Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
16
6–23). By the early years of the twentieth century, however, Pareto was prepared to 
look first of all at the violent protests of the left, and then at the reactive violence of 
the fascist arditi and paid strike-breakers, and conclude that he was witnessing not 
the darker side of human nature but rather the nature of every ‘non-elite’. Non-elites, 
it now seemed, are always prone to violent collective action where, just as Le Bon 
and Tarde had previously mentioned in connection with crowd psychology, they 
display little capacity to reason or accept responsibility (Coser 1988, 412).
The well orchestrated strikes of the bienno rosso of 1919 and 1920 would prove 
particularly symbolic for Pareto of the contrast between elite and non-elite. These 
set the scene whereby Mussolini could contrast an inflated image of his own strength 
and determination with the weaknesses of a corrupt, insular democratic government 
which had failed to subdue social unrest with sufficient force (Bellamy 1987, 32). 
Van Den Berghe (1978, 190) credits Pareto with the resulting theoretical insight 
that an important general precondition to political revolution, later to be developed 
by historian Crane Brinton, is the widespread impression that government, while 
on the one hand seeming oppressive, is simultaneously perceived as ‘weak and 
vacillating’. 
Given the socio-political context in which he wrote, it is hardly surprising that 
Pareto tailored his ‘theory of revolution’ to pertain equally to the seizure of power 
by either fascist or communist extremists.
4
 Either scenario would, he believed, 
involve a penetration of non-elite personnel – and hence of non-elite psychological 
characteristics – into the elite strata. He qualified this view, however, by maintaining 
that such upsets of the social order tend to be short-lived. Working from his 
assumption that the more ‘capable’ will always tend to gravitate to fill the higher 
political and economic control positions, he argued that the characteristics of the 
practitioners of trasformismo and clientelismo are likely to prevail in the very senior 
levels of government in all kinds of political system. Even the leaders of the non-
elite crusades against elite corruption, he believed, tend to be members of the elites 
who possess these traits.
5
Political events thus led Pareto directly to his stark contrast between the 
exploitative elite which appears weak, vacillating and corrupt, and the non-elite 
which is easily provoked into expressions of moral outrage and violent protest. It 
also becomes apparent here that Pareto’s contrast between the elite and the non-
4  In his ‘Treatise’, Pareto provides a lengthy description of the revolutionary violence 
of the ‘red week’ of June 1914 which pitted the Salandra Ministry against trade union 
organisations which were then supported by newspapers such as the ‘Avanti’ of which 
Mussolini was then editor. The war of words between the two, according to Pareto, reflected 
exactly ‘the fight between the lion and the fox’. ‘There will come a day’, Pareto added, ‘when 
the lion will reach the fox with a well aimed cuff’ (Pareto 1935, §2480 (fn)).  It was only 
later in his (1923)‘The Transformation of Democracy’, however, that Pareto came to look 
upon communist and fascist violence as competition between up and coming rival elites, both 
possessing the characteristics of his ‘lions’.
5  Pareto mentions in his ‘Treatise’ that ‘In general, in revolutions the members of 
the lower strata are captained by leaders from the higher strata, because the latter possess 
the intellectual qualities required for outlining a tactic, while lacking the [combativeness] 
supplied by individuals from the lower strata’ (Pareto 1935, §2058). 

---

Pareto’s ‘Psychologistic’ Sociology
17
elite corresponds at the same time to some kind of distinction between, to use very 
loose terms for the present, ‘democratic’ and ‘anti-democratic’ character. Upon that 
understanding, a more complete account of the idiosyncracies which Pareto attributed 
to his ‘democratic character’ will now proceed through a closer examination of 
the patron-client ties which were essential to the functioning of Italy’s system of 
clientelismo. 
This tie might be described, on the surface at least, as follows:
The distinguishing feature of archetypal patron-client relationships is a broad but imprecise 
spectrum of mutual obligations consistent with the belief that the patron should display 
an almost paternal concern  for and responsiveness to the needs of his client, and that 
the latter should display an almost filial loyalty to his patron  (Landé 1973, 105, cited in 
Zuckerman 1979, 16). 
Ernest Gellner explains that this kind of bond was very different to that which 
existed in feudal societies. Certainly, there were similarities. In feudal societies, 
highly unequal, extended networks also ran vertically. There was also that same 
‘stress upon loyalty to persons rather than to principles’ which we find in the patron-
client tie. Gellner stresses, however, that feudal power relations were ‘codified’, 
‘formalised’ and ‘proudly proclaimed’ as central to ‘the cult of honour and loyalty, 
violence and virility’. By contrast, he says:
...it seems to me of the essence of a patronage system that, though no stranger to pride, it 
always belongs to some pays réel which is ambivalently conscious of not being the pays 
légal. Patronage may not always and necessarily be illegal and corrupt, and it does have 
its own pride and morality; but though it may despise the official morality as hypocritical, 
fraudulent or effeminate, it nevertheless knows that it is not itself the official morality 
(Gellner (ed.) 1977, 3).
Rogow and Lasswell make a similar point in their discussion of economic 
circumstances where ‘corruption’ is likely to supplant ‘rectitude’ in human relations. 
They mention that in business and politics new strategies are constantly being devised 
that fall within the ‘gray zone’ of ‘confusion and disagreement about norms’ (Rogow 
and Lasswell 1963, 71). Corrupt strategies, they claim, are likely to be justified by 
their practitioners as follows:
The argument is: The incorruptibility of public and private persons is an ideal toward 
which we aspire; it cannot occur, however, in many practical situations without exposing 
businesses to great and unwarranted risk. Corruption can legitimately be used to mitigate 
excessive competition – cut throat competition – without going to the extremes of full 
monopoly, which in turn provokes government monopoly and sooner or later leads to 
autocracy. Corruption is a means of maintaining the many advantages of the modern 
organisation of markets into patterns composed of a few leading firms and many small 
units (Rogow and Lasswell 1963, 94).
Such thinking was common, they point out, in the US at the turn of the century when 
private business was expanding rapidly. Yet this might equally apply to Italy during 
the same period. As will now be explained, processes of economic modernisation 

---