SOURCE: "Vilfredo Pareto," in Modern Italian Social Theory: Ideology and Politics from Pareto to the Present, Polity Press, 1987, pp. 12-33.

[In the following essay, Bellamy takes issue with critics who perceive a significant ideological discontinuity between Pareto's earlier and later writings.]

Pareto, when studied at all, is generally interpreted in two apparently mutually exclusive ways. Economists regard him as a classical liberal, who made important contributions to the theory of rational choice underlying the defence and analysis of market mechanisms. Sociologists and political theorists, by contrast, tend to dismiss his ideas as crude and illiberal—as attacking the role of reason and democracy in politics, and exalting the use of force by an elite to impose its will on the populace. The two images are said to correspond to different periods of his life. The first belongs to the early phase when, as an engineer and later a captain of industry, he threw himself into the movement for free trade. The second resulted from disillusionment at the frustration of his early hopes. An exile and recluse in Switzerland, he became the bitter and cynical commentator and dissector of contemporary events. The two divergent views are thereby reconciled by the thesis of an historical break between the early and the late Pareto.

This [essay] challenges this view by exploring the development of his sociology in the context of his political opinions and involvements. If disappointment with Italian politics is indeed the key to his sociological thought, then the ideals of the early period repay study by providing the background to his later criticisms. This constitutes the first section of this [essay]. I then turn, in section two, to the examination of his system to show how the principles of his economic liberalism governed those of his sociology. Finally, in section three, I demonstrate the continuity between the supposed two Paretos, revealing how his use of the insights of the Trattato to describe political developments from the First World War to his death in 1923, echoes his analysis of events before the war.

I claim that the similarity between Pareto's earlier and later views derives from the conceptual scheme he employed to interpret human behaviour. Pareto's liberal principles led him to shrink the political spectrum dras tically, reducing all human activity to certain sharply defined and contestable types—essentially ' rational' or ' irrational' . These categories were then enshrined within his sociology. This, in turn, had the effect of legitimizing a particular form of political practice—namely fascism. Pareto's development thereby illustrates the central issue of this book—namely, the nature of the relationship between social theory and political action.

THE POLITICS OF PARETO's SOCIOLOGY

Pareto was born in Paris in the year of liberal revolutions, 1848. His father, the Marquis Raffaello Pareto, had been exiled from Genoa to France in 1835 or 1836 for his Mazzinian opinions, and had taken a French wife. An amnesty enabled him to return in 1855. A civil engineer, he rose to high rank in the service of the Piedmontese (later Italian) government. Pareto followed his father's career, graduating in engineering in 1869 with a thesis on ' The fundamental principles of equilibrium in solid bodies' , which inspired a number of his later ideas on economics and sociology. He was appointed a director of the Florence branch of the Rome Railway Company in 1870 and held this post until 1874, when he became managing director of the Società Ferriere d' Italia.

During these years he increasingly took part in political debates as an ardent supporter of universal suffrage, republicanism, free trade and disarmament. Borkenau and H. Stuart Hughes regard his later debunking of humanitarian and democratic ideas as a reaction to his father's Mazzinian beliefs. Yet, as Finer has pointed out, there is no evidence for this interpretation. On the contrary, he was plainly attracted by these ideas, regretting the ' inauspicious circumstances' that led to his being born in France rather than Italy, and regarding someone opposed to the goals of the Risorgimento as a ' bad citizen' and ' a disgraceful being who lacks one of the prime qualities of man: patriotism and the love of liberty. Far from rejecting his paternal heritage, Pareto's writings, in both economics and sociology, have their roots in his attempt to analyse the conditions governing the development of democracy in postunification Italy, and to struggle for its realization in an uncorrupted form.

The difficulties confronting such schemes can be imagined by anyone with a cursory knowledge of Italian history. The moderate conservatives, the ' Historical Right' , who ruled Italy from 1861 to 1876, were obsessed with reducing the debts incurred by the Risorgimento, the Italians becoming the most heavily taxed populace in Europe as a result. This was combined with a centralized and heavily bureaucratic administration, distant and remote from the people, only 2 per cent of whom had the franchise in any case. As attention was focused increasingly on internal problems, the right's inability to stimulate the economy or ameliorate the social conditions of the masses drew increased criticism. Popular unrest manifested itself in violent mass movements—Bakunin's anarchism enjoying a spectacular new lease of life—and culminating in an attempted insurrectional putsch in 1874. Unfortunately the parliamentary opposition did little to solve these problems either. The ' Young Left' dropped the Mazzinian programme for the privileged of office, seeking little more than a reduction of taxation and a small increase of the electorate (to 7 per cent of the population) to ensure their continued stay in office. Under their leader Depretis, Italian politics became a matter of bargaining and the exploitation of government patronage to obtain the necessary balance between northern and southern interests by the various party or faction leaders to maintain their administration power. This policy of trasformismo characterized public life for the next fifty years, and effectively blocked any radical change in government.

Pareto's first political writings were primarily directed against the abuses of the Italian parliamentary system and the ruling classes' lack of concern for the plight of the people. An admirer of Mill and Spencer and the British political system generally, he argued from the principle of individual liberty for a policy of universal suffrage and free trade. Pareto contended that the opposition of the bourgeoisie to both of these policies was motivated by the desire to protect their privileges, rather than a principled defence of freedom, as they maintained. They argued that the franchise must remain limited, because only those who paid taxes had a stake in the nation, adding that the illiterate masses were unable to make a reasoned decision in any case. Pareto retorted that responsible government would only result when all, through elections, were involved in it. The vote was not, he wrote, a right, but ' the exercise of a necessary function for the good working of civil society.' The voter required, as ' a first and indispensable quality' , the possession of ' the culture and the necessary knowledge to fulfil adequately his task.' Compulsory education was therefore a prerequisite in a country where 78 per cent of the people were illiterate, if universal suffrage was to become notjust ' an empty word, but a beneficial reality.'

