Revue européenne des sciences sociales

European Journal of Social Sciences

51-2 | 2013
Autour de Pareto

Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of

ideal political theory
Joseph V. Femia

Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ress/2554
DOI: 10.4000/ress.2554
ISSN: 1663-4446

Publisher
Librairie Droz

Printed version
Date of publication: 15 December 2013
Number of pages: 133-148
ISBN: 978-2-600-01805-0
ISSN: 0048-8046

Electronic reference
Joseph V. Femia, « Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory », Revue européenne des
sciences sociales [Online], 51-2 | 2013, Online since 01 January 2017, connection on 19 March 2020.
URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ress/2554 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ress.2554

© Librairie Droz
 PARETO, MACHIAVELLI, AND
THE CRITIQUE OF IDEAL POLITICAL THEORY*
joseph v. femia
University of Liverpool
femia@liverpool.ac.uk

Abstract. Recent years have witnessed the growing prominence of a “realist” challenge
to the prevailing paradigm of normative political philosophy. It is argued that “ideal
theory” is fact-insensitive and presupposes conditions that are at odds with the reali-
ties of politics. While the “non-ideal” approach to political philosophy presents itself
as something new, this article demonstrates, to the contrary, that it originated in the
work of Machiavelli, and that it was – in more recent times – developed by Pareto. The
cogency of the realist critique of abstract speculation is also demonstrated. Still, political
realism remains susceptible to the objection that it rationalises the status quo and offers
no basis for systemic change. In response, this article argues that Machiavelli and – espe-
cially – Pareto provided the intellectual tools to deal with this objection. Social and poli-
tical change, in their analysis, can be justified on functional rather than ideal grounds.
Keywords : Vilfredo Pareto, Niccolò Machiavelli, normative political theory, realism,
functionalism.

Résumé. Au cours des dernières années, la prééminence de la philosophie politique

d’inspiration normative s’est vue peu à peu contestée par le paradigme « réaliste ». On a
reproché à la « théorie idéaliste » d’être insensible aux faits et de présupposer des condi-
tions non concordantes avec les réalités politiques. Alors que l’approche « non-idéa-
liste » se présente comme relativement nouvelle, cet article entend démontrer qu’elle
trouve au contraire son origine dans les écrits de Machiavel et qu’elle fut développée plus
récemment par Pareto. Si la pertinence de la critique réaliste à l’encontre des specula-
tions abstraites n’est plus à démontrer, le réalisme politique donne néanmoins prise à la
critique en ce qu’il rationalise le statu quo et ne fournit pas d’interprétation convaincante
du changement systémique. À cet égard, cet article vise à montrer que Machiavel et, plus
particulièrement, Pareto ont forgé des outils intellectuels susceptibles de répondre à
une telle objection. Il peut en effet être rendu compte du changement politique et social,
dans leur analyse respective, sur la base d’une pensée fonctionaliste plutôt qu’idéaliste.
Mots-clés : Vilfredo Pareto, Niccolò Machiavelli, théorie politique normative, réalisme,
fonctionnalisme.

* Cet article a précédemment paru dans Joseph V. Femia et Alasdair J. Marshall (eds), 2013,
Vilfredo Pareto: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries, Farnham (UK), Ashgate, p. 73-83. Il est réédité
ici avec la permission de Ashgate Publishing Ldt.

