The “Slave Mode of Production” and perspectives of comparison

The slave as res, as a thing, as part of the slave labour taken into account by Marx is evidently not sufficient to explain the development of Roman economy in which not only freedmen but also the servi, the slaves, carried out economically relevant operations often unbeknownst to their owners. So if on one hand the Marxist analysis of slave societies is always a base from which to start studying the economic and commercial structures of Rome, we need undeniably to examine other dependency situations in which the slave was not a mere object but rather one of the actors of Roman economic life, as the filii familias.