Following Mill, he defined liberty as ' the faculty of doing everything which in a direct and immediate way does not harm others.' Like Mill, however, some of the conclusions he drew from this principle which have more in common with T. H. Green's ' new liberalism' than ' classical liberalism' . For example, he argued that compulsory education, far from conflicting with liberty, was essential for its exercise:

Now it is manifestly clear that compulsory education should rather be called freedom of education, since the parent who does not educate his son harms him greatly and in a direct way … The new born son is a citizen to whom the law owes guardianship and protection, and in fact this principle prevails in the modern legislation of civilised peoples … even taking away the father's right to dispose of his entire estate in his will. In virtue of what principle, I ask, must this guardianship, which is exercised over material goods, be diminished when treating that other patrimony, education,' which is indispensable to all but above all to those, and they are the majority, who have no other?

Pareto defended the workers' right to combine and strike on analogous grounds. The innovative studies of Franchetti, Sonnino, Fortunato and Villari, from 1874 onwards, had already revealed the abject poverty oppressing the southern peasantry. Pareto's own experience made him aware of the similar conditions prevailing amongst factory workers in the north. Commenting on a proposal to set a minimum wage and a maximum margin of profit, he sarcastically speculated on where the ' lovers of liberty' , who opposed it, had been hiding

when the tide of government interference was growing, instituting monopolies of every sort. It must be because of my weak mental faculties that I can' t understand such a subtle distinction, but I fail to understand … how the principles of economics are unhurt when one punishes a citizen who does not want, either in agreement with others or alone, to sell his labour for a supposedly fair price and are mortally wounded when one imposes this just wage not on the worker but on the person who exploits him. For my own part I believe that justice leaves open only two paths: either the state does not meddle either in this nor in many other even graver ways in the relations between capital and labour and only exercises the office of maintaining free competition, or if it intervenes, it does so impartially, in everyone's favour, and not constantly for one side and to the detriment of the other. Either the state protects nobody or it protects everybody; beyond this there are only arbitrary acts, injustice and damage to national prosperity.

Pareto argued that if there were really uncorrupt elections and free competition then everyone's welfare would improve, because the opinions and talents of the best would prevail to the advantage of the whole community. In many respects this remained his conviction. Yet it was equally clear to him that, given the current state of affairs, the workers' use of extreme tactics to get their grievances heard was both justified and reasonable.

Increased familiarity with parliamentary politics did little to improve his poor view of it. He stood twice as a candidate, in 1880 and 1882, and declined a third opportunity in 1886 in no uncertain terms: ' I' ve already had too many opportunities for seeing at close quarters the bad faith and cowardice of certain people without seeking out other ones. I' m content with the satisfaction of despising them and of saying it loudly to everyone.' He withdrew increasingly from active participation in politics and business, resigning as managing director of the Italian Iron and Steel Company in 1889 in order to devote himself to writing.

His career as an economist and political journalist took off in these years, and be began to develop many of the core ideas of his sociology. His liberal convictions and his growing cynicism were fuelled by a deterioration, even by Italian standards, of the political climate. Depretis died in 1887 and was succeeded as Prime Minister by Francesco Crispi. Originally a Mazzinian Republican and a follower of Garibaldi, in power he became an authoritarian demagogue. An admirer of Bismark, he mixed repressive domestic measures with abortive schemes for colonial expansion, whilst continuing to exploit the system of transformismo to retain his parliamentary support. A disastrous economic and foreign policy, combined with government corruption, produced a number of financial scandals which supplied Pareto's caustic pen with plenty of material.

He had become friendly with the liberal economist Maffeo Pantaleoni, and began to gain a reputation as an economic theorist because of his development of the market theories of Walras and Edgeworth through the application of sophisticated mathematical techniques. He combined the two activities of polemicist and economist when, at Pantaleoni's invitation, he began to contribute numerous comments on contemporary politics ('cronache') to the Giornali degli Economisti from 1891 to 1897. The themes noted in his earlier polemics continued to predominate. Pareto retained his commitment to individual liberty, and his conviction that militarism and protectionism originated from the selfish and ultimately shortsighted desire of the bourgeoisie to keep their dominant position. This led him to express sympathy for the socialist cause—a fact which may surprise those who only know him for the ridicule he poured on the ' socialist myth' in Les Systèmes Socialistes (1901). Pareto's early support was, however, not inconsistent with his later scorn for the doctrine, which he never accepted.

Pareto had already warned the middle classes that ' it is to count over much on human ignorance, to expect that one can persuade the workers of the inefficiency, or worse the damage, that would come from measures wholly analogous to those adopted by the wealthy for their own ends' . The protectionist policies subsequent on Italy's joining the Triple Alliance, which led to a drop of 40 per cent in exports previously secured by a free trade agreement with France, seemed to confirm his worst fears. ' Popular socialism' , he now argued, was but the natural response to ' bourgeois socialism' , the only difference being that the latter pursued the less laudable aim of favouring the haves rather than the have-nots. Pareto bemoaned the lack of scientific judgement amongst the populace which could allow two such erroneous doctrines to hold sway, because once in power the socialists acted no differently from the others. Even ' if power should pass into the hands of the masses, they would make no better use of it, on the contrary, as they are still more ignorant and brutal than the bourgeoisie, their oppression would be worse.' The remedy was not in a change of masters, though that might be necessary by way of transition:

[A]s I look at it, the only way of diminishing the sum total of suffering in the country is to withdraw the individual as far as possible from the power of the government or of the commune,—that is, to follow a path opposite to that which has led us to the existing bourgeois socialism, and which will lead us, in the future, to popular socialism.