revue européenne des sciences sociales n o 51-2 – p. 133-148

134 Joseph V. Femia : Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory

For a couple of generations now, the dominant model of political theory – at

least in the English-speaking world – has been to formulate ideal principles
and concepts, and to assume that these must be expressed in political action.
Since this model presupposes “the priority of the moral over the political”
(Williams, 2005, p.2), it can be labelled “political moralism”. Since its prac-
titioners (Rawls, Dworkin, Raz, Habermas, to name a few) are preoccupied
with characteristic liberal themes, such as justice, individual autonomy, human
rights, and democratic deliberation, it is sometimes referred to as “liberal
moralism”. In all its forms, it assumes, in the Kantian tradition, that reason
can give us access to a fixed and stable moral order.
A striking feature of this type of theorising is its anti-political bias. As
Glen Newey points out, the implementation of rational patterns of life, whate-
ver their content, “would herald the end of politics” (2001, p.7), if by that term
we mean the clash of interests and opinions. One is reminded of Marx’s view
of communism, “the riddle of history solved”, a society of perfect transparency
and solidarity, where politics in the familiar sense of the word “withers away”.
Marx realised that the supersession of politics spells the supersession of poli-
tical philosophy. Normative political philosophers of the present day resemble
Marx in their search for a “final solution” to problems of political and social
organisation, one that would render further speculation otiose. Even Habermas,
who apparently wants to subject us to incessant political deliberation, assumes
that universal dialogic procedures or discursive principles, which themselves
embody absolute moral commitments, will provide a means of rationally resol-
ving practical discord. The purpose of public debate is merely to endorse deci-
sions generated by reason. The aim of political theory, for Habermas as for
other political moralists, is to arrive at a set of ideal prescriptions rather than
to justify preferences in the context of existing values and political constraints.
Perhaps inevitably, this reduction of political theory to applied ethics has
given rise to a counter-movement of philosophers or theorists who find it insuf-
ficiently realistic and insufferably arrogant. The first rumblings of discontent
were audible in the late 1980s, when Judith Shklar (1989) urged us to subs-
titute a “liberalism of fear” for the more fashionable liberalism of hopes and
Revue européenne des sciences sociales 135

dreams. But the reaction against political moralism has gathered pace during
the past decade or so, with an increasing number of theorists challenging
the idealistic identification of politics with mankind’s most noble aspirations
(e.g. Newey, 2001; Williams, 2005; Mills, 2005; Farrelly, 2007; Miller, 2008, and
Geuss, 2008). Now of course, Pareto scholars will know that he too was a critic
of normative political theory, and that he worked in the tradition of political
realism founded by Machiavelli (see Femia, 2006, chs. 4,6). Like the Florentine,
Pareto conceived “the political” as a product of the appetitive nature of human
beings, and ridiculed theorists who, positing a cosmic purpose or order, dreamt
up imaginary republics of ideal virtue, without even the slightest genuflection to
things as they are (Pareto, 1935 [1916], §277, §300). In the modern era, Pareto
can be seen as the standard-bearer of political realism, which he opposed to
the Enlightenment moralising that dominated the political discourse of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet the “new realists” do not seem to be
aware of his existence. Some of them barely even mention Machiavelli. While
they attack liberal moralism for its lack of historicity, their own awareness of
the past hardly inspires confidence. But, needless to say, the fact that they are
essentially “reinventing the wheel” does not negate the validity of their argu-
ments. In what follows, I want to examine the main criticisms of political or
liberal moralism, and to argue that consideration of the attempts by Machiavelli
and Pareto to establish political realism can shed light on the strengths and
weaknesses of that approach.

1. THE CRITIQUE
Realist objections to normative political theory can be divided into four
categories. First of all, it is deemed to be descriptively inadequate, insisting on
the idealisation of reality “to the exclusion or at least marginalisation of the
actual”(Mills, 2005, p.167). That is to say, it ignores the realities of power
and recalcitrant political institutions; it pretends that traditions or economic
constraints do not exist, and turns a blind eye to the plurality of values and
interests in modern society. Assuming, as did Kant, that politics is the applica-
tion of a priori principles, discoverable by the exercise of pure reason, it seems
136 Joseph V. Femia : Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory

to be addressed to benign dictators in the Platonic mould who are empowered

to enact morally perfect schemes – though no such audience exists in contem-
porary society. Such criticisms echo Pareto’s scorn for what he called “meta-
physical” thinking, which tried to demonstrate particular facts by means of
general principles, instead of deriving the general principles from the facts. As
he described his own theoretical project: “We have no knowledge whatever
of what [...] ought to be. We are looking strictly for what is.” (1935 [1916], §28).
Pareto was unremittingly hostile to the seductive idea that there is something
perfect, a realm of Platonic Forms, which contrasts with the imperfect world
of experience, and holds out the prospect of political and moral finality. In
common with Machiavelli, who wanted to focus on – as he put it – “real truth”
rather than “imaginary things” (1975 [1531], ch.XV, p.90-91), Pareto was deter-
mined to protect us from the tyranny of abstraction, and to take “experience
and observation” as his guide (1935 [1916], §6).
G.A. Cohen (2003, p.243-245) has responded to this strand of criticism by
arguing that ideals such as justice are completely independent of facts about
human social existence. Principles of justice tell us what we should think, not
what we should do. Factual constraints are relevant to the application of such prin-
ciples, but the principles themselves must remain pure, cleansed of all empirical
considerations. However, you do not have to be a Machiavellian realist to wonder
whether the validation of moral principles can be independent of all facts. Take
the concept of justice. A moment’s reflection will tell you that it becomes an
issue only in what David Hume called the “circumstances of justice” – scarcity
and limited altruism. If both material resources and human compassion were
infinite, there would be no need for rules governing the distribution of benefits
and burdens. To assume, as does Cohen, that a concept which owes its very exis-
tence to factual limitations could be “fact-insensitive” is conceptually incoherent
(Farrelly, 2007, p.844-845). Consider another example. Could the moral objec-
tion to torture survive if mankind had a much reduced susceptibility to pain?
Revue européenne des sciences sociales 137

