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Pareto's Concept of Demagogic Plutocracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Joseph Femia
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DESPITE HIS STATUS AS A FOUNDER OF MODERN SOCIAL SCIENCE, Pareto receives little scholarly attention. In particular, his penetrating discussion of ‘demagogic plutocracy’ (his term for the liberal state) has been strangely ignored by analysts of Western, or ‘bourgeois’, democracy. While Marx's scattered and inconsistent remarks on ‘the capitalist state’ have spawned a vast literature, Pareto is lucky to be acknowledged in a footnote. Consider the exemplary case of David Held, a theorist of great repute, who managed to write a 321 page textbook called Models of Democracy without once mentioning Pareto's name. Why has Pareto been ‘put in quarantine’? One reason is surely the irritating nature of his master-work, Treatise of General Sociology (published in 1916). Even his admirers describe this work as ‘monstrous’ – disorganized, unnecessarily long, full of pedantic distinctions, and continually interrupted by digressions, and by digressions within digression. He never missed an opportunity to break the thread of exposition in order to pursue some bright idea or display his arcane erudition. But a fuller explanation of Pareto's ‘quarantine’ requires us to look at the social psychology of intellectuals.

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Articles
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Government and Opposition , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1995 , pp. 370 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1995

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References

1 Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987. In addition, see Andrew Vincent’s highly regarded Theories of the State, Oxford, Blackwell, 1987, which mentions Pareto once en passant.

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9 AIS, para. 150.

10 ibid., paras 870, 875.

11 ibid., para. 154.

12 ibid., paras 2239, 2394; and V. Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy, trans. Girola, R. and ed. Powers, C. H., London, Transaction Books, 1984, p. 28 Google Scholar. Originally published in 1921 under the title, Trasformazione delta democrazia.

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27 Les Systèmes Socialistes (1902), ín Pareto, Sociological Writings, p. 140.

28 MS, para. 1543.

29 Les Systèmes Socialistes (1902), in Pareto, Sociological Writings, p. 138.

30 ibid., p. 139.

31 MS, para. 2183

32 ibid., para. 2244.

33 ibid., paras 2253, 2183–4.

34 ibid., para. 2053.

35 But it’s a fairy-story whose authorship is often attributed to Pareto! Tom Bottomore, for example, in his influential Elites and Society, Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1966, complains that Pareto (unlike Mosca) was blind to the ‘heterogeneity’ of the elite (p. 12). For some people, a ruling elite is by definition conspiratorial and self-conscious. (See R. Dahl, ‘A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model’, American Political Science Review, LII, 1958, pp. 463–9.) Maybe they read Pareto with this preconception in mind.

36 MS, para. 2254.

37 ibid.

38 ibid., paras 2265, 2257.

39 ibid., para. 2231.

40 ibid., para. 2233.

41 ibid., para. 2234. Borkenau finds it odd that Pareto, having accused Marx of simplifying a complex reality by dividing society into ‘capitalists’ and ‘proletariat’, should commit precisely the same error with his division between ‘speculators’ and ‘rentiers’ (Pareto, p. 141). The criticism is a fair one, though Pareto does acknowledge that the dividing line between the two ‘classes’ is blurred. (MS, para. 2235).

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43 ibid., para. 2250.

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56 ibid., paras 1486–92, 1608–9.

57 ibid., para. 2134.

58 ibid., paras 2228, 2307, 2309, 2059.

59 Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy, p. 71.Google Scholar

60 ibid., pp. 43–6, 66.

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73 Vilfredo Pareto e il fascismo, Rome, Volpe, 1974, pp. 15, 216 in particular.

74 Fascisms’s temporary hold on the liberal imagination extended beyond Italy. Many American liberals also welcomed the fascist takeover. Unlike Pareto, however, they tended to be ‘new liberals’, disillusioned with the atomistic, contractual approach of the Lockean tradition. See Diggins, J. P Mussolini and Fascism: the View from America, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1972, pp. 220–39.Google Scholar

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79 Fiorot, Politica e scienza in Vilfredo Pareto, p. 212.Google Scholar

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82 Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy, pp. 45–8.Google Scholar

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84 Consciousness and Society, p. 266.