‘Working Class’ Is Not an Identity. Ash Sarkar Meets China Miéville

Each generation must encounter the Communist Manifesto anew, deciphering Marx and Engels’ text for their own era. So what gives this short book its enduring power? In his new book A Spectre, Haunting: On The Communist Manifesto, China Miéville explains how its various facets – being part political treatise, part gothic literature, and part spell to bring about a different reality – continue to act upon the world.

The author of The City & The City joins Ash Sarkar on Downstream to discuss sadism, sci-fi, blockchain utopias, Lord of the Rings and the politics of Sally Rooney’s fiction.