This reference to human nature, to the natural human condition, brings

us neatly to the second type of criticism levelled at the political moralists: that
their theories violate the “ought implies can” proviso and are therefore prac-
tically unrealisable. The “motivations that are morally required of us”, asserts
Thomas Nagel, “must be practically and psychologically possible, otherwise our
political theory will be utopian in the bad sense” (1987, p.218). Normative poli-
tical thinkers tend to ignore this advice. They assume idealised human capaci-
ties and pay little or no heed to the limitations of human nature. Cosmopolitan
theories of global justice, for example, rely on the prevalence (eventually, if not
now) of an almost boundless altruism. Listen to Thomas Pogge, who seems
to believe that strangers in distant lands are no less entitled to our beneficent
concern than are our closest relatives: “[...] individual human beings are what
ultimately matter; they matter equally, and nobody is exempted by distance or
lack of shared community from political demands arising out of the counting
of everybody equally” (1994, p.86). Similarly, the Habermasian ideal of endless
democratic discourse presupposes the availability of almost unlimited time – or
at least unlimited willingness to engage in public debate. Both Machiavelli and
Pareto, by way of contrast, saw selfishness or egotism as a natural property of
the human species. Indeed, the supposed constancy of human nature was what
allowed them to discover repeated patterns in history. They poured scorn on
all attempts to imagine man as an ideal moral being, and – like the present-day
realists – saw no point in judging the real against a vision of perfection.
But here the moralists can enter a plausible objection. Surely moral prin-
ciples should allow us to criticise agents and practices that fail to conform to
them. If we make no demands on the human capacity to make sacrifices for
others, or for the common good, if we always assume the worst about human
nature, how can we ever discover its limits? However, it is one thing to expect
morality to challenge existing thought patterns; it is quite another to make
demands that are alien to our deep-seated emotional needs and responses, such
as our instinctive valuation of associative duties over those to remote strangers.
As David Miller (2005, 2008) has argued, the universalism of normative poli-
tical theory requires too much of people – to act purely with regard to rational
138 Joseph V. Femia : Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory

considerations, to abstract oneself from all social particularity and become a

citizen of nowhere, an impartial actor. There is the danger of slipping into a
kind of absolutism, where – in the words of C.A.J. Coady – the “morally advisable
becomes the morally obligatory, or the somewhat morally preferable becomes a
stern duty” (2008, p.17). The purveyors of such absolutism, it could be argued,
condemn themselves to moral irrelevance. A deontological ethic (I have Cohen in
mind) in which the definition of what is right is not derived from a calculation of
what is possible would oblige us to hold (oddly) that certain actions are morally
obligatory even though no one, or hardly anyone, can be expected to perform
them. Of course, this argument could be pushed too far. By definition the ideal
stands in opposition to the real, and not even Machiavelli and Pareto wanted to
deny that we could aspire to something better than the status quo. Moreover,
the present unrealisability of an ideal does not show that it is unrealisable tout court.
Slavery was once seen to be an entrenched part of the natural order, and those
who opposed it were dismissed as idealistic visionaries. While there is no dispu-
ting such considerations, it is generally understood that moral thinking must pay
attention to possibility and feasibility if it is to avoid destructive outcomes.
This brings us to the third type of criticism levelled at political moralism:
that attempts to implement ideals, however admirable these ideals might seem,
can lead to unintended and unwelcome consequences. The main problem here
is the alleged mismatch between natural human behaviour and the require-
ments of the ideal. Machiavelli expressed this point with brutal clarity in chap-
ter 15 of The Prince, where he issued a warning to all “well-meaning” statesmen:
“[...] the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide
that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns
the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.” (1975 [1531], p.91).
Pareto, defending Machiavelli against the charge of immorality, points out how
hard it is to get people to face inconvenient political facts: “Anyone viewing the
facts objectively, anyone not minded deliberately to shut his eyes to the light, is
forced willy-nilly to recognize that it is not by being moralists that rulers make
their countries prosperous.” If anyone is to blame for this unpleasant truth, it
is not the rulers but “‘corrupt’ humanity” (Pareto, 1935 [1916], §1975, §2410).
Revue européenne des sciences sociales 139

