Fondo Vilfredo Pareto della Banca Popolare di Sondrio
Giovanni Busino – Vilfredo Pareto (1848 – 1923)
1
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923)
Acclaimed by some, disparaged by others, Pareto’s place in the history of social
analysis persistently continues to arouse controversy. Although economists do not
dispute his importance, while deploring his sociological drifts, sociologists on the
other hand are outraged by his monstrous books, his impenetrable theories and his
esoteric epistemology, despite the kindly-disposed comments of Raymond Aron,
Talcott Parsons and a few knowledgeable sociologists.
The Italian Years
Born in Paris on 15
th
July1848 of a French mother and an Italian father (in exile in
France due to his liberal ideas), Vilfredo Pareto’s family came to live in Gênes
around 1854. In 1859 the Paretos moved to Casale Monferrato and there Vilfredo
was registered for the Leardi College where he studied science and the classics. In
1867 he obtained a degree in mathematics from the Faculty of Sciences of the
University of Turin and then, in 1870, a Civil Engineering Diploma from the
Polytechnic College with a thesis on the theory of elasticity of solid bodies and on
the integration of differential equations which define their equilibrium. In that same
year he was engaged by the Rolling Stock Department of the Roman Railway
Company in Florence. In October 1873 he was appointed an executive of the San
Giovanni Valdarno forge of the Iron Industry Company. He became Managing
Director in 1875 and resigned his post in 1890.
In 1893 Pareto was appointed Professor of political economy at the University of
Lausanne and then, in 1907, holder of the ad personam chair of political and social
sciences. He gave up university lecturing in 1911 to devote himself exclusively to his
own work. Designated by the Government as Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, on 1
st
March 1923, he declined that appointment for personal reasons. He died on 19
th
August 1923 at Céligny in the Canton of Geneva.
From the time when he settled in Florence in 1870 Pareto participated, through
writing and speaking, in the spreading of liberal doctrines, free exchange, anti-
protectionism and pacifism commended by the Adam Smith Society. His liberalism
was extreme and his moralism uncompromising. A critic of the policy of Italian
Governments of the time, of the ideas and actions of the whole ruling class, Pareto
could see in politics only ambition and bad faith, intrigues exploiting popular
passions. Power is only corruption, trickery and malice. His hostility towards the
centralizing and bureaucratic State went hand in hand with the quest for a fair social,
economic and political order. His intransigence, his fight against protectionism,
against armament programs, against Government Minister Crispi’s gallophobia and
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the malpractices of wheeling and dealing, left him on his own, a publicist without a
public and without influence.
The Swiss Period
Around 1890, through the economist Maffeo Pantaleoni, he discovered the works of
Léon Walras and the marginalist school. His conversion to the “new economic
doctrines”, to mathematical economy and to the theory of general equilibrium was
instantaneous. University lecturing made it possible for him to devote himself entirely
to the study of economic theories and to applying mathematics to the social
sciences.
At the age of 48 Pareto published his first book, Cours d’économie politique, in which
he explains the theories of capital, production, trade and crises. After presenting the
general principles of pure economy, a science which must be studied in accordance
with the same criteria as those of physics, he puts forward the constants and
uniformities of human actions. Some of these actions bring about a pleasant
sensation, called ophelimity, an idea which “expresses the relationship of affinity
whereby something meets a need or satisfies a desire, legitimate or not”; others,
which are the utilities, supply certain conditions of health, development of the body
and of the intelligence for individuals and aggregates, for whom they also provide for
reproduction. By means of these ideas, Pareto worked out abstract models which
allowed him to gather and classify facts and then draw empirical or rational laws
from them. Thus, the researcher can explain specific and complex phenomena. A
typical example of this conceptualization is given by the graph of incomes, or wealth
graph. Pareto shows that the distribution of income takes the form of a spinning top
with its point turned upward, in all countries. The poor form the rounded lower part of
the reversed spinning top and the rich the upper part, at the pointed end. An increase
in minimum income and a reduction in the inequality of incomes can only be
produced, either in isolation or cumulatively, if the total of the incomes increases
faster than the population. An increase in the number of large fortunes does not
produce a general growth in wealth, any more than an increase in the number of the
poor brings about general impoverishment in the country. In other words, the
inequality of fortunes and the reduction of pauperism are two very different things.