The problem lay ' not with the men' , or not only with them, but with the system of ideas they espoused. He greatly admired individual socialists, such as Napoleone Colajanni, who risked prison by denouncing the wrongs of contemporary politics. Moreover, he appreciated that it was faith in a socialist future which gave them the strength to risk their personal liberty in so doing. This position is well expressed in the following passage from a letter to Colajanni:

I am not a socialist, and I' m saddened by that, because if I could have that faith I would see a better moral reward for the work of those who fight to better the lot of the people than can be expected from Political Economy. But it seems to me that socialists and economists should be able to travel some way along the same road, to oppose the evil ways of our rulers.

Pareto remarked that he felt his position ' in comparison to the socialists and supporters of our governments is similar to that occupied by the positivists with respect to the various religious beliefs.' Indeed, anticipating his later theory of ideologies and his use of Sorel's theory of myths, he maintained that socialism and reactionary conservatism had exactly the same attraction as Christianity, from which they derived their form. However, whilst they undoubtedly appealed to genuine emotional needs, and had a practical value in inspiring people to act, their ' scientific' value was nullatory, ' unfortunately lacking the use of the experimental method to make them profitable, the sole secure guide to human reason' .

Pareto contended that the attempt to define the best society for humankind was inherently authoritarian, since the possibilities for human expression and fulfillment defy classification. As a result freedom, even occasionally to make mistakes, must be conceded so that full scope could be given to human diversity. Mill and Spencer were still very much at the forefront of his thinking, and he demonstrated a faith in the progress of reason worthy of these heirs of the Enlightenment. He exhorted the liberals to employ rational argument, rather than force or deception, to make their case, ' thereby paving a way down which they cannot be followed or blocked by those who derive their power from lies and fraud.'

Pareto succeeded Walras as professor of political economy at Lausanne in 1893. Here he took on the task of laying the foundations for a science of society, grounded on the ' sure basis' of the logico-empirical method of the natural sciences, in his lectures on economics. The Cours d' Economie Politique of 1896 are perfectly consonant with the liberal principles of the youthful social reformer. He aimed to expound the ' uniformities' underlying human behaviour, ' stripping man of a large number of accretions, ignoring his passions, whether good or bad, and reducing him eventually to a sort of molecule, susceptible solely to the influence of the forces of ophelimity [self-satisfaction].' Drawing on Spencer, Pareto argued that society evolved through the progressive development of needs and desires as individuals sought ever more varied and higher forms of self-satisfaction. Societies consequently ceased to be simple homogeneous units and diversified into a heterogeneous organic community. He asserted that an ideal equilibrium between different individuals pursuing their divergent but ultimately compatible projects, could be discovered by a ' science of utility' . However, given the current state of our knowledge, he argued, the presumption must be in favour of individual liberty and the free market, and all attempts at intervention, be it from socialists or protectionists, strongly resisted.

Discussion of the important innovations in econometrics made by Pareto in pursuit of this goal are beyond both the competence of the author and the present study. However, he saw fit to expound his theories in a sociological rather than a purely economic context in two chapters of the Cours—on ' social evolution' and ' social physiology' respectively. The argument of the first has already been outlined above; the second is more innovatory. Numerous scandals during Crispi's second administration, from 1893 to 1896, convinced him that the ruling classes were willing to use any expedient other than free and open government to preserve their interests. His friend Pantaleoni's resignation from his post at the Scuola Superiore di Commercio at Bari, due to government pressure after he had criticized their policy of a customs duty on wine, symbolized this further decay of public morality. Pareto felt particularly bitter since he had drawn attention to this paper in an article in the Revue des deux mondes. The bank crises led to the further smothering of criticism by free-trade economists. More than ever before, Pareto shared common cause with the socialists, whose followers in the Sicilian Fasci were brutally suppressed and the party forcibly dissolved in 1894. This sympathy is reflected in the Cours in Pareto's first sketch of what later became his theory of the circulation of elites.

As Finer has pointed out, Pareto neither adopted nor rejected Marxism; he absorbed certain salient features into his own theory and thereby denatured it. Acknowledging a debt to Marx and the soi disant Italian Marxist Achille Loria, Pareto agreed that ' class struggle … is the great dominant fact in history' , but argued that it took two forms. In the first, beneficial form, it was equivalent to economic competition and produced maximum ophelimity. Usually, though, it took the second, harmful form, ' whereby each class endeavours to get control of the government so as to make it an instrument for spoliation.' Pareto argued that it mattered little what the declared principles of the government might be—democratic, socialist or liberal—the effect was the same: the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of whoever was in power. Class war in the healthy sense, he believed, originated from the natural differences and inequalities obtaining between individuals, and was therefore an ineradicable aspect of all societies, the Marxist dream of an egalitarian communist community being a dangerous utopia. However, the class war justifiably attacked by Marx arose not from differences of ability, which might ultimately serve the good of all, but as a result of differential access to the organs of power. In this latter instance, the governing class abused its position in order to serve its own narrow ends. The only solution was to reduce drastically the capacity for governments, of whatever political disposition, from intervening to curtail individual or economic freedom.

The Cours puts Pareto's subsequent desire to unmask the irrational and essentially self-interested origins of political behaviour into perspective. His later attacks on humanitarian and democratic arguments did not indicate an aristocratic lack of concern with the plight of the people. On the contrary, they were motivated by a profound sympathy with their condition. He directed his cynicism against those whom he regarded as hiding self-interest behind a veneer of false altruism, not those who had a genuine interest in helping their fellow citizens. However, this reveals a contradiction in Pareto's own analysis and remedy—namely between his belief that efficiency, in the sense of optimal individual utility, could be attained in a perfectly competitive market composed of egoistic individuals, and the need for an assumption of altruism if the necessary redistribution of rights and power which would allow the market to operate in the desired manner were to occur. As we shall see later, a number of problems related to Pareto's defence of individual liberty follow from this paradox.

