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Pareto and Pluto-Democracy: The Retreat to Galapagos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

S. E. Finer
S. E. Finer*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

(Sartre to Camus): You blame the European proletariat because it has not publicly stigmatized the Soviets, but you also blame the European governments because they allow Spain into UNESCO; in this case I can see only one solution for you: the Galapagos Islands.

Vilfredo Pareto completed his Treatise on General Sociology in 1912, although it was not published till 1916. It is a vast work of one million words; sprawling, disorderly, and stuffed with minor masterpieces of often pointless erudition. The first three-quarters attacks the scientific status of practically all the various political and moral theories that have sought to pass themselves off as scientifically grounded and it is worth noting that even the most dedicated critics of Pareto have acknowledged the effectiveness of his onslaught. Among the positive contributions of the Treatise, five propositions stand out. First, Pareto affirms that social phenomena are not “caused” by any single factor but that all elements in society influence one another reciprocally. Secondly, social phenomena recur in cycles. Thirdly, the bulk of human behavior is not “logical” but only “logicalized”, or, as we should say today, not rational but merely rationalized. Fourthly, irrespective of constitutional forms, every society consists of the minority elite governing (leading?) the majority non-elite. Fifthly, parliamentary democracy, or to speak more accurately, “pluto-democracy”, is no exception: it comprises a governing elite of highly skilled operators who contrive to remain in power by persuasion and manipulation of the masses. Principally it is for the last three contentions that Pareto is today remembered, or, as I shall show, misremembered, as a “proto-fascist”.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1968 , pp. 440 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1968

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References

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15 On this work H. S. Hughes comments that “in his view of public morality Pareto was extremely rigorous; in his ideas on private morality he was playfully permissive”: op. cit., p. 261. But anybody who cares to consult Pareto's views on the family and on education (Le Mythe Vertuiste et la Litterature Immorale, Paris, 1911, pp. 146 ff) will find this to be the very reverse of the truth. He was the perfect square.

16 MPP, 6 December 1891.

17 MPP, 23 December 1896.

18 MPP, 22 February 1898.

19 MPP, 20 July 1898.

20 MPP, 16 May 1898.

21 MPP, 16 May 1898.

22 Pareto, V., “Il Crepuscolo della Liberta,” Rivista d'Italia (02, 1905)Google Scholar, quoted in MPP, Vol. II, p. 436.

23 MPP, 23 February 1892.

24 MPP, 18 April 1893.

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26 MPP, 10 April 1898.

27 MPP, 11 November 1897.

28 MPP, 7 May 1897.

29 Cf. “I know that in this way I will provoke the indignation of the humanitarian-democratic sect, but that is precisely my aim”: MPP, 2 March 1907.

30 SP, 23 April 1917.

31 MPP, 20 May 1896.

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35 MPP, 30 November 1899.

36 MPP, 20 January 1892.

37 MPP, 12 January 1898.

38 MPP, 26 October 1907.

39 MPP, 28 January 1908.

40 MPP, 23 February 1892.

41 MPP, 22 December 1891.

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