Many contributors have been speculating on connections between Pareto and
Mussolini. One writer says that Pareto could not have followed Mussolini
because Pareto died so soon after Mussolini took power.

That is hardly dispositive. Consider also that Pareto might have inspired
Mussolini. Many passages in Pareto snarl with contempt for liberal democracy
- I can supply chapter, verse and text on demand. It is also possible that
both were swept along in the same current, going with the same flow. The
Allies may have won the war, but when the soldiers came home and learned
modern economics on the G.I. Bill they were instructed in part by followers
of Austrian and Italian philosophers openly skeptical of and even hostile to
democracy when "carried too far". 

Likewise with the question of Hayek and Pinochet. Knight and Stigler
disputed Hayek and earlier Austrians about periods of production and all
that, and apotheosized J.B. Clark, and even kept Hayek out of the core Dept.
of Econ., but when it came to Pinochet, neither side seemed to be troubled
by the problem of les desaparecidos. The end justified the means.

Today we have Grover Norquist with his no-tax pledge. He could not have led
and inspired James Buchanan, but Buchanan  with his "Public Choice"
certainly could have inspired Norquist, and made him socially and
academically "respectable". Again, both could be carried along in the same
anarchistic flow with Rand, Thatcher, Reagan, Greenspan, and dozens of
others we could all name.

So I suggest it is mere quibbling, in the worst sense of "academic", to deny
the obvious ideological ties that bind the above critics of social democracy
who dedicate themselves to keeping if from being "carried too far".

Mason Gaffney