Redistribution of wealth could enlarge the base of the spinning top and thin down its
pointed end, but the loss suffered by the rich would clearly be less than the poor
would gain and so the social differences would remain practically the same.
Improving the living conditions of the poor and the problem of greater social justice
depend more on an increase in production than on the distribution of wealth.
According to this theory, “Pareto’s Law” also states, the “natural forces”, the causes
which act to determine distribution, depend more on the nature of men than on the
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organization of society. The shape of the spinning top is not a matter of chance,
otherwise it would be like the probabilities curve. Now the distribution curve differs
totally from the probabilities curve, well known to statisticians under the name of
“error curve”. It is created by a universal law.
The Cours d’économie politique, in addition to the general principles of social
evolution (history is immobile, cyclic, Man always the same throughout the
centuries) presents a theory of social physiology according to which societies are
never homogeneous. Differentiations, antagonisms, disputes and divergent interests
are the resultant of “natural forces”. The class struggle, in the shape of economic
competition and confrontations for power, “is the major fact which dominates history”.
Impossible to eliminate it because “the laws of Nature soar well above the prejudices
and passions of Man. Eternal, unchangeable, they are the expression of creative
power; they represent what is, what must be, what could not be otherwise. Man can
arrive at knowing what they are but could not change them.” (Cours d’économie
politique, § 1068).
In the two volumes of Les Systèmes Socialistes (1902-1903), social doctrines are
analyzed from the point of view of logic and non-logic action as well as from the
angle of the procedures used to convert objective truths into subjective truths. From
this work it emerges that social problems cannot be resolved “by ranting based on a
more or less vague ideal of justice, but only through scientific research to find the
means of adjusting the means to the aim and, for each man, the effort and the
trouble to the enjoyment so that the minimum amount of trouble and effort provides
well-being for the largest possible number of men.” (Systèmes, Ch. X).
Economy in Sociology
Although he continues to proclaim his determination to make social sciences exact
sciences, Pareto, from the beginning of the century, dissects the imperfections of
reason and reveals that what pushes men to act is feeling, passion and certain
instincts.
In Manuel d’économie politique (1906), homo oeconomicus is an abstract being
guided by egoism, economic systems are isolated from any possible influence and
studied at a given moment in their history. The confrontation of abstract theory with
specific phenomena (trade, protectionism, crises and economic cycles) leads Pareto
to evaluate the importance of logical actions, non-logical actions, circulation of the
élite, the role of ideologies, morals etc., as well as to indicate the aims and limits of
economic science. He uses the concepts of ophelimity, the curves of indifference,
the hill of pleasure, the paths of expansion etc. to explain the various types of
equilibria, the properties of partial equilibria, of general equilibrium, to give a
completed formulation of the theory of social return or of the collective economic
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optimum. While the standard theories of general interest were based on the
individual comparability of satisfaction, the maximizing of the sum total of
satisfaction and a fair distribution of income, Pareto asserts that the ophelimities of
different individuals cannot be compared and he consequently rejects all rules of
distribution.
Direct proof of this evolution is given by the irreverent book Le mythe vertuïste et la
littérature immorale (1911) in which moralism and puritanism, humanitarian
ideologies, feelings of renunciation and asceticism, are judged to be displays of
weakness, ways of duping the gullible.
