Wilfredo Pareto 1848-1923

Abstract

Those who begin their economics studies by reading Pareto will be deeply impressed by his thinking. However, few will become "paretianos", because there was never - and I think it would be impossible - a school of Wilfredo Pareto's own, his scheme is too broad, global, Catholic, for him to do school. There are also no marshallists, because equally wide is Alfredo Marshall's flight.
Both are creators of a system to such a comprehensive point that it is confused with science as a whole.
When Pareto wrote of economics (from 1869 to 1912), our science already spoke English. Writing in Italian or French, as this Swiss professor (Italian by birth, French mother, born on French soil and teacher in Lausanne) did, made him a second-rate economist, unknown to English-speaking colleagues, who are the ones who count in our science.
His father was a Genoese Marquis, exiled in France, for his mazzinism; married to a French woman. So Pareto will be "Italian ma anche Francesa". Wilfredo was born in 1848 and his family returned to Italy in 1858, on the occasion of that year's amnesty.