But those who are enamoured of normative ideals are not only accused of
harbouring illusions about the powers and capacities of ordinary people and
ordinary politicians; they are also berated for ignoring empirical constraints
and competing ideals. In Machiavellian fashion, the critics draw attention to the
paradox that virtues can become vices in a political context. It is not sufficient,
they say, for philosophers to evaluate an ideal itself, in all its pristine purity;
we must also assess the likely or necessary moral costs of the changeover to
the supposedly ideal system. In Pareto’s words, we should “consider both the
intended and the incidental effects” (ibid., §1864). Certain ideals should be rejec-
ted, not only if it is literally impossible to implement them, but also if in practice
it would be too costly in terms of values we hold dear. According to J. Raikka:
Kant and his followers are wrong in claiming that only social arrangements
that are impossible to carry out are infeasible. When evaluating the feasibi-
lity of a social institution, it is not enough to consider the strong constraints.
Indeed, a political theorist should consider some of the weak constraints too,
namely those that entail moral costs if the suggested institutional arrange-
ments are implemented (Raikka, 1998, p.37).

On this argument, even when a morally desirable ideal is infeasible only in

the weaker sense, the morally correct approach would be to counsel compro-
mise. Ignoring Voltaire’s famous aphorism that “the best is the enemy of the
good” could produce an outcome that makes the status quo seem attractive.
This argument is open to challenge, however, since it assumes that poli-
tical philosophers can accurately predict the costs of changing social arran-
gements, and in all circumstances. Political scientists, let alone political philo-
sophers, find it difficult to make such predictions; and in any case – say the
defenders of normative theory – the evaluation of social ideals should be distin-
guished from the evaluation of policies designed to implement those ideals
(O’Neill, 1988). This is true to a degree, but our accumulated human expe-
rience does provide solid evidence of the unwanted consequences that can be
generated by pursuing certain ideals. The complexity of social causation need
not reduce us to cognitive helplessness. While the twentieth century experi-
ment in communism is an obvious example, there are other, less dramatic
140 Joseph V. Femia : Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory

ones. We now know, for instance, that our high-minded efforts to aid poor
individuals and countries can result in debilitating cycles of dependency. For
a political philosopher simply to ignore such considerations when devising an
ideal scenario would seem to be remiss, given that they appear to be grounded
in unavoidable economic and administrative imperatives, and in permanent
patterns of human motivation. An “ideal” theory is hardly ideal if its imple-
mentation will almost certainly entail significant moral costs.
It could be argued, however, that this “realist” argument is based on a narrow
understanding of the functions served by universal ideals. Furnishing a blueprint
for radical change is only one such function. As John Rawls (1999, p.216) has
argued, an ideal conception gives us a standard by which to measure reality. How
could we ever use the term “unjust” unless we had an ideal standard of justice
to guide our judgement? This is an unconvincing argument. In order to identify
individual cases of injustice, we need possess only a loose principle of fairness,
which need not aspire to universality or timelessness. It may simply be inherent
in the habitual practices of our society. How many people feel the necessity to
consult an ideal political philosopher before making such judgements?
We therefore come to the fourth and final criticism of political moralism:
that it lacks an historical perspective and shows no understanding that moral
vocabularies will necessarily vary over time and space (e.g. Williams, 2005, p.13).
When it comes to morality, realists are cognitive pessimists, who doubt that
such a thing as “truth” exists or is usefully accessible to human intelligence.
Political concepts, they tend to believe, are subject to competing interpretations
and historical changes of meaning. It follows that the quest for an Archimedean
point, removed from any context, is futile. In its Marxist, or postmarxist, form,
this perspective goes so far as to accuse the liberal moralists of being bourgeois
ideologists, reflecting in their ideas and values the interests and experiences
of their own class. To Mills, their social ontology “will typically assume the
abstract and undifferentiated equal atomic individuals of classical liberalism”.
This ontology is oblivious to the “relations of structural domination” that
profoundly shape the thought and behaviour of all social agents. The hypos-
tatised individual that dominates the discourse of liberal political philosophy,
Revue européenne des sciences sociales 141

