These notes of 1857-58 are now for the first time translated into English. They throw a flood light on Marx's mature views concerning the economic development of human society as a whole, from "primitive communism" to capitalism and socialism. The notes deal particularly with the epochs of historic development and their evolutionary stages, which for some time has been a subject of controversy among Marxist historians. Dr. Eric J. Hobsbawm provides a full explanatory introduction, and additional texts are included fromGerman Ideologyand theCorrespondence.Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany and studied in Bonn and Berlin. Influenced by Hegel, he later reacted against idealist philosophy and began to develop his own theory of historical materialism. He related the state of society to its economic foundations and mode of production, and recommended armed revolution on the part of the proletariat. Together with Engels, who he met in Paris, he wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party. He lived in England as a refugee until his death in 1888, after participating in an unsuccessful revolution in Germany.Eric Hobsbawm was born in 1917. Educated in Vienna, Berlin, London and Cambridge, he became a Fellow of the British Academy and has been showered with academic honours from around the world. He taught until retirement at Birkbeck College, University of London, and since then at the New School for Social Research in New York. His many books have been translated into several languages.