Blog
No Marx for Winnipeg Mural
Karl Marx may have been the father of communism, but in the eyes of a Winnipeg business group, he’s a politically incorrect choice for a mural depicting Winnipeg at the time of the 1919 general strike.
A century ago, Winnipeg made international headlines for its labour unrest and communist sympathies. However, Gloria Cardwell-Hoeppner, executive director of the West End BIZ, admits she ordered an artist working on a public mural to alter the design and erase the image of a person “very much looking like Karl Marx.”
The 19th-century philosopher simply didn’t fit the intended aim of the BIZ-sponsored mural, Cardwell-Hoeppner said.
“We were looking to have images of social history, not political history,” she added.
“That was a time with a lot of things happening and there were a lot of people coming into the city. They were leaving struggles that they were having over in Europe and coming to a new life here. That was what was trying to be depicted here.”
The two-metre by three-metre mural, on the side of a building at Ellice Avenue and Banning Street, was among a series of public murals the West End BIZ has had created in the last several years.
The BIZ has sponsored about 50 murals throughout the inner city in an effort to beautify Winnipeg’s core. Each year, it hires artists and university arts students to paint two or three such works.
Sketching of the mural depicting Winnipeg around 1919 began a few weeks ago, Cardwell-Hoeppner said, but the artists embarked on the design that included Marx “before the research was complete.”
The artist had intended to show a man of that period, not to pinpoint Marx himself, Cardwell-Hoeppner said. The decision to erase the Marx image, made Monday, disappointed at least one passerby.
“Walking down Ellice these past few days was a gratifying experience,” said Errol Naumko, who wrote to the Free Press to express his dismay.
The mural has also become the subject of at least one local Internet blog.
Chris Webb is a journalist and activist living in Toronto. He is currently the Publishing Assistant at Canadian Dimension magazine and a Communications Officer with SEIU-Local 1 Canada. Read more by Chris Webb.
As a Socialist ( socialist party of Great Britain-reconstituted)it does not surprise me that modern Capitalists and their spokeperson, Gloria Cardwell-Hoeppner have changed history by implying that their sponsered Winnipeg general Strike mural must be reduced to triviality; just a social aside commenting that, ” We were looking to have images of social history, not political history. That was a time with a lot of things happening and there were a lot of people coming into the city. They were leaving struggles that they were having over in Europe and coming to a new life here. That was what was trying to be depicted here.” The WGS was at the time probably on of the largest political events propagated by the workers in Canadian history. Of course the Capitalists of that era, whose wealth although dimminished by that recession because the larger number of unemployed workers were idle, broke and not creating surplus value for them, were displeased because they had to dig deeper into their idle pockets of cash reserves to maintain their priviledged existense. As it is the nature of Capitalism. The Capitalist Class (idle rich) own and control about 90% of the wealth. The Working Class (productive poor)recive the remaining 10% balance. The workers however comprise 90% of the population. Do the math! The Working class still have not embraced the politics of Marx and Engles, thus, until they organise for Socialism, they will always find themselves on the brokest end of the economic stick. Marx and Engels maintained that the Capitalist mode of production based on production with a goal to make a profit should be replaced by Socialism whereby the mode of production would be production for use-and furthermore that the wage enslaved workers must be the political group to activate this change.
#1. Posted by John Thompson on August 1st 2008 at 4:40am
High marks for Marx
Unfortunately, Jesse Hajer’s letter concerning the West End mural missing Karl Marx seems to imply his lack of knowledge of the history of Winnipeg. I would like to make Mr. Hajer aware that there is another mural dedicated to a significant event - the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike which, in fact, is one block away from where striker Mike Sokolowski was shot (and the only one who was killed during the strike).
It is important to understand that the strike concerned the “haves” and the “have nots”, divided by the CPR tracks (working class living on the north side and the elite living on the south). The west end, as we know it today, had nothing to do with the 1919 General Strike!
While Mr. Hajer’s comments concerning the fact that the majority of Marx’s works had little or nothing to do with communism or revolution is correct, most leftists - including myself - could only get through about twenty pages of “Das Capital” before throwing our hands up in despair. Marx’s influence had more to do with his polemical work “The Communist Manifesto”, as well as his organizational struggle against anarchism in the Second International organization.
No question, as Mr. Hajer suggests, whether you agree with Marx or not, dismissing his influence on history is denial. But the fact is, in terms of Winnipeg’s history, the West End Biz is correct in saying that Marx had no impact on the West End of Winnipeg. But the North End is something different altogether. As you enter the North End off the Slaw Rebchuk Bridge, a sign blazes off a rooftop, “Welcome to the North End. People Before Profit”.
This is where the Communist Party of Manitoba was founded, where communist school board trustees and city councilors and MLAs were elected from the early 1930s to the 1990s. In 1941, William Kardash was elected as an MLA and retained his seat until 1957. Jacob Penner and M. J. Forkin were elected City Councilors in 1930’s. Jacob Penner was councilor until 1960 when Joe Zuken took over in 1960 to 1983. Irene Haig was the last communist to be elected to the Winnipeg School Board Division #1 until 1990. Main Street was the location of the only radical, communist bookstore founded by Roland Penner in 1951 which stayed open until 1992.
If there is a place for a mural of Karl Marx, it is in the North End!
Nick Ternette
#2. Posted by Nick Ternette on August 4th 2008 at 12:33am
Hi Nick,
While I agree with you that the North End of Winnipeg is more suitable for a mural of Marx than the West-End, I’m not entirely convinced by your assessment that Marx’s writing had little to do with communism or revolution.
Marx founded the international workingmen’s society along with Engels and together their work provided the theoretical framework for the revolutions of 1848—the same year the communist manifesto was published.
Marx is relative everywhere, even if his mural was on the side of the CanWest building! His materialist analysis of history gave us the first clear understanding of class society and this is as relevant today as it was during the years of the 1871 Paris commune.
I say Keep Karl alive!
#3. Posted by chris webb on August 6th 2008 at 3:27pm