Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Pareto's ‘Chronicles’ in Relation to his Sociology

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09538251003665743

1465-3982

Michael McLure,

Monetary Policy and Economic Impact

Abstract The ‘second series’ of the Giornale degli Economisti commenced in 1890 and established itself as the leading Italian vehicle for the dissemination of the new marginalist economics. From 1891 it also included a special feature entitled ‘cronaca’, which critically chronicled practical developments in Italian public policy, public finances and the state of the economy. Vilfredo Pareto was the regular author of the chronicles between 1893 and 1897. This study provides the context necessary for an appreciation of the juxtaposition evident in Pareto's chronicles between his radical-liberal critique of leading Italian politicians and his relatively gentle commentary on some Italian leaders associated with the extreme left. It also identifies attributes from Pareto's chronicles that extended, albeit in a modified form, to his 1916 Trattato di Sociologia Generale. In both instances: the actual political world is characterised on a similar basis; criticism is undertaken on a brutal, sarcastic and often polemic manner; and the left–right political divide is treated as a relatively low-order issue. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Peter Groenewegen, Steven Medema, Fiorenzo Mornati, Ray Petridis, Warren Samuels and the referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. The initial motivation for this study derives from Italo Magnani's comment to me that my book on The Paretian School and Italian Fiscal Sociology (McLure, Citation2007) could have benefited from the inclusion of more information on the Italian political context at the time of Pareto's early contributions to the Giornale degli Economisti. Notes 1While Pareto's non-scientific writings have been almost completely ignored in English language studies in the histories of economic thought, this is not the case in Italy. Tommaso Giacalone-Monaco Citation(1960) did much to bring Pareto's commentaries and letters to public attention, including Pareto's chronicles. Later Giovanni Busino, and more recently Fiorenzo Mornati, have included a very wide range of non-scientific contributions within Pareto's 32 volume opera omnia. The Italia di Vilfredo Pareto (Busino, Citation1989) also provides a fine discussion of Pareto's views on Italy and his relations with various Italian figures. 2Cavour is regarded as the first Italian Prime Minister because his premiership occurred during Parliamentary declaration of the unified Kingdom of Italy in Turin on 17 March 1861, a decade before the seat of popular Italian government was set in Rome. 3The political machinations associated with this event were nicely described by Pareto (Citation1893, pp. 686–687). The resulting increases in tariffs were indeed significant, with a 15% duty imposed on luxuries such as sugar and coffee; the wheat tariff more than doubled to 30 lire per tonne (subsequently rising to 50 lire in 1888 and 75 lire in 1894); and steel and manufactured products enjoyed even higher and more complicated levels of protections (Clark, Citation1984, p. 95). (Throughout this paper, Italian text quoted in English has been translated by the author, except when the cited reference is to a published English language translation.) 4Fiorino & Ricciuti (Citation2008, p. 11), reporting on the influence that groups protected by the protective measures of 1887 on government spending between 1876 and 1913, conclude by pointing ‘to the role of the iron and steel industries as the most powerful interest group. Our analysis indirectly suggests that Italy followed a model of economic development in which “manchesterian” experiences (the textile industry) coexisted with high capital-to-labor ratio industries (the heavy industry).’ 5I would like to thank Juerg Weber for pointing this out. 6However, a copy of the report eventually found its way to Maffeo Pantaleoni, and it was then passed to Napoleone Colajanni, a deputy from Sicily, who read extracts of the report to Parliament in December 1892 (Seton-Watson, Citation1967, p. 155). At the end of 1893, Pareto reported this scandal to the English-speaking world, laying the blame squarely on Giolitti (Pareto, Citation1893, pp. 720–721). 7It should be acknowledged though that protectionism in Italy started to decline from the late 1890s onwards. In view of this, Giovanni Federico & Antonio Tena Citation(1998) have questioned whether, for the period 1870 to 1920 as a whole, Italy can be generally characterised as a highly protectionist economy. 8The history of the emergence of the Giornale degli Economisti is carefully and clearly outlined in Dibattito tra Economisti Italiani di Fine Ottocento (Magnani, Citation2003; see McLure Citation2007, pp. 50–53). 9Giovanni Busino has examined Pareto's views on Cavallotti and the relationship between Pantaleoni, Pareto and Cavallotti in L'Italia di Vilfredo Pareto (1989, pp. 260–271). Busino cites Pareto's telling pre-‘cronaca’ observation of 1888 that Cavallotti's ‘radicalism is political rather than economic, which, in the present state of minds in Italy, is a virtue rather than a fault’ (quoted in Busino, Citation1989, p. 261). Fiorenzo Mornati Citation(2001) has also observed that in this period Pareto was deeply interested in the practical problems associated with the construction of a socialist state and the allocation of resources, focusing on matters such as responsibility for public administration, justice, the organisation of production and the implementation of redistribution. Pareto's interest in the politics of the extreme left is best viewed from this practical, rather than from an ideological, perspective. 