Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) is best remembered as a founding father of both modern sociology and contemporary, neoclassical economics. Yet, in an eventful and rich life, he came to scholarship quite late, in his 40s, after having been a passionate advocate of free market and democratic reforms in Italy. This lecture will explore Pareto’s encounter with politics and his outrage at Italy’s corruption and crony capitalism, and will argue that his political realism was actually forged in his experience of dealing with Italian politics. The lecture will present a sketch of Pareto’s liberalism, comparing his views with thinkers such as Frederic Bastiat, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer.

Alberto Mingardi is associate professor of the history of political thought at IULM University in Milan and a Presidential Scholar in Political Theory at Chapman University. He is Director General of the Italian free-market think tank  Istituto Bruno Leoni, which he founded. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Cato Institute and Secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society. He blogs at EconLog. His last books available in English are Classical Liberalism and the Industrial Working Class: The Economic Thought of Thomas Hodgskin (London, 2020) and, with Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State (Great Barrington, MD, 2020).