In the monumental Traité de sociologie générale (1916), Pareto systematizes his
conception of sociology as an “exclusively experimental” general social science
which at once sets aside observable, commensurable and calculable behavior and
as a matter of priority he concerns himself with linguistic customs, innate logic, forms
of subjectivity irreducible in the calculation, regularities of cultural meanings,
thoughtless motivations in social life, the justifications they are given, the sense
attributed to the contents of historical actions, the internal structure of behavior, the
component principles of affective, apparent and procedural rationality, and the non-
logical. This sociology aims at revealing the mechanisms which produce society’s
symbolic universes. Instead of the idea of law, Pareto uses the idea of uniformity, i.e.
of a statement true under certain conditions. Science must study the uniformities and
mutually dependent ties which exist between social facts. It proceeds by successive
approximations. Economy makes a first approximation towards the understanding of
human behavior, a second approximation is provided by applied economy, and the
others by sociology. The Science is neither a reconstruction-restoration of social
reality, nor a pure reflection of it, nor is it a more or less impressionistic copy of it. It
constructs scientific objects by artificial extraction from the actual universe; it defines
the relations which connect the theoretical constructions together and then it
transposes the results found to other simplified universes, indeed applies them by
analogy to different realities so as to obtain new constructions of objects and of
conditional operators. At the basis of all analyses there is action, i.e. behavior
oriented towards objectives; the action is an effort, an expenditure of energy implying
at least a motive. Pareto works out a theory for the action in all its complex
interdependencies. From this theory he deduces the properties of the “system
object”. The theoretical constructions thus obtained are “simple hypotheses” which
stay alive as long as they agree with the facts, and die and disappear when new
studies destroy this agreement.” (Traité de sociologie générale, § 52).
Social phenomena have changing forms, manifested briefly by symbolic systems
such as ideologies, customs, collective representations, traditions etc. On the other
hand, the background is discovered by deduction or by inference. It is theoretical
analysis which, through a study of relationships, reveals the nature and composition
of this latent order. The form and background constitute, from another point of view,
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the subjective and objective aspects of the phenomena. Representations of the
phenomena and of the relationships between human actions are often deformed.
Only the objective aspect is real, constant and unchanging.
Logical and non-logical actions
Social actions, grouped into categories of logical actions, which “are, at least for the
main part, the result of reasoning”, and non-logical actions, which “arise mainly from
a certain psychological state: feelings, sub-consciousness etc.” (Traitè, § 161), The
main object of research by sociologists are reasoning, deliberations, arguments, the
logic of the subjects, objectifying the subjective, declarative and procedural
knowledge which anticipates and prescribes the actions of the social actors. Social
reality, formed of a non-conscious, constant part, can be grasped through its variable
part, i.e. thanks to the conscious interpretations deposited like sediment in symbolic
systems. Alongside demonstrative logic, Pareto conceives a non-demonstrative
logic which is that of plausible and persuasive argumentation.
Logical actions logically unite the means to the end, while in non-logical actions this
connection is non-existent. In logical action the connection must exist for the actor
but also for all those “who have wider knowledge” (Traité, § 150). Action, to be
logical, must be so either objectively (anybody having knowledge extending outside
the action) or subjectively (the person acting). The former use experimental material
and objective facts established and linked together by strict reasoning; the latter, by
far the more numerous, and of great importance in social life, are more or less
colored by logic; they form a “stack of absurdities” (Traité, § 445) and reflect the
arbitrary nature and the change in the ways in which men think and act, the coercive
weight of the milieu, the presence in each of the social agents of prejudices, beliefs,
values and ethos which the socialization processes have incorporated into stable
institutionalized symbolic systems. From then on, human action is crystallized into
meaningful structures, neither exclusively external nor essentially internal.
In the logical reasoning and developments added to non-logical actions, Pareto
again finds a pre-given, stable and latent fact, going beyond any empirical
explanation, conceptualized through deduction from the system of symbolic
structures, called residues, and a manifest and variable face, which can be observed
empirically, called derivation.
