VILFREDO PARETO’S SOCIOLOGY Rethinking Classical Sociology Series Editor: David Chalcraft, University of Derby, UK This series is designed to capture, reflect and promote the major changes that are occurring in the burgeoning field of classical sociology. The series publishes monographs, texts and reference volumes that critically engage with the established figures in classical sociology as well as encouraging examination of thinkers and texts from within the ever-widening canon of classical sociology. Engagement derives from theoretical and substantive advances within sociology and involves critical dialogue between contemporary and classical positions. The series reflects new interests and concerns including feminist perspectives, linguistic and cultural turns, the history of the discipline, the biographical and cultural milieux of texts, authors and interpreters, and the interfaces between the sociological imagination and other discourses including science, anthropology, history, theology and literature. The series offers fresh readings and insights that will ensure the continued relevance of the classical sociological imagination in contemporary work and maintain the highest standards of scholarship and enquiry in this developing area of research. Also in the series: Crossing the Psycho-Social Divide Freud, Weber, Adorno and Elias George Cavalletto ISBN 978 0 7546 4772 0 Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology New Expanded Edition Hans Henrik Bruun ISBN 0 7546 4529 0 Defending the Durkheimian Tradition Religion, Emotion and Morality Jonathan S. Fish ISBN 0 7546 4138 4 What Price the Poor? William Booth, Karl Marx and the London Residuum Ann M. Woodall ISBN 0 7546 4203 8 Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology A Framework for Political Psychology ALASDAIR J. MARSHALL Glasgow Caledonian University, UK © Alasdair J. Marshall 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Alasdair J. Marshall has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Gower House Suite 420 Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405 Hampshire GU11 3HR USA England Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Marshall, Alasdair J. Vilfredo Pareto’s sociology : a framework for political psychology. - (Rethinking classical sociology) 1. Pareto, Vilfredo, 1848-1923 2. Social psychology 3. Political psychology I. Title 02'.092 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marshall, Alasdair. Vilfredo Pareto’s sociology : a framework for political psychology / by Alasdair J. Marshall. p. cm. -- (Rethinking classical sociology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-4978-6 1. Sociology--Philosophy. 2. Pareto, Vilfredo, 1848-1923. I. Title. II. Title: Sociology HM585.M3457 2007 301. 092--dc22 2007025146 ISBN-13: 978 0 7546 4978 6 Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall. Contents List of Tables vii Series Editor’s Preface ix Author’s Preface xix 1 Introduction 1 2 Pareto’s ‘Psychologistic’ Sociology 9 2.1 Pareto and Marx 9 2.2 Pareto’s Elite Theory 10 2.3 A Brief Biography 10 2.4 Pareto’s Italy: Clientelismo and Trasformismo 13 2.5 Pareto and Machiavelli: Similar Theories of Human Nature 21 2.6 Pareto’s Historical Cycle and the Circulation of Elites 25 2.7 Pareto and Parsons: Similar Theories of Social System? 31 2.8 Pareto’s Residues 37 2.9 Conclusion: Pareto’s Political Sociology 41 3 Social Personality 43 3.1 Introduction 43 3.2 Social Personality 45 3.3 Cognitive Indeterminacy 51 3.4 Conservative and Liberal Heuristics under Conditions of Cognitive Indeterminacy 59 3.5 The Evolution of Knowledge through Trial and Error Experimentation 63 3.6 Social Complexity 67 3.7 Conclusion 77 4 Pareto’s Psychology 79 4.1 Introduction 79 4.2 Cultural Conservatism and Liberal Scepticism 83 4.3 Individualism and Collectivism 89 4.4 Creativity 99 4.5 Risk 108 4.6 Force and Fraud 116 4.6.1 Force 116 4.6.2 Fraud 123 4.6.3 The Dark Triad and Superego Strength 134 vi Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology 4.6.4 The Rise of the Dark Triad? 136 4.7 Ideological Conviction-Relativism 142 5 Testing Pareto’s Theory 151 5.1 Introduction 151 5.2 The Student Study 152 5.3 The MP Study: Variable Selection 158 5.4 Scale Analysis 166 5.5 Population Diversity 167 5.6 Comparing the Three Parliamentary Parties 167 5.7 Seniority within Parliament 178 5.8 Do Findings Support Pareto’s Model of Personality? 183 5.8.1 Introduction 183 5.8.2 Conservatism-Liberalism 184 5.8.3 Individualism-Collectivism 184 5.8.4 Dissociation, Aggression and Aloofness 185 5.8.5 Do these Clusters form Broader Personality Configurations? 185 5.8.6 Demographic Analysis 189 5.9 Final Conclusion 191 Bibliography 195 Index 211 List of Tables Table 5.6(a) Differences between the parliamentary parties on all measures 168 Table 5.6(b) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs aged 35–55 173 Table 5.6(c) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs aged 55+ 173 Table 5.6(d) Differences between younger and older MPs of both Parties 174 Table 5.6(e) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs who have spent nine or less years in Parliament 175 Table 5.6(f) Differences between Labour and Conservative MPs who have spent more than nine years in Parliament 175 Table 5.6(g) Differences between less and more politically experienced MPs 176 Table 5.7 Differences between MPs by parliamentary seniority 179 Table 5.8(a) Factor analysis of personality variables 183 Table 5.8(b) Factor analysis of all variables 190 This page intentionally left blank Series Editor’s Preface An 11 page handwritten manuscript, Un bel tacer fu mai scritton, by Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), recently came under the hammer at Christies in London, as part of a Lot that included a number of separate items held together by the theme of mathematical social science. The manuscript – an extended book review, written in Italian at Céligny in 1909 – formed part of the now famous Albin Schram collection of autograph letters and manuscripts, which ran into over 500 lots and whose Sold Total was in excess of £3.8 million. There were a number of items available of interest to social science, including letters by Max Weber and by Adorno. These items sold, often fetching twice their estimates, but, nonetheless, the final prices were far behind those reached for other – mainly literary or historical or natural scientific – items. The Pareto mss had probably found its way into the Schram collection via a transaction in Italy in 2003. I want to use this example of the ‘value’ of an historical sociological document to examine the ‘value’ accorded to classical sociology within sociology and to consider the extent to which the relation of sociology to the classical tradition is a dimension of the history of the discipline or a theoretical enterprise in its own right in which past and present are more or less closely interwoven. These concerns are clearly of relevance to our series Rethinking Classical Sociology. Is the fact that this Pareto manuscript, along with other social science autograph letters, fetched far less than literary pieces – a letter of condolence by John Donne for example – or indeed other historical or scientific lots – an indication of the lack of public interest in sociology, or indeed a lack of a realisation of the historical impacts on thought and institutions and policies of social science in the modern world? Of course, even those items of a scientific nature that ‘did well’ – for example, Darwin always commands a high price as does Freud – did not actually carry within their pages the scientific theories for which these authors are responsible: rather the value came from the aura of association: these were papers that had been seen and touched, and written on by famous persons. And within the disciplines that Darwin and Freud ‘founded’ their legacies are not without severe criticism: that is, lack of contemporary esteem for every idea they formulated does not correlate with the high value of their artefacts. All these items were of differential ‘value’ to private collectors – this was not an auction for academics, though some were no doubt in attendance; but common denominators in determining value were notions of age, authenticity, and when relevant, content (excellent examples of their genre for example). Rarity could play a role in arriving at final price, but the collector is driven to own that which exists, not to be familiar with the content and to intellectually ‘own’ that rather than the relic itself. What principles of value operate in sociology in relation to the texts from the past which date from the foundational eras of the discipline? There were no social
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