And today we are taking a look at the graphic novel edition of the Communist Manifesto, organized and illustrated by Martin Rowson. Before diving in, my final note is that I will probably keep political analysis and critique to a minimum. Personally, I identify as an Anarchist, but I currently also find many different kinds of Marxist thoughts and commentaries to be interesting. So, particularly in this format, I found this historical document to be not only interesting but also pretty edifying.
Going back to the details of the book. This particular edition of The Communist Manifesto was published on June 5th 2018 by SelfMadeHero. I initially read this book shortly thereafter because I was keeping close tabs on my library's new graphic novel section. I also dragged myself out of my homebody routine and went to a talk by Martin Rowson at the library that fall which was cool. I've read it again at least once since then, but procrastinated on reviewing because it's so IMPORTANT, but here we go.
According to his somewhat illegible personal website welcome screen: Martin Rowson is a multi-award winning cartoonist, illustrator, writer, graphic novelist, broadcaster, ranter and poet. Passing over all the periodical publications he has contributed to, books that he wanted to highlight his contributions to included Scenes From The Lives of the Great Socialists (1983), Lower Than Vermin: An Anatomy of Thatcher’s Britain (1986), The Nodland Express (with Anna Clarke, 1994), Fuck: The Human Odyssey (2007), The Dog Allusion: Gods, Pets and How to be Human (2008), four volumes of The Limerickiad (2011-2016), a series of comic book adaptations, including T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land (1990), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1996), and Gulliver’s Travels (2011).
In 2001 Rowson was appointed Cartoonist Laureate for London by Mayor Ken Livingstone... He’s also chairman of the British Cartoonists’ Association... In a full-page editorial in 2017, in response to one of his Guardian cartoons, The Daily Mail denounced him and his work as “disgusting, deranged... sick and offensive.” And because he doesn't really mention it outright, I will add that he's is an Englishman and that, as someone who has done a lot of work in the political cartoon world, I did appreciate his going on a tangent about the importance of punching down and, assuming I'm remembering this correctly, several examples of what he meant by that. Not only because it makes me feel a bit better about recommending his work but also because he was talking to a group that might be tempted to ignore the ways other people might be oppressed in ways in addition to class.
Besides Martin, there's of course the contributions of those Marx and Engles dudes. What about them? To quickly summerize the life stories of these two men that you've likely never heard of lol.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Kingdom of Prussia in 1818, became stateless, and died in 1883 in London, England. Descended from a long line of rabbis, his father converted to Protestantism shortly before Karl's birth. Karl studied law and philosophy at university and married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843.
The similarly heavily bearded Friedrich Engels, was born in Barmen, King of Prussia in 1820 and also died in London, England but in 1895. His family owned a large cotton-textile mills, and his father did pressure him to become a businessman as he came into adolescence. While they never married, Engles found himself in a 20 year relationships with Mary Burns, a "fierce young Irish woman with radical opinions who worked in the Engels factory" according to Wikipedia. Like Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny Edle von Westphalen, Mary deserves more credit then they have received historically for their contribution to the work published by their more "notable" male partners.
In describing The Communist Manifesto I would like to start by stressing how short it is. Obvious to some, I guess my subconscious brain had combined Das Capital and the Communist Manifesto and convinced me that it was FAR TOO LONG. This was not true. It can still be hard to get around to reading short books, but I figured I would point that out in case anyone else was suffering under that particular misunderstanding.
Pulling from Wikipedia "Commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London just as the Revolutions of 1848 began to erupt, the Manifesto was later recognised as one of the world's most influential political documents. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and then-present) and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.
The Communist Manifesto summarises Marx and Engels' theories concerning the nature of society and politics, namely that in their own words "[t]he history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It also briefly features their ideas for how the capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by socialism. In the last paragraph of the Manifesto, the authors call for a "forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions", which served as a call for communist revolutions around the world."
Moving onto the art, this was a really big selling point with me for this particular edition. Dark, dramatic and full of interesting, funny, and witty details. Combined with the ways in which Rowson breaks up the text into dialog bubbles, it was very nice to be able to jump back and forth between the text (and there is a substantial amount of text) to study different aspects of the illustrations that visually represent different elements being explored in the text. This also provides different ways to remember what is being said in the manifesto and makes the text more accessible.
As a pamphlet, the Communist Manifesto, is a product of its time and the ongoing emphasis on class as a point of oppression. There are some good things said about the exploitation of women as wives that their husbands basically own. Diverse sexuality and gender are not unsurprisingly not really brought up. Similarly, as continues even to the present day, communism often focuses exclusively on the politics of production in such a way that can seem to be leaving out people cannot work as much as the "average" person - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.
Reviewing my filmed flip through, because I sadly can't get my hands on this book at the present moment, I would say that the crowd scenes appear to have some representation from seemingly both male and female presenting people, which is nice. It appears that most people are very British looking caricatures of people who appear to be white. Especially since we are dealing with a black white and red colour scheme, which would leave us completely at the mercy of physical cliches to communicate ideas of difference in race, I would say that this lack of diversity is really for the best. That said, I guess there's a thing to be said about the ways the corruption, in this style of art, is denoted by "ugliness" which, while I still have a lot to consider and learn about in this area, is certainly less then ideal.
So, overall, if you have ever found herself interested in The Communist Manifesto, I would highly recommend this particular edition. I think it exemplifies many of the ways I feel like comics are a superior medium then simply the written word.
