You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell

You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell

Whenever a collection of Marx's works is published, a few questions inevitably arise. Is Marx still relevant today? Do we still have something to gain from reading the great man's thoughts about economic structures? To put this question another way - if Marx was wrong, in the end, about what communism would look like, then why do we still read his writings?

One way to answer this is by looking at the similarities between Marx's world and ours. The Communist Manifesto describes a world which is dominated by materialism. People are leaving their farms and flocking to the cities. Technology is steadily taking over the workforce. Cheap goods are flooding the market in Europe and beyond.

Wage Labor and Capital describes, in familiar detail, the impact of technology on social relations. Both Wage Labor and Value, Price and Profit describe a world in which capital needs to constantly expand in order to stay competitive. Wages are kept as low as possible. Skilled workers are losing their jobs to machinery and have to compete for unskilled work which pays far less. Workers live in squalid conditions and work long hours.

The world which Marx describes, in other words, has a good deal in common with the world we know today. Marx's writing shines in its ability to describe that world clearly and without sentimentality. The ideas that he develops in Capital, his masterwork on economic theory, apply today more than ever. That's because his theories are based in steady observation of material reality. Marx's genius was in his ability to observe the material world and extrapolate the laws that underpinned that material reality.

Daniel Howell is one of the world's most popular and celebrated entertainers. For 10 years he has written and produced comedy videos on YouTube that have gained over 1 billion views and millions of followers, along with an award-winning BBC Radio 1 show, No.1 New York Times bestselling books The Amazing Book is Not on Fire and Dan and Phil Go Outside and two stage shows with sellout world tours. Known for his self-deprecating and sarcastic humor, Dan has also spoken about his real struggles with depression and sexuality and it is this mix of entertainment with the profound and deeply personal that has given Dan a devoted following of fans - as well as becoming an activist and ambassador for the Royal Foundation charity Young Minds.