Vilfredo Pareto vs Marx Flashcards
Differences between theories on social conflict
what is a pluto-democracy
According to Pareto, the term to describe many European societies in his time refers to societies governed by the rich. (hybrid state)
- societies were mechanisms for the elite to rule over the masses (politically, economically, military, corporate and other members of the elite).
Who said, “Aristocracies do not last, History is a graveyard of aristocracies.”
Vilfredo Pareto
“Legal violence is the consequence of the norms established in a society, and in general resort to it is more beneficial or at least less harmful than resort to private violence”
Pareto - The Use of Force in Society
What is a derivation?
non-logical theories that people use to explain what they believe to be doing when engaging in non-logical ways of behaviour.
- accepted on the basis of emotions and feelings
- attempt to hide realities
What was Pareto critical of?
- the legacy of the Enlightenment
- view of that social change is motivated by rational ideas like Reason, progress, or desire for liberty
- He believed most social action (exception of science and strictly economic behaviour is driven by irrational sentiments and that mankind deludes itself to the real causes of social and historical change.
What does Pareto mean by demystify social life?
- unmasking the realities behind the appearances of social life.
- show that most powerful systems of abstract thought had influenced the course of human history or helped shape society were inspired by underlying impulses and irrational sentiments. (everything is not real)
Did Pareto believe in democracies?
No. “a government of the people, by the people and for the people” any society that claimed such a title was fooling itself.
- or actually the elite were fooling the masses.
- dismiss as utopian the idea of working class liberating itself, against the “nature of things”
- Marx naive to deny the natural and inevitable tendency of elite domination
What is the circulation of elites? Pareto KC
- theory of regime change
- cyclic theory of the periodic rise and fall of political elites, or ruling dynasties.
- some rules through coercive force and harsh methods of social control (hard power)
- others manipulation, deception and cunning (soft power) ie: foxes
What is the persistence of power?
What is the Pareto rule?
- 80 percent 20 percent rule
- 80% of an output will be produced by 20% of the population
- aka law of the vital few
Pareto’s typology of social action?
- Logical action
- Non-logical action
- illogical action
Elements of Non-logical action
sentiments: basic psychological drives, deep seated impulses, biological urges
residues: tangible effects of sentiments, manifested sentiments, directly observed, described
derivations: social actors that offer logical reasons, motives, causes and other pretexts to explain and justify peoples actions in society.
How many kinds of sentiments?
1 Residues - 6 classes
2 Derivation - 4 classes
Social circulation
Foxes (speculators): inclination to combine things, maintain their power through diplomacy and skillful manipulation
- innovation, calculation, imagination etc.
Lions (rentiers): group persistence / persistence of aggregates
group persistence
- devotion to duty
- protection of national honor
- defence of trad. institutions
what is historical materialism? Marx KP
theory of history and society
- focus for human history should be on how communities and societies make their livelihood and produce their subsistence (mode of production)
what is mode of production?
- the way a society is organized to produce its own subsistence and livelihood
- primitive = hunting and gathering
- ancient = slavery
- feudal = agriculture
- industrial capitalist = machine production
- develops its own political and cultural superstructure
- analyzed though forces and relations of production
** influences all aspects of social life
what did Marx mean by false consciousness?
- the inability of members of a social class to correctly identify their position in relation to other classes (esp. dom class)
- social classes of society accept the ideology of the ruling class even when their own interests are structurally opposed to those of the ruling class
what is alienation? Marx KP
- those who labour (work) for their livelihood, lose control over the products of their labour and the conditions of their work. (sell themselves)
- workers alienated from the products, other workers and themselves
- evolved into economic concept of “exploitation”
what is exploitation?
- process where the surplus value is extracted from the worker during commodity production.
- more than term of moral condemnation
- hidden mechanism that wealth is accumulated in capitalist society
What is class struggle?
- not as the same as today
- division b/w those who owned and controlled the means of production and those who owned nothing except their own ability to work for a living.
- ownership vs non-ownership of economic resources