The actor organizes his action consciously and continuously in relation to one or
more systems of significations. The typology of the logical action is an operator,
useful if his predictive value is good, if he helps to formalize the means / end
relationship. However, if the efficiency and the cost cannot be arranged in
accordance with a means / end relationship, if the figures are not commensurable,
that operator is inadequate. Since the ends are neither given nor located, they
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cannot be reduced to the formal rationality of scientific language. The rationality of
science is different from the instrumental rationality of action and decision. The
dispositional variables conjectured or conjecturable constitute a topic of logical value
from which are drawn the premises of the arguments, of the conditional reasoning. It
is to escape the eleatic paradox that Pareto builds the ontogenetic and phylogenetic
underframe of the residues on which rest the reasoning and equivocation which
underlie and accompany choices and decisions. It is true that, in doing this, he
separates the representations from the actions, while recognizing that they can have
a common source, in a field outside sociological analysis, reserved for psychologists
and called the “psychic state” (Traité, § 1690-2).
Residues and derivations
Language reveals to us the tendency of men to split hairs, to argue in order to make
their behavior and beliefs plausible and acceptable. It comes before all forms of
logico-experimental and structural rationality, by means of discursive class objects,
the symbolic universes.
Residues do not exist, they are pre-constructed, both the content and knowledge of
common sense; they are sources of sociality, conditions necessary for structuring
the symbolic meanings. At the moment of granting actors a ready-made “logic”,
given in advance, they perform functions of identification, representation and
nomenclature. Their composition is found to be the extension of spontaneous,
balanced and self-regulated organization and of actions of classification,
standardizing and persuasion.
We do not know whether the residues, on account of the adaptative value, have
selected behaviors to which they are predisposed, whether they are socio-cultural
representations of human resources faced with environmental constraints, or more
or less direct manifestations of the phylogenetic factors reached by inference,
categories of predispositions of behavior selected by nature. That residues constitute
the implicit premises of equivocation used unknowingly by the social actors is an
indubitable fact. In some instances, they express emotions, in others they are
deduced from a representation; they always vary, throughout history, in number and
intensity. In view of the fact that the concept of residue encompasses the intention
and symbolization of the intention, the “feelings, subconscious etc.”, transformed into
symbolic relationships, become intelligible and comprehensible, and therefore
accessible, objects. In other words, the residues transcend experience and logic, are
located beyond scientific language, and give great autonomy to natural language. On
the other hand, derivations give a certain foundation to value judgments relative to
the purposes of the action. Produced from specific experience thanks to the mediate
inference of argument techniques, they provide the arguments capable of explaining
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how we act. By legitimizing both the objectives and the means, by filling in and
systematizing the gaps in our knowledge, derivations give an apparent form of truth
to the values, beliefs and convictions of social actors. They precede feelings and
contribute to strengthening them.
Of course, the typologies and classifications of the residues and derivations are also
typologies of the macro-sociological social processes, worked out from the
universalism/particularism dichotomy where universalism is the code and
particularism is the context. This dichotomy is generalizing for the residues of the
instinct of combinations and the persistency of the aggregates. The four other
classes (the need to show feelings through external acts, residues in relation to
sociability, the integrity of the individual and his dependencies, the sexual residue)
are specifications and particularizations of the first two classes and, while being
heterogeneous they contain the elements essential for ensuring the overall
constancy in spite of variations in detail. With regard to the types, they vary during
the stages of social development. Nevertheless, the variations are still compensated
so that the classes invariably remain constant. Discourses, pseudo-scientific
theories, ideologies in general (and Pareto considers everything normative as such)
are only a simple reflection of real interests. Like the residues, derivations are
arranged in classes and types. There are four classes: affirmation, authority,
agreement with feelings or with principles, verbal proof; they are based on language
and make residues perceivable thanks to the treatises, but they are unsuitable for
converting assertions into verifiable propositions. Derivations have no intrinsic value,
they do not act directly in fixing social equilibrium; they are only the manifestations
and indications of other forces “which are those which act in reality in determining
social equilibrium”. There is no determinism of the residues over the derivations
since the former are dependent on the latter and the latter can affect the residues
either by hindering the manifestations or by configuring them otherwise from time to
time.
