SOURCE: "Pareto's Republic," in Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas, The Viking Press, 1939, pp. 348-55.

In the following essay, Lerner offers a highly critical view of P areto 's sociological thought.

Take a Machiavelli, with his amazing sense of the springs of human conduct and his cynicism about ethics; soak him in the modern worship of scientific method; hard-boil him in a hatred for democracy in all its manifestations; fill him with an intense animus against proletarian movements and Marxian theory; add a few dashes of economic fundamentalism; stir it all with a poetic feeling about the ruling élite; sprinkle thoroughly with out-ofthe-way erudition; season with a good deal of acuteness and homely wisdom; and serve at interminable length. If you follow this recipe you should have something that resembles Pareto's treatise on The Mind and Society.

I do not want to underestimate the personal...