Hello and welcome to Downstream. I'm Ash Sarkar and today I'm going to be talking to China

Mieville, author of a specter haunting a new book on the communist manifesto and also the

brain behind the city and the city, Embassy Town, Perdido Street Station. We're going to talk

about sadism, communism and longing for something better than what we've got. I hope you enjoy.

Welcome China to the Navarra studio. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for having me.

We're here to talk about your new book, a specter haunting, but I have a feeling that we

are going to range a little bit outside of that terrain as well. But to kick us off, could you maybe

tell us what communism is? Oh, how long do we have? I mean, one of the, I mean, the book starts

quite early on saying this is highly contested, you know, so it would be ridiculous to say, well,

here's the definition and now we all agree. But I think, you know, broadly speaking, it highly

contested, including among its advocates, obviously. No, quite like the left. Yeah, well, quite.

But I think, I mean, at a very, very base level, I suppose, for me, what it is about is

grassroots democratic management of society and production that, therefore, as part of that,

prioritises human need over profit. And if you want nothing else that I suppose would be my kind

of my very baseline. Why is it that every time you talk about being a communist, I'm not just

talking about you, I'm talking about the kind of, you know, grander you, you're made to feel like

dog that has defecated on a prized family rug. Yeah. Well, you're very used to this being one of the

one of the poster children for being a communist publicly. I mean, we can make jokes about it,

but it is actually really depressing because I think, I mean, I would be tempted to say that there's

two baseline answers. For years, one of the key answers was Stalinism and the situation of Stalinism.

And that I think was a real issue and something to be taken seriously. And of course, the right wing

always essentially acted as if the left wasn't engaging with this issue, which was bad faith bullshit.

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