On the morning of September 23rd, 2025, from 9:50 AM to 12:00 PM, the 44th session of the Marxism Forum and the 46th session of the Zhengsi Academic Workshop were successfully held at Southeast University, co-hosted by the School of Marxism and the Research Center for Basic Theories of Marxism. The academic lecture titled “New Reading Approaches to Capital—An Analytical Reading of Italian Workerism, French Structuralism, and German New Marxist Readings”took place in the Room Y206 of the Jizhong Building at the Jiulonghu Campus. Dr. Frank Ernst, a researcher from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany, was invited as the keynote speaker, with Professor Weng Hanbing from the School of Marxism serving as the host. Over 50 representatives, including faculty and students from the university, attended the lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Dr. Frank Ernst systematically reviewed three new reading approaches to "Capital" from the post-World War II period to the 1960s: Italian Workerism, French Structuralism, and German New Marxist Reading. He then elaborated on the core content of these three new interpretative methods. Workerism represents a "Copernican turn," interpreting Capital from the perspective of workers, highlighting their subjectivity and the social antagonisms involved. Structuralism interprets Capital based on an "epistemological break," which opens up a new "theoretical practice" and a new "problematic." The German New Marxist Reading, on the other hand, starts from the "perspective" of capital and money to interpret the value as a social mediator, emphasizing a logical and formal analytical reading that points to the negative essence of value, social mediation, and money. Finally, Dr. Ernst summarized that all three reading approaches provide a new interpretation of Capital based on the Critique of Political Economy Outline, and while their methodologies differ, they collectively offer new perspectives on Marxist critiques of capitalism.

In conclusion, Professor Weng Hanbing from the School of Marxism provided a summary of the lecture, noting that Dr. Frank Ernst has offered new interpretative insights for the study of "Capital." The session concluded with warm applause from the attending faculty and students.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Frank Ernst, born in 1972 and a graduate of Humboldt University Berlin with a Ph.D. in philosophy, is a researcher at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany and the head of the Heiner Panke Association. His work primarily involves the study and education of Marxist theory, specializing in German critical theory and critiques of political economy. His notable publications include Money as Measure, Means, and Method: Calculation through Temporal Identity and The Philosophy of the Instantaneous Disappearance of Money, among others, with dozens of academic papers published.