Government oppression steadily increased in the last years of the 1890s, culminating in an attempted palace coup d'état in 1898 when reactionary liberals, led by Sidney Sonnino, attempted to invoke the royal power to exact legislation directly by statute, rather than through parliament. In a series of articles in the socialist journal Critica Sociale, Pareto urged genuine liberals to unite with the socialists in their fight against the growing authoritarianism of the state. He remained a fervent opponent of socialist theories, ' but the fact is, that throughout Europe the socialists are almost alone in effectively resisting government oppression and fighting superstitious patriotism, which should not be confused with a healthy love of one's country …' This and similar statements, written as late as 1899, might well seem to render Pareto's massive attack on Les Systèmes Socialistes, only two years later, inexplicable. Indeed, a change of tone is present only months afterwards in a number of academic articles warning of ' the dangers of socialism' , and elaborating his theory of ideology.

This change can partly be accounted for by political developments. On 29 July 1900 Umberto I was assassinated by an anarchist. Instead of inaugurating an even darker period of reaction, this event lent authority to the warnings of the liberal parliamentary opposition, forming under Zanardelli and Giolitti, of the need to conciliate the new social forces or be destroyed by them, a point emphasized by a crippling general strike in Geona in December 1900. Giolitti heralded the new mood in a speech which was to bring the conservative rule of Crispi's successors, Pelloux and Saracco, to an end:

For a long time attempts have been made to obstruct the organisation of workers. By this stage anyone who knows the conditions of our country … must be convinced that this is absolutely impossible … The rising movement of the ordinary people accelerates daily; it is an invincible movement common to all civilised countries, because it is based on the principle of equality between men … Friends of institutions have one duty above all: to persuade these classes, and persuade them with deeds, that they can hope for far more from existing institutions than from dreams of the future.

This passage neatly sums up the policy followed during the next fifteen years of largely Giolittiled administrations. He added a new element to the trasformismo of his predecessors—that of reformism. He aimed to woo the socialists gradually with piecemeal social legislation and bring them into the existing system, disarming their revolutionary potential by ' putting Marx in the attic'

Pareto's attack on the socialists should be examined in this context. The period from 1900 to 1902, when Les Systèmes was composed, witnessed an unprecedented number of strikes—1,034 in 1901, and 801 in 1902 re spectively. To many commentators it appeared that the leniency of Giolitti was to blame. Pareto's analysis went deeper, fully according with the earlier castigation of the right-wing government and his sympathy for the left. Part of the answer lay in the fact that the strikes were an understandable backlash after years of repression and exploitation. To this extent he still supported the workers. What disturbed him was the manner in which they turned on their fellows who had declined from joining their action, accusing them of a lack of solidarity. This seemed to him to reflect the authoritarian measures of the right. Even worse, though, was Giolitti's connivance at this in order to retain the political support of the PSI (Partito Socialista Italiano) and organized labour. Clearly a new elite or aristocracy of power-brokers and ' spoilators' was forming, even more adept at manipulating the institutions of government than the reactionary bourgeoisie had been. Their influence was all the more persuasive, since socialism acted like a new religion and diverted the people's attention away from their true interests with the hope of a mystical and totally illusory future paradise.

Les Systèmes Socialistes did not signify the historical break between the young liberal and the future fascist. It sprang from the same liberal belief in the rights of the individual against all forms of authority and the claims of reason against those of religion and tradition. However, Pareto was now convinced that pure economic analysis was incapable of explaining human behaviour. As he wrote in the introduction, it ascribed too much importance to human reason, forgetting that ' Man is not a being of pure reason, he is also a being of sentiment and faith.' Pareto aimed to place the study of these latter elements on a scientific basis in order to build a complete picture of political economy. Yet instead of complementing each other, his sociology became the inverted image of his economics—describing the pursuit of self-interest by irrational rather than rational means.

To the extent that Marxism and socialism had a similar enlightenment heritage, Pareto continued to sympathize with them. He distinguished the ' learned interpretation' (l' interprétation savante) from the ' popular' view of Marx: ' The learned interpretation of the materialist conception of history is close to reality and has all the characteristics of a scientific theory' . However, in this form, Marxism was ' at bottom, no more favourable to socialism than to any other doctrine; it is even absolutely opposed to sentimental and ethical socialism …' Rather, class war, properly considered, was simply an aspect of the Darwinian struggle for the survival of the fittest. Contemporary politics had quite convinced Pareto of the plausibility of Marx's thesis, but the fight was not just between capitalists and workers, nor could it ever be overcome in a communist society. It was inherent in the essential inequalities prevailing amongst human beings. He still retained his liberal belief that in a free market these differences were mutually enhancing. But in a society which enabled the ruling group to extend its privilege and power, it inevitably led to the exploitation of the weak. Pareto had yet to elaborate his notion of the circulation of elites into its developed form, largely attributing the rise and fall of ' aristocracies' , as he here calls them, to natural selection. His firm conviction of the rather brutal reality underlying social processes had nevertheless toned down his crusading liberal zeal, though it derived from similar premises concerning the nature of human action. This thesis, though, was only the background to the principal theme of the Systèmes—the demolition of the ' popular interpretation of socialism.'