that “natural” possessor of rights and freedoms, that exemplar of rationality, is

nothing but a false universal, a mental construct, detached from the hegemo-
nic ideologies and group-specific experiences that distort our perceptions of
the social order (Mills, 2005, p.168-172).
But one can reject the “spurious universalism” (ibid., p.173) of normative
theory without endorsing class analysis and all its attendant intellectual baggage.
Pareto, for his part, insisted on the inevitability of historical and cultural variation
in the normative content of political concepts. Like Machiavelli and other realists,
he was hostile to “essentialism” and to the assumption that “logic” and “reason”
could or should dictate human behaviour (Pareto, 1935 [1916], §69, §300, §471).
For him, ethical standards were not universal and rational truths but histori-
cally conditioned products of changing circumstances and shifting passions. The
idea that such standards had a purely “logical” foundation was antithetical to
his account of human psychology, which assumed that “sentiments”, or – in his
distinctive jargon – “residues”, determined our behaviour, and that what we call
rational judgement was merely an exercise in ex post facto justification for instinc-
tive preferences (ibid., §359). For example, when a person says “That thing is
unjust” what he really means, according to Pareto, is “that the thing is offen-
sive to his sentiments” (ibid., §1210). These psychic states (sentiments/residues)
were, in Pareto’s opinion, more or less universal responses, but their theoretical
expression – belief systems or “derivations” – varied according to context. From a
Paretian perspective, then, the contractarian theory of Rawls would be dismissed
as “essentialist” or “metaphysical” in its assumption of an objective idea of
justice, floating above all historical and cultural particularities. Pareto was a critic
of contract theory, seeing it as a bogus and futile attempt to escape temporal
criteria of judgement (ibid., §.1146, §1504-1507). For him, political categories such
as “justice” are functional rather than objective – serving both psychic and social
needs. They can never achieve closure since their content – unlike their under-
lying motivation – is culturally determined (ibid., §1893). Pareto’s argument finds
an echo in those critics of Rawls – often cultural relativists - who maintain that
his theory of justice is nothing more than a liberal theory of justice, reflecting the
outlook of comfortable American professors.
142 Joseph V. Femia : Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory

Rawls and other normative theorists might object that such criticisms confuse
questions of origin with questions of validation. The existence of historical and
cultural diversity does not rule out the possibility that one single idea or ideal is
indeed the true one, with the rest being impostors. Well, perhaps – but the libe-
ral idealists scrupulously avoid any reference to God or Revelation. In the absence
of divine intervention, what mysterious factor or attribute has allowed them to
overcome the cultural limitations that have afflicted all previous thinkers, and
to arrive at the one true concept of humanity? Pareto was contemptuous of such
pretentions. In his view, even if abstract moral absolutes did exist, we could
never discover what they are, as they correspond to “nothing real”, nothing
tangible (ibid., §1551). Except in the realms of logic and mathematics, we cannot
demonstrate the truth or existence of what we cannot observe, or reduce to a
set of identifiable empirical operations, performances, or capacities. For Pareto,
as we have seen, abstract concepts such as “justice” are used to designate speci-
fic situations that agreeably stimulate our sentiments (ibid., §1210, §1609). Yet
normative philosophers persist in their tortuous efforts to “prove” that the term
refers to some objective reality that is not immediately evident to the senses.
Pareto offers a psychological explanation for this otherwise puzzling “delusion”:
A person living in a civilised society becomes familiar with certain moral or juri-
dical relationships that are continually shaping his life, with which his mind is
gradually saturated, and which end by becoming part and parcel of his intellectual
personality. Eventually, through group-persistences, through his inclination to
take what is relative as absolute, he carries them beyond the limits within which
they may have been valid. They were adapted to certain circumstances, certain
cases, merely; he makes them serve all cases, all circumstances. So concepts of an
absolute morality and an absolute law come into being (ibid., §1501).

