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Economics and Sociology Meet Socialism: Sombart, Durkheim and Pareto

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Economic Thought and Institutional Change in France and Italy, 1789–1914

Abstract

This paper intends to re-examine the reflections of Werner Sombart, Vilfredo Pareto and Emile Durkheim, who provide general guide to interpreting some crucial elements of the discussions on Marxism and socialism from 1895 to 1901. From November 1895 to May 1896, Durkheim starts a broad reflection on socialism and Saint-Simon in a course held at the University of Bordeaux, where he begins a comprehensive evaluation of the “history of Socialism”, including also the assessment of thinkers like Fourier, Proudhon, Lassalle and Marx. Sombart in 1896 publishes a collection of eight lectures held in Zurich, highlighting the link between his reflection on socialism and the analysis on “modern capitalism” he develops in Der moderne Kapitalismus. Pareto publishes Sistemi Socialisti in 1901, after a systematic reflection on socialism begun in 1896, which allows him to verify the categories and interpretative models he would adopt in his economic and sociological inquiries. The paper illustrates some aspects of this challenging confrontation, namely: the analysis of the methodology and interpretative power of the socialist theories; the features of “modern socialism” as a “social fact”; and the debates on the relationships between capitalism and socialism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Der modern Kapitalismus is published in 1902. Sombart later revised his work, publishing the first two volumes in 1916 and the last volume in 1927.

  2. 2.

    Antonio Labriola had published in 1896 his Del materialismo storico. Delucidazione preliminare, now in A. Labriola, Saggi sul materialismo storico, eds. Augusto Guerra, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1968, pp. 73–167.

  3. 3.

    The different attitude is already clear in the following works: Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (1911), Der Bourgeois: Zur Geistesgeschichte des modern Wirtschaftsmenschen (1913). On this see: Gioia 2015, pp. 11–32.

  4. 4.

    It is, at the end, an interpretation shared also by Vilfredo Pareto, who has to admit (as occurred to Cairnes and others) that the laissez faire is not scientifically provable and cannot therefore be a solid ground for scientific explanations: Pareto (1961), par. 68, p. 38, Cairnes 1873, pp. 232–264. On this, see also: Keynes 1991, esp. p. 31 ff).

  5. 5.

    Interesting reconstructions of these debates on the future of capitalism and the Zusammenbruchstheorie in Colletti and Napoleoni (1970), Rosdolsky (1970), esp. p. 513 ff., Fetscher 1979, pp. 235–274, Salvadori 1979, pp. 275–314.

  6. 6.

    A profound re-exanimation of competition has been brilliantly proposed in (Robinson 1972 [1933]) in two works by Joan Robinson, who published her Economics of Imperfect Competition and by Edward H. Chamberlin, with his Theory of Monopolistic Competition (Chamberlin 1939). On this, see: Schumpeter 1990, III, pp. 1410–1413 and Deane 1981, pp. 203 ff.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Vitantonio Gioia

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Correspondence to Vitantonio Gioia .

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  1. Department of Political Science, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Riccardo Soliani

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Gioia, V. (2017). Economics and Sociology Meet Socialism: Sombart, Durkheim and Pareto. In: Soliani, R. (eds) Economic Thought and Institutional Change in France and Italy, 1789–1914. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25354-1_11

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