Contrary to the position maintained by a number of contemporary economists, the conviction is fast gaining that before the socio-political situation may be changed it is first necessary to change the economic one. This latter being seen as the structre on which the superstructure is constructed (an interpretation shared by both Marx and Adam Smith, in different, though specular, fashion).

This book attempts to show that history actually demonstrates exactly the contrary. England was able to undergo the Indistrual Revolution only after it had consolidated a revolution of rights - indeed this is how it has always been. Without both rights and guarantees being first in place, no economic intitiative can occur. Peace itself cannot be seen as the objective because it is actually a precondition, as the classic writers of the ancient and mediavel worlds have pointed out. It is thus necessary for the political field to recover both authority and autonomy from the economic sphere if we do not want to resign ourselves to living in what has been described as dynamic instability. What we need, in fact, is dynamic order, without which there can be no progress.

Another point emerges from this study: many have viewed economic action from a negative and pessimistic stance, asserting that it is only irrepressible human selfishness that creates private intiative. From such initiatives stem the wellbeing of society and the improvement of life. It is therefore in the interest of everyone, and foremost of the economic operators themselves, that these aspirations are realised within a legal framework.

Finally, uncertainy is a typical characteresitc of human life, to the extent of being of one of the components of everyday life. Because of this financial instutiions such as insurance companies have grown up, which actually work on the nature of risk. This again demonstrates how unacceptable an anarchical-libertarian position is, since it brings with it in its uncertainty risks that are not confined to the economy.

However this study does not look forward to a world in which the positions are reversed, and where politics can reach the point of stifling the economy.

Rooco Pezzimenti teaches History of Political Though in the Faculty of Political Science of the Guido Carli Free University of Rome (LUISS).