China News Service, Beijing, November 8. On November 7, a new book launch conference for the "African Marxism Translation Series" co-sponsored by China Social Sciences Press, the School of Marxism at Zhejiang Normal University, and the African Marxism Research Center at Zhejiang Normal University was held in Beijing. On that day, Walter Rodney’s “Decolonizing Marxism”, Kwame Nkrumah “The Road to Revolution”, George Padmore “Pan-Africanism or Communism?” 》Three new books released.
Zheng Xiangfu, a senior professor at the School of Marxism at Zhejiang Normal University and the editor-in-chief of "African Marxism Translation Series", introduced that "African Marxism Translation Series" is organized and implemented based on the "African Marxism Research and Translation of Representative Works" (22&ZD019), a major project of the National Social Science Fund approved in 2022, and strives to complete the translation and publication of the main works of major representatives of African Marxism and related authors within 5 to 10 years. After the completion of the project, it is planned to compile the textbook "Introduction to African Marxism", incorporate African Marxism into the foreign Marxist research system, and start writing relevant monographs.
Li Jingyuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Marx’s creation of historical materialism was largely due to the new vision of world history. “Scientific socialism is not entirely a product of Germany, but at the same time an international product.” The development of socialism in Africa and the critique of new racism can provide new historical experience for enriching the contemporary content of Marxism. The research team’s approach of leading research through translation and promoting translation through research deserves recognition.
Zhao Jianying, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and a professor at the School of Philosophy at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that African Marxism continues to engage in theoretical innovation and discourse reconstruction in response to Africa's unique history and reality. The translation collection reflects the ideological genealogy of African countries exploring the road to modernization, provides the international academic community with a window to observe the context of African thought, helps break the Western-centric knowledge framework, and expands foreign Marxist research.
Feng Haoqing, director of the Social Science Department of Zhejiang Normal University, said that the rise of groups in the Global South has become an irreversible trend of the times. Reflecting on the Western-centric knowledge framework and constructing independent development discourse and knowledge systems for the non-Western world have become the common aspirations of the academic circles in developing countries. African Marxism is an indispensable and important branch of the global Marxist theoretical system. For a long time, relevant research in domestic academic circles has mostly relied on second-hand documents, and systematic citations of original documents have been relatively insufficient. The publication of the translation series has made up for this deficiency to a certain extent.
On that day, experts and scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (National School of Administration), Nankai University, Tianjin University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Zhejiang Normal University and other research institutes and universities gathered together to discuss the theoretical positioning, subject boundaries, historical context and teaching applications of African Marxism, which provided useful inspiration for further deepening the research on African Marxism and promoting the construction of Marxist theoretical disciplines.
