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Pareto’s theory, written in the positivist tradition, fits almost too well the ideal type that is the order paradigm.  To begin, he assumed sociology to be an empirical discipline, meant to follow the methodical lead of the natural sciences.  He called for the establishment of the “logico-experimental” method by which investigation would be based solely on experience and observation.  Moreover, the construction of his theory, particularly in its major terms, reflected his view of order in the universe.  Pareto believed that the highest form human organization is the social system.  It logically follows that the natural state of society is one of dynamic equilibrium. 

 

In some important ways, Pareto was influenced by the works of Comte and Spencer.  He embraced Spencer’s position on noninterference (especially as it applied to laissez-faire economics).  The concepts of greater differentiation and interrelationships developed by both Spencer and Durkheim appear to have also informed the work of the Italian, especially in his early sociology.  However, by the time that his Treatise was published (1915), Pareto was to condemn Spencer and Comte along two lines.  First, he rejected the earlier positivists for their lack of scientific sophistication.  Second, he faulted their vision of evolutionary progress.

 

It must be admitted that Pareto’s conception of the social system was quite mature when compared with the efforts of his contemporaries.  He drew on his engineering background to substitute a mechanical image (system) for a biological one (organism).  Of crucial importance was Pareto’s conception of society as a system of elements or variables in a state of reciprocal and mutual interdependence.  His systemic explanation of how a society works, and its interpenetration with the minds of its members, rendered organicism quite crude in comparison.  However, Pareto’s intellectual break with Spencer and Comte went beyond the question of sophistication.

 

Pareto imagined in the work of his intellectual ancestors the unacceptable tainting of the Enlightenment philosophies.  In the Treatise he called for the abandonment of the ideal of unilinear progress, a principle he had discerned in the evolutionary conceptions of his predecessors.  As we have seen, neither Comte nor Spencer assumed the perfectability of human nature.  They held fast to the Hobbesian conception of the antisocial being saved from mutual destruction only through reason.  However, Pareto went beyond Hobbes.  When the promise of progress in his native Italy fell far short of fruition, he was drawn to perhaps the starkest portrait of human nature in Western philosophy, that of Niccolo Machiavelli. 

 

In an attempt to end his exile at the hands of the Medici conquerors of his native Florence, Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) wrote The Prince.  In it, he argued that the ordinary sentiments of humankind are those of greed and selfishness.  In concrete terms, those who are subject to political authority are without gratitude, honesty, and courage.  The subject population by nature is unable to resist to passions of the moment and will violate both principles and the rights of others.  At an intellectual level, there is no creative thought but only the imitation of authority.  It is this imitation of authority, together with the desire for self-preservation, that represents the only hope for human redemption.

 

Machiavelli did not specify precisely how those in power came to avoid the disaster of such a nature.  However, he found in the despicable condition of the subject population a mandate for political action.  He wrote that rulers are required to employ means that are beyond the pale of personal morality.  These include a mastery of legal forms of social control but may also include deception, brute force, and the evaluation of all strategies by means of the ultimate end to which they are put.  Therefore, the ruler is advised to give the appearance of virtue, piety, and thrift, thus behaving as the fox.  Or when necessary, the ruler must resort to power and cruelty as does the lion.  In the words of Machiavelli, it is “safer to be feared than loved.”  The power of such imagery had a striking impact on Vilfredo Pareto, as we shall soon discover.

 

One final point is in order.  As we suggested earlier in the case of Auguste Comte, it is not necessary to conclude that the events of his era somehow converted Pareto from democrat to elitist.  The ideological alliance between economic “liberalism” (then laissez-faire capitalism) and democracy was weak throughout the turbulence of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe.  It was inconceivable to the new owners of property that the fading aristocracy should retain its political privilege.  It was also unacceptable that the crown heads continue to use their power to grant economic charters only to those persons and firms that enjoyed royal pleasure.  Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations became the manifesto of the rising bourgeoisie simply because it called for laissez-faire economics.  This meant in effect an end to the mercantile system whereby the crown frequently conferred monopoly status on favored enterprises. 

 

Calls for bourgeoisie democracy in this historical context did not mean universal suffrage, political representation of the whole people, or the recognition of common rights in governmental affairs.  Ultimately, it meant state assurance of a free economic order whereby the demands of the marketplace would determine what should be produced, who should produce it, how it should be produced, and how the production should be distributed.  Of course, the new owners would be the definers and executives of the “will of the market.”

 

For Pareto, when disenfranchised workers and peasants pressed for land reform, union organization, and public works, democracy had been carried too far.  In the situation of his times, the Italian (like Comte and Spencer before him) was a laissez-faire revolutionary.  However, he perceived little economic gain and great turmoil to be had should political freedom be expanded.  Indeed, before Mussolini’s rise to power, the bourgeois agenda was under serious attack by the adherents of an alternative: democratic socialism.  Given such conditions, Pareto’s “antidemocratic” shift, as seen in his turn to the heritage of Machiavelli, represented a logical step, not a dramatic conversion (Perdue, 1986, pp. 97-99).