Pareto's Chronicles: Liberty and the Left

The ‘second series’ of the Giornale degli Economisti commenced in 1890. It revealed a notable change in editorial direction from the earlier series, which was a direct result of Alberto Zorli being joined by leading liberal intellectuals, Ugo Mazzola, Antonio de Viti de Marco and Maffeo Pantaleoni, as the Journal’s proprietary directors. In regard to economic science, the second series saw the Journal establish itself as the leading Italian distributor of the new marginalism. In regard to politics, it became a leading advocate for liberal policy. To that end, the Journal published a special feature from 1891 entitled ‘cronaca’, which critically chronicled practical developments in Italian public policy, public finances and the state of the economy. In 1893 Pareto took over from Ugo Mazzola as author of the chronicles, a role he continued to perform until 1897. His contributions were, overwhelmingly, critical of interventionist and militaristic actions of the Italian Government. The purpose of this paper is to place Pareto’s chronicles in their historical context and search for comments that hint at the subsequent development of sociological theory. This will be achieved by: interpreting Pareto’s ‘cronaca’ with reference to political developments in Italy from the 1880s to 1897; identifying practical illustrations in the ‘cronaca’ concerning liberty and the extreme left in Italian society; and identifying three broad consistencies between Pareto’s ‘non-scientific’ ‘Cronaca’ and his scientific ‘General Sociology’.