This short book deals with one of the most important and controversial problems of Marxist theory, the relation between the political economy of capitalism and the much broader doctrine of historical materialism. Illustrations are only mathematical equations dealing with economic theory provided in the appendix and in several instances throughout the text. The text is all-but-exclusively in English (translated from the French); titles of source books and articles are frequently cited in French in the notes at the end of the book (pp.127-133); otherwise, the notes are in English translation.