw enough of natural disasters, plagues and epidemics, wars and 
widespread poverty, death, murder and cruelty themselves to be well aware of the 
nature of human societies: we do not have the monopoly on this sort of experience and 
in many ways may be more protected from them). Hence the classics are interrogated 
for the profound help they can offer in thinking through these very conceptual issues. 
To ask about the rationality or irrationality of human behaviour, about the causes of 
social change, order and stability, about the types of inequality that persist, about the 
nature of power and the control of resources – all these issues are shared between 
past and present, and there is no reason why classical thought about these conceptual 
matters should be any less profound. Hence the classics are engaged with because of 
this continuity of conceptual conundrum. With Pareto, his concerns with explaining 
the irrational basis of social behaviour and the predilection to give these irrational 
bases rational and ideological justifications, is one such example of an answer to a 
common and perennial question about the rationality of social action. 
At other times, the situation can be somewhat reversed: for example, contemporary 
conditions may exhibit in more extreme forms than hitherto the very social situations 
that the classical theory originally considered, almost in anticipation. Such would be 
the case with Weber, for example, were charisma to be the dominant form of political 
legitimation in states where rational-legal values and norms had previously held 
sway; Marshall points to a similar situation in his work on Pareto, since the risks 
associated now with political planning in complex industrial societies, he argues, 
renders Pareto’s ideas particularly apposite: they have become of age. Of course, 
such a conclusion could not be reached without an interpretation of the current 
political system nor without knowledge of Pareto’s sociology – a dialogue between 
these two forms of knowledge creates a synthesis that has theoretical potential. In 
other senses too, the changing social conditions from classical times to our own 
does not impact on the relevance of classical sociological ideas for the interpretation 
of historical societies. What has altered – both for the study of past societies and 
the analysis of contemporary societies – is the range of specialised research and 
the uncovering or production of vast amounts of relevant data that are pertinent to 
the enquiry. Marshall’s study again provides a good illustration of this point since 
he brings Pareto’s work into alignment with the huge amount of psychoanalytic 
literature that has been produced since Pareto died: in many ways, Marshall 

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Series Editor’s Preface
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translates Pareto’s psychological theories into contemporary parlance to the mutual 
illumination of both. In other words, as I return to below, there needs to be kept 
fresh knowledge of classical sociology precisely because some of these resonances 
cannot be predicted in advance nor discovered without wide ranging knowledge of 
the classics themselves. Hence a further reason for reading the sociological classics 
is precisely to preserve our knowledge of them precisely because they are felt to be, 
or may become once again but in new ways, relevant to our worlds. 
However, the degree to which we feel our worlds our similar or dissimilar to 
the worlds of the classical sociologists – and there are blatant examples of where 
they are not – will vary from time to time and topic to topic – but overall, where 
the nature of modernity and its origins and its futures are still a defining feature 
of sociological work then the classical sociologists, whatever their specific epoch, 
are still our contemporaries. Hence we read the sociological classics because they 
address similar social processes in relation to modernity that we have inherited. 
One reason that can be given for not reading the sociological classics relates to 
a limitation at source, but this is often meant more in a moral than empirical sense: 
that is, classical sociologists were not concerned apparently with many of the social 
issues which concern us. Most strikingly is this felt to be the case with relation to 
race and ethnicity and most significantly in relation to gender. Even in the light of this 
legitimate criticism I believe there is still much scope for retaining engagement with 
the classics. I have two arguments. First, that learning how and why a sociological 
vision is limited should not give us cause to celebrate our superiority to the classics 
for seeing more than they ever did, since this is something of a hostage to fortune, 
when it becomes clear in days to come how limited and biased our own images of 
social reality and what was considered significant were. What is more interesting is 
to understand the social and cultural factors that impacted on vision and limited it: 
placing classical sociology in its context allows us to see how sociological discourse 
is produced within a context and does not exist outside of social realities, as if it 
were immune from the very social forces it uses to explain all other phenomena. 
Hence studying classical sociology in relation to the history of the discipline can 
only benefit the practice of sociology. 
A second argument relates to actually finding, as I mentioned above, more 
continuity with the classical sociological imagination than is perhaps at first 
anticipated For sure, what constitutes inequality and the diverse forms in which 
social divisions arise and persist may involve a wider spectrum than the classical 
authors envisaged – there is nonetheless a continuity of concern with inequality and 
stratification as such in all the classical texts – the specific manifestations are what 
has altered. When we are alerted to these contemporary manifestations however, it 
is possible to see where they are in fact mentioned in classical work. For example, 
Herbert Spencer’s writing about children, education, child rearing or about the nature 
of disabilities connects classical concerns with contemporary issues. The continuity 
can also be found by the discovery of other classical voices that have not previously 
been heard because of earlier limitations in reception: the work of Dubois and in 
particular Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Jane Addams come very much to mind. 
It is also important to read the sociological classics on account of the partial 
reception histories of the texts and ideas. In the nature of the case, and in a similar 

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