quality:corruption
Fascism and power distribution

Renato Cirillo wrote that Vilfredo Pareto had frequently been considered a predecessor of fascism as a result of his support for the movement when it began. However, Cirillo disagreed with this interpretation, suggesting that Pareto was critical of fascism in his private letters.

Pareto argued that democracy was an illusion and that a ruling class always emerged and enriched itself. For him, the key question was how actively the rulers ruled. For this reason, he called for a drastic reduction of the state and welcomed Benito Mussolini 's rule as a transition to this minimal state so as to liberate the "pure" economic forces.

When he was still a young student, the future leader of Italian fascism Benito Mussolini attended some of Pareto's lectures at the University of Lausanne in 1904. It has been argued that Mussolini's move away from socialism towards a form of " elitism " may be attributed to Pareto's ideas. Franz Borkenau, a biographer, argued that Mussolini followed Pareto's policy ideas during the beginning of his tenure as prime minister.

Karl Popper dubbed Pareto the "theoretician of totalitarianism", but, according to Renato Cirillo, there is no evidence in Popper's published work that he read Pareto in any detail before repeating what was then a common but dubious judgement in anti-fascist circles.