ABSTRACT
The proposed essay analyses certain aspects of Vilfredo Pareto’s thought through a comparison with Werner Sombart, two very different but not distant or unrelated classics of sociology. Although they started from different cultural backgrounds (engineering and history), they both married economics to sociology, but with an ever-vigilant focus on the political dimension and political economy.
Many are the points of contact within the various contexts: from the traditions of thought they inherited to the methods of investigation they developed; from their consideration of historical materialism and socialism to the idea of crisis, progress and elitism, to name but a few.
There are, therefore, numerous biographical, methodological and substantive aspects that the two authors have in common. This essay can only analyse some of these aspects under the cognitive assumption that both shared and contrasting elements in the two authors allow for a better understanding of the theoretical speculation and intellectual legacy they left us. Too often, in fact, their studies have been confined behind distinct and distant theoretical fences, as if they were irreconcilable, denying the versatility that each of them was able to employ in sociological reflection and that instead unites them in their destiny as great classics of sociology. Moreover, denying the possibility of understanding how many paths can be traced and travelled in order to know the same social phenomenon.
