Vilfredo Pareto's Contribution to a Sociology of Globalization

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Chapter 3 Vilfredo Pareto’s Contribution to a Sociology of Globalization

Emanuela Susca

Introduction

Regardless of his much-discussed links with early Italian fascism (Barbieri, 2003), Vilfredo Pareto was not a nationalist social thinker. On the contrary, his sociology can be seen as a significant stage of the theoretical course leading sociologists beyond the provincial and ethnocentric approach nowadays called “methodological nationalism.” My contribution will try to show this by focus- ing on the circumstances of Pareto’s life that may reveal his personal attitude, on his use of universalistic sociological categories and, most of all, on his detailed analysis of the historical happenings of his times. As, unlike many commentators, I do not believe that the Paretian writings are disorganized or tediously prolix, I will quote directly from Pareto on several occasions. I hope to illustrate how Pareto managed to be at times powerfully immediate and at other times sarcastically sharp and, more generally speaking, the reasons why his sociological work is still worth revisiting almost a century after his death.

Aiming for a “Cosmopolitan Vision”

Although generally considered one of the Italian “founding fathers” of sociology, Pareto was born in Paris, where his father was in exile because of his radical political ideals. The Marquis Raffaele Pareto was a republican supporter of Mazzini who wanted to call his only son “Wilfrid” in honour of the German Revolution of 1848 and probably as a reaction against the comparative inactiv- ity of the Italian bourgeoisie of his times. Pareto’s mother was a French woman named Marie Méténier. The other two most important women in his life were not Italian either: his first wife Alessandra Bakunin was Russian, while his second wife, Jeanne Régis, was from Paris. There is no question that Pareto grew up in Italy, where he completed his studies and worked for decades as a civil engineer. Nevertheless, he spent the most important part of his life elsewhere: his failure to gain a position in Italian politics or as an academic subsequently

66 Susca made him move to Switzerland in order to succeed Walras as professor at the University of Lausanne. As he taught economics and later sociology in this multicultural, multilingual country, he could reach a wide and international audience. Being bilingual, he wrote with equal proficiency in Italian or French, often actively co-working on the translations of his major works. The importance of that stay in Switzerland became even greater after Pareto’s retirement from the university, at the time of the laborious writing of the monumental Trattato di sociologia generale. Pareto underlined this himself in a letter, dated 10 December 1916 to his friend Maffeo Pantaleoni:

[…] in order to study the social doctrines from an exclusively experimen- tal viewpoint, a man would have to entirely distance himself from the world, so that he would not have, even indirectly, any practical effect in his life, and so that he would not be subject to the influence that any acquaintances and friends might have over him. In fact, a man of that kind did happen to withdraw to the retreat of Céligny, and it would have been better if he had withdrawn to a place that was even more secluded. […] I do not know whether my Sociology is a worthy or an unworthy work and it is not my place to decide that; but say what you like, it is certainly the fruit of my special conditions and it definitely was and is for me a piece of luck to be able to live in Céligny, far away from the noises of the world. Pareto, 1962: 199; our translation

To be quite honest, this confession only recognized a part of the truth. Villa Angora was the peaceful, comfortable refuge of an old, sick scholar as well as Pareto’s privileged point of observation on what was happening day by day in Europe and throughout the world. As an attentive reader of newspapers and newly printed books, he sought inspiration and confirmation of his theories in the present. His Treatise is indeed “the fruit of thoughts and second thoughts, readings, notes and research, sketches, drafts and rewritings that lasted for twenty years” (Bobbio, 1972: 34). But the additions and notes entered in the corrected proof of the Italian edition and in the subsequent French edition are often clear attempts to compare pre-formed theoretical schemas with the most recent social and political developments. Intolerant to any censure or self-censure, Pareto perceived Switzerland and particularly Céligny as places where he could fully enjoy freedom of thought. As a result, we now rediscover him as a sociologist capable of forget- ting his own origins and looking at Western societies in a powerfully non- conventional way.