Influenced by Sorel, whom he came to admire and correspond with, Pareto developed his comparison between socialism and religion. He distinguished ' between the concrete objective phenomenon and the [subjective] form in which our mind perceives it.…' The first corresponded to our ' scientific' knowledge of an object or of society. The second, on the other hand, often gave quite a different picture and could be found in most of our theories and beliefs. Pareto wished to discover why the subjective viewpoint held such sway over men's minds. The main source of error, he contended, ' lies in the fact that a very large number of human actions are not the outcome of reasoning. They are purely instinctive actions, although the man performing them experiences a feeling of pleasure in giving them, quite arbitrarily, logical causes.' As a result, there were two aspects to any doctrine: ' the real facts' which gave rise to it, and ' the methods of reasoning employed in their justification.' Pareto applied this dual perspective to socialism and argued that whilst the ' scientific' theory corresponded to the ' objective' reality of the struggle for survival, ' popular socialism' covered this up in amass of high-sounding, humanitarian language. The task of sociology was to classify the ' hard core of sentiments' from which the various and often seemingly contradictory beliefs and theories derived.

This task was only sketched out in the Systèmes and formed the subject of the Treatise of General Sociology of 1916. His concern for the moment was to show that however well-intentioned ' popular socialists' might be, their ideas had but one consequence—the expropriation of one part of the nation by the other, ruling section. The motivation for his attack on communist ideals has often been misinterpreted as a desire to bolster the power of the bourgeoisie. This interpretation mistakes Pareto's purpose entirely. He did not attack those who genuinely felt for the poor and oppressed, and supported individual freedom, but maintained that those who argued for these causes on socialist grounds were either deluded or charletons. Politicians like Giolitti claimed to be working a peaceful social revolution, Pareto regarded this as simply a cover for their own ends. They hoped to retain political power by meeting the workers' demands, but he saw it as the last desperate effort of an exhausted class. ' Bourgeois socialism' was being replaced by the new leaders of ' popular socialism' . The bourgeoisie's new-found enthusiasm for liberty, democracy and equality was indicative of its inability to oppose the new social forces. When this became apparent he believed a direct clash would occur and the new elite of workers' leaders would take over. This would not inaugurate the communist utopia, but another era of oppressors and oppressed. The struggle between different individuals he concluded could not be abolished. Indeed, even in a free market system only the harmful consequences of this struggle were prevented, since it was instrumental to the progress of society. Socialists who ignored this reality would become its victims. As his favourite Genoese saying expressed it: ' Play the sheep and you will meet the butcher.'

Les Systèmes Socialistes was the work of an entrenched economic liberal, not a die-hard reactionary. Pareto was not alone in his disillusionment with Giolitti's regime. Young intellectuals of both left and right castigated his system of compromise as corrupt. Radical socialists believed Giolitti had undermined the revolutionary potential of the proletariat, buying them off with transient material benefits; and nationalists bemoaned his abandoning the creation of an Italian Empire. As we shall see, a similar anger towards this belittling of their hopes for a revived new Italy expressed itself in all the major theorists of this period.

Compared with many of the accusations and fantastic projects of his contemporaries, Pareto's work seems both restrained and reasonable. A well-known review of Les Systèmes Socialistes, by the intellectual entrepreneur Giuseppe Prezzolini, illustrates this contrast. Like most of his generation, Prezzolini was somewhat maverick in his political allegiances, regarding himself as part of an intellectual elite which praised creativity and individuality, and damned conformity and the second-rate. He regarded Pareto's book as a warning to the bourgeoisie not to become the dupes of the socialists, whose leaders sought to replace their benign rule and set up as an ' aristocracy of brigands.' Pareto responded that he had not taken sides on the issue, showing if anything more sympathy for the socialists' energy than for the pathetic acquiescence of the middle classes. As he had made plain in the Cours, he viewed Prezzolini's elitist nationalism with a distaste matching his aversion to socialism, regarding it as ' equally exaggerated, only in the opposite direction' . The ' neo-aristocrats' had simply reversed the socialist ' gospel of complete equality … According to them, the whole human race existed merely in order to produce a few superior men; it was only compost for some flowers' . Prezzolini captured the difference of their approaches in his reply: ' In a word, you see in the theory of aristocracies a scientific theory; I see it instead as a scientific justification of my present political needs.'

If Pareto desired to write ' scientifically' on the subject, this did not entail an absence of political passion. In fact, this ambition was the expression of his point of view. He had long divorced himself from the existing parties and decided to limit his own political activity to his study. His bitterness at the political scene was no more a sign of support for the bourgeoisie than it had previously been for the socialists. He opposed oppression from either side, but the hope that the socialists would be more tolerant than their adversaries seemed to have become a chimera. He succinctly expressed his position in the following passage from an article of 1905:

Before, the restrictive legislation was all to the advantage of the bourgeoisie, and against the people; whoever fought it, therefore, could honestly believe he was working to create a just regime, which would not favour either side with privileges. I do not see how you can demonstrate such a conception to be erroneous a priori, and it seems to me that only subsequent events have the power to give such a demonstration, as they have done. They have shown that we have not stopped even for a moment at a mid-point, where there are no privileges; instead the bourgeois privileges have been abolished only to make way for the popular privileges, so that he who fought all privilege, in reality and contrary to his intention has succeeded only in substituting one kind for another.