Pareto believes that the “residue” of “sociality” plays an important role here
(ibid., §1429). If a person reading a poem exclaims, “It is beautiful”, he really
means that it seems beautiful to him. Given our social/imitative nature, howe-
ver, anyone hearing the exclamation will feel that the poem ought to make a
similar impression of beauty upon him. And so on and so forth. What was origi-
nally a subjective preference is transmuted into an “objective” fact. The percep-
tion grows that the poem is beautiful, no matter what people may think of it.
Revue européenne des sciences sociales 143

2. TOWARDS A REALIST ALTERNATIVE

Even if we accept, as I do, that the realist criticisms of political or libe-
ral moralism are convincing, this does not necessarily mean that realism
constitutes a viable alternative. Is it really possible, as Machiavelli and Pareto
apparently claimed, to have a purely empirical political theory, one that only
explores (as the Florentine put it) “what is actually done”, not “what should be
done” (1975, ch.XV, p.91)? Are normative preferences not built into our descrip-
tive language? Do our factual claims not often have an evaluative element?
When we describe the glass of water as either half empty or half full, are we
not making a kind of value-judgement? Of course, we could simply say that a
realist theory of politics should be primarily descriptive, even if it cannot avoid
normative content altogether. When Pareto (1935 [1916], §365) writes that it is
“not the function of theory to create beliefs”, he means that theorists should
not presume to develop visions of the good society. It is not a logical corollary
that they should eschew any hint of evaluation in their theoretical analyses. But
there is a further question. Assuming it is possible, is it actually desirable to avoid
direct consideration of “what ought to be”? Are we really willing to renounce
the idea of a political “good” that transcends the actual, and to define politics
as nothing more than the struggle for power and advantage? As Rawls has
pointed out, “the limits of the possible are not given by the actual” (1999, p.12).
Not without reason, the realist outlook is routinely lambasted for reifying the
present by identifying existing arrangements with abstract necessity.
Despite their frequent professions of perfect scientific impartiality, neither
Machiavelli nor Pareto rejected all normative claims. Although they offered no
explicit conception of “the good”, nor any notion of the ideal arrangement of
society, they both expressed clear political preferences. The former thinker
defended the virtues of republican governance and called for the expulsion of
foreign forces from the Italian peninsula; the latter was a champion of free
market principles. Rather like Marx, however, they saw these preferences as
emerging, almost naturally, from their empirical observations. When discussing
Machiavelli, Antonio Gramsci – Marx’s most eminent Italian disciple – reminded
us that hostility to abstract universals does not necessarily exclude normative
144 Joseph V. Femia : Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory

aspirations, as long as these originate in real, observable social trends, and not
in “idle fancy, yearning, daydream”. Far from being a Kantian moral imperative,
the “ought-to-be” is, properly conceived, a projection of forms and principles
inherent in existing reality (1971 [1929-1935], p.130, p.172). Gramsci is not saying
that values can be logically deduced from facts about the world; he is simply saying
that political values and goals should have a factual, as opposed to speculative,
basis. It seems to me that the normative preferences expressed by Machiavelli
and Pareto satisfy this criterion. In their writings, we can find the outline of a
“realistic” political theory that can nevertheless transcend the present and fulfil
the natural human desire for improvement. The theorist, on this conception,
immerses himself in “what exists” in order to change society. But why does the
realist thinker want to change society? After all, he disparages the doctrinal libe-
ral for seeking to eradicate the mysteries of the human world by substituting for
them the certainty of applied reason. The answer perhaps lies in what is, for poli-
tical realism, the primary political objective: namely, the establishment of order
and the conditions for cooperation. To most realists, the requirements of good
order will not remain static. Because of the appetitive and competitive nature
of human beings, order is precarious and susceptible to being undermined by
any of the infinite variety of life’s contingencies. Given this existential instability,
given this assumption that transience is part of the human condition, the main-
tenance of a balance of mutual advantage will often entail the need for innova-
tion. Ought propositions, in other words, would be fundamentally determined
by the struggle for power, and not by a desire to impose timeless moral truths.
In defence of this position, Gramsci refused to accept a dichotomy between
realism and idealism (ibid., p.172): “The opposition between Savonarola and
Machiavelli is not an opposition between what is and what ought to be [...],
but one between two concepts of what ought to be: the abstract and phan-
tasmagorical concept of Savonarola, and the realistic concept of Machiavelli”.
Machiavelli was keen to mobilise the Italian people for progressive ends – ulti-
mately, the creation of a unified national state. But, to him, these ends were
not imaginative constructs or logical deductions from first principles. To the
contrary, they were practical aspirations, grounded in objective historical
Revue européenne des sciences sociales 145

