ABSTRACT
The Rise and Fall of the Elites: An Application of Theoretical Sociology 1 is the first edition in English of a long essay by Vilfredo Pareto which marked his turn from econometrics to the study of sociology. Written at the turn of the century (1901), this classic essay outlined the basic ideas for which he later became famous, especially in the United States after 1936, when an entire issue of The Saturday Review of Literature was devoted to an analysis of the four volumes of his classic work, The Mind and Society. Pareto is now out of vogue; in their comprehensive reader, Class, Status and Power, Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset apparently do not consider it appropriate to include even a brief example of his work. It is hard to believe that he was the rage at Harvard in the thirties, under the leadership of Lawrence Henderson and Elton Mayo.