The Trattato originated as an indictment of human cupidity and foolishness, rather than a Machiavellian hand-book on how to use irrationality and force to undermine the aspiration to set up a humanitarian and democratic society. On the contrary, Pareto shared this goal, but despaired of its ever being realized. His ideal liberal polity assumed that individuals acted as rational calculators, able to work out where their self-interest lay. Unfortunately, as he had written to Pantaleoni, the study of society had convinced him that ' reason is of little worth in giving form to social phenomena. Quite different forces are at work. This is what I want to demonstrate in my sociology … ' He thus ignored the exhortations of his friend, and gave up what he now viewed as the Utopian study of economics for the real world of society. However, by turning the political practices of contemporary Italy into universal laws of human behaviour, he had the effect of legitimizing the very attitudes which he had previously sought to condemn. In the next two sections I shall show, first, how Pareto transformed his bitter characterization of Italian politics into a general sociology; and, second, demonstrate that this led to an endorsement of fascism.

PARETO's SOCIOLOGY OF POLITICS

Although not published until 1916, the Trattato was the product of ' twenty years of study' . Vast and ' monstrous' as it is, a guiding thread can nevertheless be discerned. Pareto desired to unmask ideologies of all kinds, and reveal the true structure of society. He aimed at separating factual analysis from evaluation. He achieved this by denying the validity of discussing the ultimate value of any political system. Politics consisted of necessarily subjective emotional responses, conditioned by our nature and social experience. All science could do, he argued, was describe those psychological states which correspond to particular values, and show how people attained their goals. But the worthiness of aspirations and ends could not be judged. He consequently made an important distinction, implicit in his earlier work, between the claims people make for their acts and the real motivations behind their behaviour, and he attempted to show that there was no necessary connection between the two.

Pareto divided actions into ' logical' and ' non-logical' . The former adhered to the criterion of scientific rationality he had outlined in Les Systèmes. He defined them as actions ' logically linked to an end, not only in respect to the person performing them, but also for those who have amore extensive knowledge …' The latter consisted of all the remaining actions, which failed to adopt ' logico-experimental' modes of reasoning. These ' other actions' were ' non-logical; which does not mean illogical.' Pareto noted that the subject believed most of his deeds belonged to the first category—' For Greek mariners, sacrifices to Poseidon and rowing with oars were equally logical means of navigation.' However, he argued that because only the second belief was susceptible to empirical verification, it alone was ' logical' . Regrettably most human behaviour therefore belonged to the ' non-logical' class.

This rather narrow definition of rationality led Pareto into a number of difficulties, since almost no normative proposition is of this nature. Yet axioms such as ' Do as you would be done by' form part of the moral fabric of any society. Pareto, by suggesting that only action towards a definite and attainable end was valuable and meaningful, risked undermining the complex web of tacit understandings that make up social life, and replacing it with a crude utilitarian rationalism. This danger was signalled by Croce who, in a review of the Manuale, argued that Pareto's instrumentalism turned men into machines.

The justice of this criticism became clear in Pareto's analysis of ' non-logical' actions, which he held to govern the vast majority of human activity. Pareto maintained that most behaviour of this class emanated from certain ' non-rational' states of mind. The theories which apparently guided action were a ' logical veneer' , subsequent to the original motivation to act. The operative forces in society were not ideas, therefore, but the psychic states and dispositions of which these ideas were manifestations. The social scientist's task consisted of elaborating the ' residues' , the constant element, of which theories were the ' derivations' . Pareto discovered some fifty-two residues, which he broke down into six classes.

In spite of this diversity, he explained most political conduct in terms of the first two classes of residue. Class I he called the ' instinct of combinations' . The Italian word, combinazione, connotes a range of meanings suggesting shrewdness and wit, as well as the usual English sense of the term. According to Pareto, it functioned as an intellectual and imaginative attribute, employed equally by the scientist using the logico-experimental method, the poet in his creative fantasy, and the schemer playing on the sentiments of others. Class II was the ' persistence of aggregates' . This was a conservative tendency, which held on to conventional ways of seeing the world and resisted the establishment of new combinations. Each category corresponded to a broad set of attitudes and behaviour on the part of all human beings.

Pareto claimed that his framework provided a scientific, value-free description of social activity. Yet, though Pareto swamped his readers with a mass of anecdotes and recondite facts, he was not content to remain at the level of simply describing the external aspects of events. Appearances to the contrary, he goes beyond the random collection of facts. Instead of simply stating, for example, that Prussia defeated France in 1870, he provided an explanation of the course of events in terms of his theory of human motivation. However, as Croce was to show, any attempt to go beyond crude empiricism introduces innumerable conflicts of interpretation over the choice of facts and the attribution of motives to the agents involved. I shall argue below, that far from providing a ' neutral' description of human behaviour, Pareto merely endowed his own ideological leanings with a spurious scientific status.

Pareto held that all societies were governed by an elite, the composition of which was constantly changing. The rise and fall of governing classes he put down to the alternation within them of the proportions of Class I and Class II residues. Government, he maintained, required both qualities: the invention, cunning and persuasiveness of the ' foxes' , in whom the combining instinct predominated; and the strength of purpose and willingness to use force of the ' lions' , moved more by the ' persistence of aggregates' . He classified different types of polity according to the proportions of the two different classes present in the governing elite. Moreover, there was no perfect balance which would keep an elite in power for ever. History showed a constant circulation between these two, types of ruling class. ' Foxes' gained power in civilized countries, manipulating the political machine to their advantage to obtain the consent of the populace. But ultimately they would give too much away to the opposition, in order to appease them, and were incapable of wielding force to protect their position. The ' lions' , who replaced them, willingly employed coercion and even violence to obtain their ends, but their rule would become stultified and mechanical, and they in turn would fall to the ' foxes' , who cleverly exploited them for their own ends. Finally, the political cycle was paralleled by changes in the economy between two similarly-motivated economic groups—the speculators and the rentiers respectively.

