In the 1940s, Dobb participated in the discussions of a group of British Marxist historians that included Christopher Hill and Rodney Hilton, and it was out of this experience that Studies in the Development of Capitalism arose, as well as the following essay, first delivered as a contribution to a symposium on dialectical materialism in Cambridge, Easter term, 1942, and then published in revised form in The Modern Quarterly (London, new series) 3:1 (Winter 1947-48), 5-21. Although little known, “Marxism and the Social Sciences” stands out as one of the classic statements on Marx’s method. It sums up in a few propositions what the Marxist method in the social sciences distinctively implies.