What relationship do actions have with “social utility” (Traité, § 1687)
In the first place, for the static part, Pareto examines the distribution of residues in a
given society and in different strata of that same society; next, for the dynamic part,
he studies how the residues vary in the course of time, either that they change in
individuals of the same social stratum or that the change takes place due to a
mixture of the social strata with each other, without omitting to study how each of
these phenomena acts. Residues and derivations are propagated by imitation or due
to other circumstances. A study of the propagation processes shows the existence of
a third factor: interests.
Conditions of intelligibility of the action, deprived of objective existence, connected to
each other by mutual dependence or by multiple causality, the residues, derivations
and interests, the factors necessary for equilibrium, however cannot ever be grasped
in their entirety. Is the method, therefore, inadequate, indeed sterile? No, because
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the “even imperfect idea of mutual dependence” avoids the difficulties of an
explanation based on a single causal structure. Thanks to the imperfect method of
multiple causality, it is known that residues are more constant than derivations, that
they are partly the ‘cause’ of the derivations, “but still remembering the secondary
action of the derivations, which can sometimes be the cause of the residues, if only
in a subordinate way.” (Traité, § 1732).
Thanks to this system of relationships, varying from society to society, from one
social class to another, from one era to another, mediation is possible between
internalized objective structures and individual conducts.
Social equilibrium
Society is made up of different interdependent elements (the soil, climate, fauna,
flora, the actions of other societies on it, history, race, residues, derivations,
interests) “making up a system which we shall call a social system [...]. This system
changes form and character in the course of time and when we name the social
system, we understand this system as considered both at a particular time and in the
successive transformations which it undergoes in a particular space of time.” (Traité,
§ 2066). To analyze it, it is necessary to define a state at a given moment. It is the
state of equilibrium. Emphasis is put on relationships of interdependence. Neither
the ultimate ends nor the indeterminable objectives outside the system, nor even the
matter of the change which is introduced in the course of evolution, are taken into
consideration. Of course, there are disruptions in the equilibrium (wars, epidemics,
floods, earthquakes and other disasters) but imbalance implies an automatic return
to equilibrium. Therefore, social phenomena have a wavy form. Pareto does not give
a real general theory of the equilibrium of society but only a theory of an empirically
determined system, a theory unsuitable for explaining the transition from one system
to another, for giving an explanation of the reason for imbalance.
Composed of different groups which are antagonistic due to age, sex, physical
strength, health etc., society is not homogeneous and the equilibrium is precarious.
“The utilities of the various individuals are heterogeneous quantities and to speak of
the sum of these quantities makes no sense; there is none; we can envisage it. If it is
wished to find a sum which is related to the utilities of the various individuals, it is
necessary first of all to find a means of making these utilities depend on
homogeneous quantities, which can then be added together.” (Traité, § 2127).
Conflict of utilities, conflicts of interests, division of society, antagonistic values
involve divergencies of aims which gives rise to heterogeneity and to finding out that
there is no rationality of society. With the impossibility of establishing what is the
appropriate means to an end, of locating the end for which the action is taken, of
homogenizing the criteria which are at the basis of the choices, deliberations and
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actions with a view to obtaining a utility, in brief of discovering the ends, Pareto does
not give any precise indication of how to reconcile rationality of action with epistemic
rationality in the interpretation of historico-social actions.
Undulatory movement and historical events
Insofar as residues are transformed slowly, societies also change. The thesis
according to which reason has an ever greater share in human activity gives rise to
several errors. Progress comes about by following an undulatory or rhythmic
movement. The oscillations or rhythms have different ranges, durations and
intensities. When a phenomenon reaches its highest intensity, it is the oscillation in
the opposite direction which is generally close. This makes it impossible to explain
social phenomena by using simply linear causality or a more or less rigid
determinism. Political, social or religious revolutions are just, right, necessary to
some, and unjust, wrong, unnecessary to others. However, to science, there is no
sense in that. “A scientific proposition is true or it is false, it cannot in addition meet
any other condition [...],” “Science only concerns itself with finding out the
relationships between things or phenomena, and with discovering the uniformities of
these relationships. The study of what are called causes, if by that we understand
facts in certain relationships with others, is a matter for science and comes within the
above category of uniformities. However, what has been called prime causes, and in
general all entities which go beyond the limits of experience, are found there even
beyond the field of science.” (Les systèmes socialistes, I).
