Walmart sells "Destroy Capitalism" Banksy print
Walmart’s (WMT) corporate slogan urges its customers to both save more and live better, a maxim that bargain-hunting Marxists may have embraced this week with the company’s recent stocking of a “Destroy Capitalism” Banksy print.
Adding to the irony of the retailing giant selling an anti-capitalism message is that the piece isn’t even authentic.
In one fell swoop, Walmart managed to both undermine and reinforce its image as one of the country’s most aggressive capitalist companies. Sure, Walmart hawked an anti-free market message, but apparently did so by tapping into the grubby underside of capitalism: knockoffs and cheap copies. Some of the prints were available for as low as $25.49.
Walmart didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch.
The saga of the counterfeit posters come at an awkward time for Walmart. The retailer is under fire for what critics say are too-low wages. Some of its own employees staged protests on Black Friday to protest what they say is unfair pay, as CBS MoneyWatch reported on Friday.
As for how the fake prints ended up on Walmart's website, a company representative told LAist that the Banksy prints were sold “through our marketplace third-party sellers Wayfair and PlumStruck” and that it had instructed the companies “to review their artwork to ensure the descriptions are accurate.”
The “Destroy Capitalism” print wasn’t the only subversive piece of artwork to be flagged. Walmart was selling one item labeled as a Banksy print, but which was actually created by California artist Eddie Colla, according to blog LATaco. The print shows a graffiti artist with a bandanna over her face, standing next to the spray-painted message, “If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission.”“That’s the irony, isn’t it,” Colla told LATaco. “I made a piece about individuals controlling their own fate and not making their success contingent on the approval of others. It then gets adopted by a neo-feudal corporation like Walmart.”
As for his art being mislabeled as a Banksy print, Colla pointed to capitalism as the reason.
“It’s common when a group of people try to cash in on something they know little or nothing about,” he said. “All they see is an opportunity to exploit something and make some money. They see a stencil and call it a Banksy.”