Although Pareto tended to draw on ancient history for his examples, his theory was clearly inspired by his interpretation of contemporary Italian politics, examined in the previous section. This need not invalidate his position; indeed if his view of events was correct it would tend to support it. However, not content with limiting his thesis to an explanation of the current political situation, he elevated it into a universal law of social behaviour, valid for all times and places. Pareto professed to have tested his system by an appeal to the ' facts of history' . He implied that he could provide empirical evidence of the presence of classes I and II and then show an event to be produced by them—a claim he illustrated with the equation

However, he then admitted that such a procedure was next to impossible, and that we must infer the presence of A and B from variations in q. Thus, he first described historical events in terms of his theory of residues, e.g. Bismark's victory over the French in 1870 as the result of his combination of cunning and force. He then explained and purportedly verified his thesis by explaining Bismark's conduct by the existence of the appropriate balance of Class I and Class II residues! By this method Pareto could make any event fit his scheme.

Pareto desired to render the study of human kind scientific in the manner of the natural sciences. The meaning agents ascribed to their acts was taken as a potentially verifiable fact about the presence of certain residues within them. This procedure was entirely arbitrary, since the very choice of which features to study was prejudiced by the interpretative framework Pareto employed in the first place. He ignored differences of scale, organization, economic structure and systems of belief between societies throughout history. However these might vary, he believed, the underlying political reality of the circulation of elites had always been the same. The protagonists of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 displayed identical characteristics to those of the Athenians and Spartans during the Pelopennesian war, whilst socialists and liberals in modern Italy relived the conflicts between rival factions in ancient Rome.

Yet there are clearly important differences between classical and contemporary politics, for example in the social composition of their democracies, which Pareto dismissed because of his obsession with discovering elites. In particular, two quite different conceptual schemes governed political behaviour in the respective periods. The Greeks regarded the human world as displaying an inherently rational order, as the embodiment of an underlying meaningful scheme in nature. The modern view rejects this parallel between the natural macrocosom and the social microcosm. This produces two divergent notions of personal identity. The ancients regarded themselves as part of a larger order, to which they must become attuned; moderns see themselves as characterized by a private set of drives and goals. Clearly Pareto adopted the latter view, but he thereby missed the point that the political practices of ancient Greece were quite different from those of today. For example, he stated that ' the controversies that raged at Athens over the profanation of the Hermic pillars and the Eleusinian mysteries, and the quarrels that raged in France over the Dreyfus affair, were largely masks and pretexts to cover passions and interests' . This conclusion only seemed plausible because, in his account of the two affairs, Pareto attributed modern drives to the ancient Greeks. Yet the self-interested desire for power and wealth, in many guises quite acceptable today (as in the successful entrepreneur), was universally condemned as a kind of madness by Greek moralists. He criticized the Athenians for recalling Alcibiades from command of the fleet because of ' superstitious' beliefs, at a time when his skills were required against the Spartans. But to describe the act in these terms gives an inaccurate picture of what was involved, since in Greek eyes someone who defied the Gods was ipso facto a disastrous leader of men. By attributing the decision to a preponderence of conservative Class II residues over the more realistic Class I, Pareto superimposed a parochial view of the nature of politics, totally at odds with that available to the agents at the time. He treated their religious beliefs as if they could be adopted or dropped at will, as simply the private opinions of the individuals concerned. But this was a presupposition of his sociology, not of those who actually held them. For the Greeks, these ideas and norms were rooted in their social relations, they constituted the practices they adopted and provided guidance about the appropriate attitude to take in a given situation.

Pareto believed he was providing a factual account of Greek and French politics respectively. In fact, he was redescribing them in a fashion which misconstrued the motives of the principle actors so that they conformed to his scheme. However, he went further than this, to impose an image of politics in which anyone who did not seek to serve his or her own narrowly-defined egotistical interests was either a fool or a charleton. Little surprise then, that Pareto should have fallen into the role of the advocate of the Machiavellian use of force and persuasion to maintain oneself in power. Since no political goal could be regarded as more rational than any other, success became the only measure.

This conclusion has led many commentators to attribute a change of political allegiance to Pareto, from liberal to proto-fascist. However, the assumptions behind his sociology were clearly the same as those inspiring his earlier liberalism. He retained the atomistic model of society, as made up of independent individual units continuously seeking different states of equilibrium. He was equally committed to the belief that the best balance of forces was that which yielded the greatest social utility, in terms of the maximum want-satisfaction of each individual, and that this would be achieved in a libertarian free-market society. Pareto's hostility towards ideologies expressed his frustration at what he deemed the irrationality of humankind. But arguing for his own case involved him in a paradox. For all people to adopt the free market and accept the redistribution of rights necessary for the system to work optimally, there must be a prior commitment on their part to the type of society it entails. However, this conflicts with the advantage claimed for free markets over centralized allocation—that they function by leaving the actor as the ultimate judge of his or her own preferences and projects. In fact the necessary measures would have to be imposed, or a sudden single flash of altruism be presumed, if those currently benefiting from the injustices of society were to accept a more equitable division of power. This provides a further explanation for Pareto's later endorsement of fascism. Authoritarian politics appeared to be the only way to free the market from the political spoliation of a democratic order. In this respect he remained perfectly consistent, carrying through to the 1920s his convictions about the proper relation between the market and the state developed in the 1890s. Had he lived long enough to see Mussolini's economic policy, he would undoubtedly have withdrawn his support.

