A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto

China Miéville's brilliant reading of the modern world's most controversial and enduring political document: The Communist Manifesto.

'It's thrilling to accompany Miéville... as he wrestles - in critical good faith and incandescent commitment - with a manifesto that still calls on us to build a new world' Naomi Klein

'Read this and be dazzled by its contemporaneity' Mike Davis

'A rich, luminous reflection of and on a light that never quite goes out' Andreas Malm

'Reading with [Miéville] today sharpens our senses to contemporary internationalist movements from below' Ruth Wilson Gilmore

'[Written] with diligence and a ruthlessly critical eye worthy of Marx himself' Sarah Jaffe

In 1848, a strange political tract was published by two German émigrés. Marx and Engles's apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system, which penetrates every corner of the globe, reduces every relationship to that of profit, and bursts asunder the old forms of production and of politics, remains a picture of our world. And the vampiric energy of that system is once again highly contentious. The Manifesto shows no sign of fading into antiquarian obscurity, and remains a key touchstone for modern political debate.

China Miéville is not a writer hemmed in by conventions of disciplinary boundaries or genre, and this is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today. Like the Manifesto itself, this is a book haunted by ghosts, sorcery and creative destruction.



The Manifesto is one of history's most profound prophecies. In Miéville's brilliant interpretation it is like a great comet whose periodic return blinds the sky with its light and urgency. Read this and be dazzled by its contemporaneity -- Mike Davis

China Miéville's elegant book patiently explains composition - style, structure, class - to reveal the Communist Manifesto's spectral energies. Reading with him today sharpens our senses to contemporary internationalist movements from below -- Ruth Wilson Gilmore

An excellent book, very lively and engaging, written in clear and readable prose... For today's readers Miéville does excellent work presenting and reviewing a huge amount of twentieth-century history -- Professor Terrell Carver

It's thrilling to accompany Miéville, one of the greatest living world-builders, as he wrestles - in critical good faith and incandescent commitment - with a manifesto that still calls on us to build a new world -- Naomi Klein

Very enjoyable and well done... Properly scholarly and thorough in its apparatus of discussion and issue-identification... Lively, politically driven appreciation -- Professor Gregor McLennan

With diligence and a ruthlessly critical eye worthy of Marx himself, China Miéville expands upon the Communist Manifesto, calling us into renewed struggle for the best of what humanity could be. Against the million little cruelties and death-making of capitalism, this book builds a case for the value of the Manifesto to today's struggles without demanding fealty. It turns long-standing complaints about Marx on their heads to challenge the reader even while seducing with luminous prose. I didn't know I needed this book, but I did -- Sarah Jaffe

A book about another book might sound boring, but The Communist Manifesto is more than a book: it represents a bulging galaxy of historical struggle, ever moving and shining, even if only on the periphery of our vision. Here, China Miéville opens up the pages of the Manifesto and transmits the energy of communism across the pallid present. Close reading, historical essay, political commentary and a manifesto of sorts: A Spectre, Haunting is a rich, luminous reflection of and on a light that never quite goes out -- Andreas Malm

China Miéville, mind, soul and pen ablaze, guides his readers through Marx and Engels's unignorable, inextinguishable, eternally uncomfortable and always essential Manifesto. This is both a history of critical thought and a magnificent exemplar of reading and thinking critically. Miéville has written a thrillingly lively and lucid exegesis on the Manifesto, its contents and its discontents. He's gathered together an astonishingly heterogenous array of voices and responses, making a case for the Manifesto as a locus of politically engaged analysis and argument for nearly two centuries. Miéville adjudicates and synthesizes with unfailing clarity, wit, courage, decency and passion, writing brilliantly about nationalism, race, gender, literary style, and - my particular favorite section - about the perils and necessity of hate. He gives us a Manifesto that is simultaneously a central artifact of our species and a means for understanding our present, hazardous moment, a historical work that remains absolutely, ferociously alive -- Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America

A rare combination, both scholarly and exciting to read ― The Prisma

Whatever the reader's position on these questions, A Spectre, Haunting ultimately succeeds. It is a clear, fair, and non-doctrinaire introduction ― TLS