10Georges Henri Bousquet (Citation1961, p. 213), a student of Pareto in Lausanne, suggested that while Pareto had no sympathy for socialism per se, he was offended by the persecution of the socialists. Nevertheless, the humanitarian element of Pareto's liberalism, especially his concern for the poor, is not dissimilar to the sentiment that is often associated with socialism. 11 Pareto was also a contributor to Turati's journal Critica Sociale. 12For example, in Les Systèmes Socialistes, Pareto (Citation1901–02, p. 129) is highly critical of the idea of a harmony of interests and utopian liberalism. 13The empirical results for what we now call ‘Pareto's law’ of income distribution provided some support for Pareto's focus on the winners and losers from public policy. His interpretation of this law did not rule out a change in inequality resulting from redistribution policies, but it did suggest that the scope for such change was limited. The validity of Pareto's law is, however, another topic (and one with an extensive literature). 14Pareto's home was a villa in Céligny, Switzerland and he was often referred to as ‘il solitario di Céligny’, an epitaph that he found rather amusing. 15In a more formal sense, Pareto defined sociology so broadly that it actually incorporated economics, with sociological study of economic phenomena presented as a synthesis of economic science and general sociology. The less history matters, the greater the role for economic science in the study of the means-ends aspect of logical action; the more that history matters, the greater the role for sociological analysis in the study of the non-logical aspect of phenomena for which subjective intent and objective outcome are interdependent. 16Pareto introduced the neologism ‘ophelimity’ to refer to the notion of utility as it is now generally used in consumer theory. When he discussed welfare propositions in sociology, as in his article ‘Il Massimo di Utilità per un Collettività in Sociologia’ (Pareto, Citation1913 1980), he controlled for the endogenous aspect of his sociological notion of utility by suggesting that, if a government is intent on maximising social welfare, it may define the welfare function after giving due consideration to individuals views on their welfare vis-à-vis the welfare of others. While this article is of great historical significance, it represented, in Pareto's own words, a ‘first step in the theory of social utility’ (Pareto, Citation1913 1980, p. 605). 17Pareto applied his general sociology to Italian and European society in works such as Fatti e Teorie (1920) and the Trasformazione della Democrazia (1921). 18Analysis in the Sociologia is, of course, more sophisticated from a theoretical perspective, and the scope of the inquiry is much more general (as it is incorporated within a ‘general’ theory of social equilibrium). However, the substance of political circumstances that triggered Pareto's acerbic criticism of particular policies in the chronicles is reported in much the same manner. 19In his major contributions to economic science, polemic and sarcastic rhetoric is not eliminated, but it is much reduced. The main exception is Pareto's debate with Gaetano Scorza, which is a spectacular example of Pareto deploying abuse and sarcasm to preface an otherwise purely scientific examination of welfare theory (see McLure, Citation2000). While strong language was not unknown in Italian academic circles, the force of Pareto's language is extreme even by the standards of his contemporaries. 20Pareto (Citation1916, p. 1113) muses that there are people who still think that in order ‘to know realities we can again go back to the dreams of Plato revamped by Hegel’; and Rouseau's work on the ‘general will’ is presented by Pareto (Citation1916, p. 1408) as simply a ‘game that is to the liking of Rouseau's admirers, and they go on playing it’. Furthermore, the distinction that Comte ‘tries to draw between theological faith and a positive faith is altogether imaginary … Comte's “positivistic” faith may be more or less useful to society than what he calls a theological faith—that question remains open. [But] both types of faith lie outside the logico-experimental domain’ (Pareto, Citation1916, p. 986). 21Pareto's criticism of Mill is perhaps more substantive than impertinent because it derives from a core aspect of Paretian sociology. When the subjective and objective phenomena are interdependent, action will be classed as ‘non-logical’ when considered from the means-end perspective, as it is in the Sociologia. According to Pareto, most human activity is non-logical (but not illogical), and much of it is socially beneficial. In short, Pareto did not see any direct nexus between the truth of a doctrine from a scientific perspective and the benefit that that doctrine could have for society. 22Mauro Fasiani (Citation1949, p. 270) came to the conclusion that ‘Pareto was the greatest enemy of himself: because of the force he gave to his thought and the attitudes he seemed to show off. The main fault he is explicitly or tacitly charged with, from many sides, would appear to be an unrestrained arrogance accompanied by a certain ill will towards the whole of the thinking world’. 23When utility is endogenous, the implicit units by which social utility is measured will change at each point in the cyclical oscillation of the social equilibrium. This explains why comparison of collective social welfare under different states of social equilibrium is highly problematic (see footnote 16 above).