Pareto's programme had two serious and interrelated drawbacks.

i The attempt to construct a science of society based on certain constant phenomena is vitiated by the relation between thought and action. Changes in how we define ourselves produce changes in how we act. Since the conceptual scheme governing human behaviour has not been the same throughout history, no sociological system can fail to take philosophical and ideological mutations into account and accurately describe past acts.

ii Pareto's understanding of his own society was similarly affected. By reducing politics to the circulation of elites, Pareto effectively closed the door on other political options, such as democracy or socialism. Statecraft, according to his theory, consisted solely in the manipulation of sentiments and the presence of the requisite balance of residues amongst the ruling group. Instead of creating a new ' value free' science of society, Pareto constructed a justification of the corrupt practices he had previously criticized. As the next section shows, this conception of politics was easily amenable to fascism.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DEMOCRACY

Pareto's methodology hinged on establishing certain polarities between ' objective' , ' scientific' thought and action, and ' subjective' , ' non-logical' modes of conduct. This epistemological position had consequences in his social and political thought extending beyond the immediate domain of sociological method. According to his scheme, the moral and the rational were quite distinct, the former simply being certain ends particular to the individual who held them. The conflict between competing ethical systems could not be solved by the growth of rationality. For Pareto, reason corresponded to what Weber meant by zweckrational—that is, action to attain a given practical end by the most appropriate means.

Since values were largely subjective illusions, politics was the art of the practicable rather than the desirable. The struggle between different individuals could not be transcended, because the goals people pursued were irreducibly diverse. Conflict is therefore endemic to the human condition and the ' scientific' politician could appreciate this. Democracy, in Rousseau's sense of leading to a general will of the people, was impracticable, as no genuine intersubjective values were possible. Instead politics consisted of battling interest groups. Thus ' humanitarianism' was not a true expression of concern for your fellow human beings, but a rationalization of self-interest. When expressed by socialists it was used to weaken the strength of the elite in power. Bourgeois politicians, on the other hand, used it in the hope that piecemeal reform would prevent their overthrow by a violent revolution.

A rational consensus between rival groups being impossible, Pareto put forward two alternative strategies. The first was the use of manipulative technique, appealing to the irrational sentiments of some groups and to the self-seeking greed of others. This was the tactic of the ' foxes' and, he believed, of the Italian middle-class policy of trasformismo. However, this approach could only work whilst economic growth kept the populace largely aquiescent and allowed opponents to be bought off. The system broke down in a time of crisis, when the governing class had to use force to remain in power. In such a situation the ' lions' would have their day.

Examining post-war events in Italy, Pareto saw the government as a weak and outmoded party of ' foxes' attacked by socialist ' lions' . The biennio rosso, of 1919 to 1920, produced a fresh wave of strikes, far better organized than ever before. The government's attempts to appease the workers, rather than tackle them head on, convinced Pareto of their imminent demise. These events provide the context in which Pareto's appraisal of fascism should be viewed. Mussolini was the man of the moment because, whilst not devoid of the cunning of a ' fox' , he could apply force with the strength of a ' lion' . From a ' scientific' point of view, therefore, he was Pareto's consummate politician. What purpose he put these skills to, though, is a matter of personal opinion.

This quandary bedevils Pareto's last writings. Initially he claimed he had simply described the conditions which had given rise to fascism. However it is clear from his letters, and his remarks about the ' red tyranny' of 1919 to 1920, that he welcomed it. He saw it as ending the stranglehold of the two power-blocks of producers and organized labour, who he believed had despoiled Italy before and since the war. His motivation was thus that of the early agitator, appealing to the petit bourgeoisie, whom he regarded as having lost most from the situation.

The only difficulties arose from fascism's lack of an alternative ideology to arouse the sentiments of the people sufficiently to make it a lasting political force. Pareto feared that Mussolini was simply doing Giolitti's dirty work for him, and that nothing would change as a result. His initial support, therefore, differed from that of Croce and other moderate conservatives, who hoped Mussolini would strengthen the liberal regime without destroying it. If fascism failed to establish itself as a new elite, which required fox-like cunning as well as leonine strength, violent anarchy would result. As he warned Pantaleoni, an earlier enthusiast of Mussolini than himself, ' There are growing signs in Italy, very slight it is true, of a worse future than one ever could have imagined. The danger of using force is of slipping into abusing it.' Unfortunately, Pareto had deprived himself of any grounds for isolating what was or was not an abuse.

Efficacy or social utility was the only standard by which he could judge a particular regime. Without further defining an objective standard of human happiness, a claim at variance with his liberalism, this depended solely on whether a group could persuade people that their rule was better than another. The veracity of the claim was immaterial. Pareto could not appeal to our ' real' interests when evaluating the policies of different parties, because this would have infringed the liberal belief that people should be free to decide for themselves what their wants were. Thus once Mussolini had successfully seized power, after the march on Rome, Pareto's earlier doubts faded completely. He applauded the use of force and fascism's anti-democratic stance for only in this manner ' could a radical change in Italian politics take place.' Whereas ' Italian bolshevism' had exhausted itself in sporadic violence, Mussolini had laid the foundations for a new regime via a fox-like appeal to conservative sentiments. ' The victory of fascism' , Pareto wrote to Lello Gangemi, ' confirms splendidly the previsions of my Sociology and many of my articles. I can therefore rejoice both personally and as a scientist.' He now hailed Mussolini as ' a statesman of the first rank' , who would be a historical figure ' worthy of ancient Rome.' He was his Machiavellian Prince—' the man the Sociology can invoke' , who would bring about ' the resurgence of Italy' .

There is therefore a certain circularity in the reasoning behind Pareto's sociology. Disillusionment at the frustration of his liberal ideals led to a cynical view of politics as the preserve of various elites composed of ' foxes' and ' lions' . His sociology then elaborated upon this jaundiced interpretation. Finally, the application of these categories to the study of contemporary politics actually confirmed his thesis, though in a manner he would have repudiated. For his theory provided a re-conceptualization of politics which made fascist practice respectable. As Adrian Lyttleton has remarked, ' if Pareto's theory had not existed, fascism would have had to invent it. '