Elites and circulation of the élites
Society is divided into heterogeneous groups and classes but within the groups and
classes and between groups and classes there is intense vertical and horizontal
circulation. The groups and classes are in conflict but there is also a struggle within
these groups and classes. The part of the group or class which tries to ensure
hegemony over its own group or its own class, or also over all groups and all
classes, is called the élite. The theory of the élite claims to be a generalization of the
class struggle theory.
Individuals who show great capability in the respective branches of social activity
make up the top layer, usually taking in those who govern, while the rest form the
lower layer, to which the governed belong (Traité, § 2047). This stratification of
society, corroborated also by the distribution of wealth theory, is based on the nature
of men, on the role of fecundity and mortality of the social groups and on a series of
other factors; it is not the product of economic forces or of special organizational
capabilities. The inequality of status between men is determined particularly by the
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possession of certain “capabilities” in performing any human activity. The
“capabilities” are the natural disposition of the individual to excel in a particular
activity. It is doubtful that these “capabilities” exist in nature in the state of blind
determinisms. They are rather the product of social interactions and socialization
operations. Pareto sometimes speaks of the weight of social origin and of the
technique of corruption as a means of “incapable” individuals accessing or staying in
the élite, but he firmly believes that the normal condition is and remains “personal
capability”.
Elites can survive and keep going provided they are renewed continuously, eliminate
degenerated elements and accept new elements within them in certain proportions.
Circulation between the lower layer and the upper layer - mobility - must above all be
vertical, upward, but must also be downward. There is no mobility when there is
simply assimilation or co-opting. Movement is therefore synonymous with
equilibrium and the law which governs the continuity and forming of élites is subject
to a kind of anaklasis or refraction. Although élites can disappear for various reasons
(biological destruction, psychological change in attitudes, decadence), there are two
ways of maintaining stability and social continuity: eliminating those who contest and
therefore jeopardize the social order and the existence of the élite, and/or absorbing
the elements of the governed class who may be useful or usable. This process of
endosmosis, whereby the elements of the governed class come to form part of the
aristocracy of power, is “the phenomenon of social circulation”. The capable élite is
the one which is continuously renewed and rejuvenated. It may happen that those
opposed to the élite, in order to eliminate their adversaries in power, make use of the
discontent of the governed classes or use foreign intervention. The class in power
then has to defend itself. Guile and force are necessary but it is also necessary to
obtain the passive consensus of the governed class.
Types of social systems
An “open” social order is the product of equilibrium between the residue of the
instinct of combinations and the residue of the persistency of aggregates; between
innovation, discovery and invention on the one hand and conformity with the rules,
values and social ethos on the other. Regimes are characterized by the psychology
of the élites. The distribution of residues among individuals and among social
classes is at the origin of the types of social systems. Wherever a strong instinct for
combinations prevails there is a high number of speculators, entrepreneurs,
reformers, inventors and ambitious men capable of the most hazardous
undertakings, and wherever a strong concentration of the residue of the persistence
of the aggregates is encountered, there is a predominance of people of independent
means, of individuals for whom the past is a present asset and who want nothing to
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change. Speculators usually prevail by trickery, guile and other manipulations.
However, they never manage to keep control of the situation for long because they
are ousted by those of independent means who, in turn, are driven out of power by
the speculators, in a perpetual movement.
