"Tyranny of old was exercised over people who still knew how to subsist. They could lose their means of subsistence and be enslaved, but they could not be made needy. With the beginning of capitalist production in the spinning and weaving shops of the Florence of the Medicis, a new type of human being was being engendered: needy man, who has to organise a society, the principal function of which is to satisfy human needs. And needs are much more cruel than tyrants."