pre-capitalist economic formations

MARX’s notes of 1857-8 on “Forms which preceded capitalist production” are among the most important of his writings long buried in the 4,000 page pages of the so-called Grundrisse. This lucid though highly compressed text of some only supplementary historical analysis for the first time. For as Capital, Marx here deals with the problems of historical “periodisation” and presents an account of the sequences and relationships of the pre-capitalist economic formations and of the real determinants of social change far less schematic and far more convincing than the over-simplified theory of an “inevitable” sequence of “stages” which has so often and so erroneously been attributed to him.

This edition, originally published in 1964 and now three times reprinted, contains an explanatory introduction by Professor E. J. Hobsbawm. Besides elucidating some of the more difficult passages of the text, this introduction is itself a notable contribution to Marxist historical science. It was prepared following close consultation on questions of “stages” of development in history.

As Appendices there are included excerpts from Marx’s and Engels’ The German Ideology and from their Correspondence which have a direct bearing on the text from the Grundrisse.