Marx, Marxism, Capitalism: On Two New Editions of Classic Texts

"The didactic initiative aims to investigate new perspectives of historical-economic and historical-social research starting with the discussion of two recent editions of classic works.
Structured over two half-days, the initiative will see Prof. Roberto Fineschi (Siena School for Liberal Arts) give a lecture in the first meeting on his experience as editor of the second historical-critical edition of the complete works of Marx and Engels (the second Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, which has been in publication for decades), which has recently expressed the new Italian edition of Karl Marx's ''Il Capitale'' (Einaudi, 2024). Fineschi will highlight how the philological findings on the numerous new documentary sources examined reveal ''a new Marx'', and will discuss the implications of these new findings for historical materialism as a research method for the economic and social sciences.
In the second meeting, a speaker being identified will discuss the new Italian edition of ''The Making of the English Working Class'' by E. P. Thompson, edited by Gianmaria Brunazzi, soon to be published by Pgreco. By examining Thompson's method and style in the light of the research of the exponents of the History of Capitalism, Anglo-Saxon and others, of the last two decades, the lecture aims to discuss the importance of social analysis as an approach to the study of the transformation of economic systems.
Both meetings will be divided into two parts. In the first part there will be a more traditional one-hour seminar lecture; in the second part there will be a round table discussion on the two texts under discussion, led by scholars and experts in their respective fields of study. This will be followed and concluded by a discussion with the PhD students and the audience."