The increase in individual and collective security, the weakening of the spirit of
enterprise, the growth of well-being and the peaceful co-existence between peoples,
reinforces the reticence of governments to use force. New rules and values spread
and make traditional cultural models totter. Traditional authority is shaken by this and
rebellion then becomes possible. The old social equilibrium is replaced by a new
equilibrium, a new class takes the place of the old one by force. Social and political
life is cyclic. Social change is only an ongoing rotation of minorities which only have
their sights set, beyond all else, on controlling. A change in minority is therefore a
change in form and not a change in the structure of power, indeed a change in
substance. One reality alone is ever-lasting: there is a stratification in political and
social life, that of the ruling and the ruled. It is essentially oligarchic. Politicians
promise radical change but as soon as they have won power they defend a society
which has nothing to do with whatever they promised. Then, social life is hell, cruelty
is unending and the social agents are victims of illusions and myths. Men have only
one small light at their disposal, a single weapon with which to fight: science.
Pareto today
The blocks put down by Pareto on the building site of logic and non-logic still remain
rough hewn. Contemporary sociologists have made no real breakthrough in research
on useful beliefs, practical efficacy, the logical consequences of non-logic reasoning,
the weighing of reason in the production of historical effects. With his concerned
historical typology of contexts and their indivisible effects, with his use of this
typology in the study of actions which are reasoned but not entirely reducible to the
logical calculation, Pareto has drafted a method which makes it easy to observe and
describe the differential departures between models or typologies and modeled or
typologized social actions. This method is also a contribution to establishing fruitful
relationships between sociology and history, to consolidating sociology as a
historical discipline.
Pareto has challenged sociologists to describe the requisites of actions, interactions
and pseudo-logical representations, to elucidate the unwanted relationships of
actions and conducts and perverse effects, to establish the differences between
utility for a collective unit, utility of a collective unit and ophelimity. That challenge
has not yet been taken up. The distinction between the truth of an utterance and its
social utility, the methodical description of the heterogeneity of ends, costs of social
events and the analysis of subjective utilities in social actions, are fields of research
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which still lie fallow. Nowadays, the theories of action and the cognitive theories of
knowledge struggle against the same problems as Pareto posed so well, but they
have not been at all satisfactorily resolved. Neither the positivist, culturalist or
naturalist theories which seek causes of action elsewhere than in reason, nor
functionalism, rational choices, the theory of exchange which place them in reason,
none of these theories has been able to take advantage of the paretian
breakthroughs.
In the research into arguments and scientific rhetoric, into innate or natural logic,
where “arguing is more a matter of showing than demonstrating”, the presence of
Pareto’s work is more evident. Trends in recent sociology aim at transferring the
legacy from Pareto into interactionist sociology by means of research into natural
and non-demonstrative logic. Revealing the rationalist influences of John Stuart Mill
on the theoretical and non-theoretical paretian constructions gives a new dimension
to the scope of the emotivist doctrines in the Traité de sociologie général and brings
its author back into the rationalist tradition.
If it is believed that the social sciences are not saving sciences capable of bringing
happiness to men who have so far sought it in vain; if one is convinced that no social
science will ever manage to define the general interest and the public good, to
resolve the problems of living well and the good society; if, however, one is
convinced that the social sciences are means capable of making social relations
intelligible, that they show how man believes, acts, produces and answers questions
on the organization and conditions of life in society, on existential destiny, then
reading the works of Pareto can help researchers to free themselves of illusions
about truth and objectivity as absolute values. Such reading can give a glimpse of
how and why individuals produce certain knowledge, how such knowledge becomes
the basis of action, how it is used to vitalize hopes and projects. Sociology also
shows the limits and sparsity of the contents of our knowledge. Produced in
particular contexts, this knowledge is neither eternal nor absolute. Essential wisdom
which science tends to make intelligible. However, the intelligibility is always
contextual and historically situated. Sociology assists, like a constant critique of all
forms of production of knowledge, in understanding how the study of society is a
powerful means of mobilizing energies in order to arouse consent, to justify, explain
and rationalize social action, to obtain consensus, but also in order not to confuse
rationality of action and decision with epistemic rationality.
