Daniel Cohen, economist, and Aldo schiavone, Roman Law professor

Daniel Cohen has written some remarquable books. The last one (2009) is "La prosperite du vice" (Albin Michel, Paris). It is a sober description, a sort of history of economy, beginning with the invention of agriculture, till today, when we are in the global era, the era of "virtual capitalism", when the capital is in research and developpement, publicity, fashion, and finances. Rich countries have their hand firmly grasping immaterial production.

Among his references: Aldo Schiavone's "The end of the past" (1996), Harvard translation (2000), a history of the fall of the Roman Empire. for Schiavone--cf http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Schiavone- the Roman Empire fell because it gradually transformed its economy, from a purely agriculture-based one, where aristocracy has its roots, its legitimacy and its legend, to a slave-labor economy, where the bulk of wealth is produced by slaves, ruining the small landowners, forcing them to enroll in the army, the conquering machine which produced more prisoners, more slaves, till this cycle is broken when the war stops to be a conquering war and begins to be oinly defensive.

The most striking about the excelent Schiavone is that he fails to grasp, even remotely, the relationship between philosophy and slavery, so precisely pointed by Lacan: philosophy is the appropiation, in a certain moment of history, by the master of the craft and artisanal know how of the slave.