forces. Gramsci, in his attempt to explain the nature of Machiavelli’s project,

distinguished between two types of realism: one wishes only to “manage” the
status quo, to preserve the existing configuration of power; the other is willing
to pursue a radical agenda, since it views empirical reality not as “something
static and immobile”, but as “a relation of forces in continuous motion” (ibid.).
Gramsci saw his own thought (and Marxism in general) as exemplifying this
“transformative” type of realism, whose origin he attributed to Machiavelli.
Pareto, too, maintained that the social system is “constantly changing in
form” (1935 [1916], §2067). It is “never at perfect rest”, he informs us; “it is in
a perpetual state of becoming” (1966 [1921], p.299). While he focuses on social
equilibrium, it is a dynamic equilibrium, analogous to that of a living organism,
not one defined by coexisting properties in a static system (1935 [1916], §2072).
It was mentioned earlier that realists could advocate change as a way of preser-
ving social order in the face of instability. The richness of Pareto’s analysis
allows us to explore this idea in greater depth. By way of preliminaries, let
us bear in mind that realism, in the Machiavellian sense, is not just about
practicality; it also involves the uncovering of hidden truths (motives, power
relations, perverse consequences) lurking beneath the veneer of pieties and
platitudes that sustains the status quo. The realist typically wants to lift the
veils of euphemism and portray social and political life as it really is, without
embellishment. In this sense, the realist, even if he veers to the right, is never
conventionally conservative; he is alive to the contingencies and dysfunctions
of society, and – at least in the cases of Machiavelli and Pareto – takes pleasure
in pointing them out. Even if we remove Marxist “realists” from the equation,
the realist mind-set is potentially, if not actually, subversive; its attachment to
“what is” smacks of conditionality. The underlying structural reality of society
may point in a different direction from its professed values and objectives. In
Pareto’s equilibrium theory, the fundamental reason for such a discrepancy
might lie in economic development, which often requires a corresponding
change in the collective psychology or thought-processes of society in order
to restore stability (ibid., §2340). As a realist, Pareto was hostile to change that
originated in abstract theoretical schemes or in what he dismissed as “sermo-
146 Joseph V. Femia : Pareto, Machiavelli, and the critique of ideal political theory

nizing” (ibid., §2016). Such change he described as “artificial” rather than

“normal” (ibid., §2067-2068), for it is disconnected from observable social
trends. His equilibrium model is broadly “functionalist” in the sense that
actions, whether individual or collective, are “selected” by their functional
consequences. In his phrasing: “It is a matter of selection, the choice being
dictated by the nature of the system” (ibid., §2268). What is functional at one
time may not be functional at other times. Changing circumstances (not just
economic change, but also events such as defeats in war or political upheavals)
may cause a “normal” disturbance to the social balance. Existing modes of
belief and political behaviour may appear “at odds with reality” and therefore
unsustainable in present form. A “society which is not eager to decline or
perish must necessarily reject them” (ibid., §2340).
Those who approach society from a broadly functionalist and realist pers-
pective will not always converge on the identification of dysfunctions or on
their solution. A Marxist like Gramsci will stress the supposed contradictions
of capitalism, along with their resolution in a form of radical socialism. Pareto,
a staunch defender of capitalism, would hardly agree. It should be clear by
now that a realist analysis cannot entirely detach itself from value preferences.
As Gramsci recognised, however, there is no contradiction here. Such prefe-
rences are compatible with realism provided that they are embedded in society
and do not express mere “yearning” or “daydream”. Of course, patterns of
thought and behaviour in any modern society are complex and variable.
Deciding which potential changes are “intrinsic” and which are – in Pareto’s
parlance – “artificial” will inevitably involve a large degree of subjectivity – and
this indeterminacy could be seen as a weakness. But what I think I have shown
is that political moralism, with its exclusively normative concerns, does not
enjoy a monopoly of political morality. Those who reject the abstract idealism
of Anglo-American political philosophy are not thereby condemned to act as
apologists for the status quo. And in their search for guidance in these matters,
they would do well to consult the teachings of Machiavelli and Pareto.
Revue européenne des sciences sociales 147

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