Bibliography
Pareto V. 1964-1989 Œeuvres complètes, 30 vols. Droz, Geneva
Pareto V. 1988 Trattato di sociologia generale. Edizione critica, 4 vols. Utet, Turin
(bibliography of and on Pareto, pp. LXXI-CLXXXVI)
Fondo Vilfredo Pareto della Banca Popolare di Sondrio
Giovanni Busino – Vilfredo Pareto (1848 – 1923)
13
Aron R. 1967 Les étapes de la pensée sociologique. Gallimard, Paris
Bobbio N. 1996 Saggi sulla scienza politica in Italia. Laterza, Bari
Busino G. 1968 Introduction à une histoire de la sociologie de Pareto. Droz, Geneva
Busino G. 1974 Gli studi su Vilfredo Pareto oggi. Dall’agiografia alla critica (1923-
1973). Bulzoni, Rome
Busino G. & Tommissen P. 1975 Jubilé du professeur Vilfredo Pareto, 1917. Droz,
Geneva (bibliography of and on Pareto)
Busino G. 1977 Vilfredo Pareto e l’industria del ferro nel Valdarno. Comit, Milan
Busino G. 1989 L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto. 2 vols. Comit, Milan
Busino G. 1992 Élite(s) et élitisme. PUF, Paris
Freund J. 1974 Pareto: la théorie de l’équilibre. Seghers, Paris
Valade B. 1990 Pareto: la naissance d’une autre sociologie. PUF, Paris
FINAL ABSTRACT
Renowned economist, professor in the University of Lausanne, wealthy Genoese
marquis, esteemed and feared polemicist, Vilfredo Pareto always seems to engage
in new departures. He abandons the world of industry and the beauty of Florence in
order to devote himself to the field of domestic economy. He puts aside the study of
purely theoretical economics and builds piece by piece a “sociology” intended to be
solely experimental, in other words a science that is not dependent upon value
judgments. Disdaining the sociologies that call themselves “humanitarian” and
“metaphysical”, or “christian” and “marxist”, rejecting propaganda and ideologies, he
seeks to dispel the “fog of nonsense” that pervades the political and social struggle.
Disenchanted, skeptical, piercing, remarkably learned and insatiably curious, yet at
times incredibly naive, awkward and headstrong, Pareto pursues the chimera of a
new science that, after essaying to give proper weight to Man’s desperate and
unceasing need to justify his conduct, might proceed to shed light on the profound
reasons motivating that conduct and discern the factors that promote equilibrium or
mutation in society, that cause the rise and fall of the ruling classes. From the mass
of his writings there emerges an imposing tableau of customs, beliefs, problems,
hopes and feverish quests for liberty. Denigrated and worshipped, now read but not
quoted, now paraphrased but not read, contested by all, honored by few who
however have not understood him, Pareto is surely one of the forerunners of
present-day sociology: functionalism, structuralism, rational choice, action theory,
ethnomethodology ..., these are all his spurious offspring.
The article offers a concise presentation of Pareto’s intellectual life and positions his
current research in sociology.
Fondo Vilfredo Pareto della Banca Popolare di Sondrio
Giovanni Busino – Vilfredo Pareto (1848 – 1923)
14
Index words
Action, Authority, Class Struggle, Derivation, Economy, Elite(s), Equilibrium,
Feelings, Formal languages, History, Ideologies, Interests, Knowledge, Logic/Non-
logic, Models, Natural language, Needs, Ophelimity, Optimum, Organization, Power,
Rationality, Reason, Residues, Social processes, Social sciences, Social theories,
Social typologies, Sociology, Stratification.
Giovanni Busino
Institut de Sociologie et d’Anthropologie
Université de Lausanne
Giovanni Busino
3, avenue Mirany
CH-1225 Chêne-Bourg.
Tel.
++41 22-348 13 30
Fax: ++41 22-348 78 68
Mail: giovanni.busino@bluewin.ch
Document Outline - VILFREDO PARETO
- The Italian Years
- The Swiss Period
- Economy in Sociology
- Logical and non-logical actions
- Residues and derivations
- Social equilibrium
- Undulatory movement and historical events
- Elites and circulations of the élites
- Types of social systems
- Pareto today
- Bibliography
- Final abstract
- Index words
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