Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by comedian and writer. Danny Katch, he is the author of the book,

Socialism, seriously. A brief guide to human liberation available from the wonderful Haymarket books.

Danny Katch, welcome to Kurt Affairs.

Thank you.

Very happy to be here.

All right.

So socialism, seriously, you begin early in your book.

You've got something I think is delightful, which is that you rewrite the opening passage of the Communist Manifesto for the contemporary era.

An excerpt from your book was adapted recently for Jacobin, and you included this in there, too.

And so why don't we start with that?

Because you show us, you know, obviously the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels wrote one of the

enduring classic texts of socialism, but they wrote it about the world of the mid-19th century.

And your point in writing this updated version in modern language about the contemporary United

States is, I take it, that it has

enduring relevance.

Yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely something I wanted to get across.

And I think one hope that I had in the book, it's not the only one.

I mean, obviously, the primary hope, it's fame and fortune for myself, you know, regardless of what happens.

Yes.

Which leftist literature is famously the root-to-year.

I show is very well.

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