The articles comprising this book stem from Croce's reflections on an essay on the materialist conception of history sent to him in 1895 by his former teacher, Antonio Labriola, whose lectures on moral philosophy Croce had attended at the University of Rome in 1885, and who can claim credit for having converted Trotsky to Marxism. The essay stimulated Croce to write a number of articles on socialist literature and economics that were gathered together and published as Materialismo Storico ed Economia Marxistica in 1899.