Preliminary concepts This monograph explores the strengths and weaknesses of a Marxist approach to economic development. Two questions come immediatlely to mind: “What is meant by ‘economic development’?” and “What is a ‘Marxist approach’?” The definition of economic development used here is unexceptional: economic development includes the rate of growth of output per capita, accompanied by fundamental shifts in the composition of output, the pattern of employment, the level of urbanization, the utilized technology, etc. Questions of distribution of this growing output are also central to the subject. In short, economic development is the study of the causes and consequences of the pattern and speed of economic growth and structural transformation. Development also implies the eradication of mass poverty. All of this is quite conventional.