By James Thompson
HOUSTON-LaToya Ruby Frazier’s current exhibition featured by the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston is visually stunning and serves to enlighten its viewers about the horrors of capitalist degeneration. It features photographs, videos, digital works and a photolithograph series which tells the story of the artist’s hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania which was home to Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works which was established in 1872.
The exhibition communicates to its viewer the devastation rendered to a community by capitalist boom and bust. Braddock, a suburb of Pittsburgh, was once a thriving metropolitan area with more than 20,000 residents and has dropped to a population of 2500 people. Many of Braddock’s steel plants closed and or dramatically downsized between 1980 and 1985. The exhibition also illustrates the devastation of capitalist economic contortions on three generations of African-American women.
A pillar of the exhibition is a photographic study of the closing of Braddock’s community hospital, a facility affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The hospital opened in 1909 as the Braddock Hospital and became affiliated with the UPMC in the 1990s only to be closed in 2010. The reason given for the closing was that it was losing money. At the time of the closing, the hospital was the community’s largest employer. After the closing, a company was contracted to demolish the historic building. Interestingly, the same company was simultaneously contracted to build a new UPMC facility in an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. The new facility is generally considered to be inaccessible to the low income residents of Braddock.
The photographs of the exhibition depict the deterioration of the community of Braddock and the consequent misery of its residents. All three generations of African-American women, including the artist herself, are afflicted with serious medical conditions. Of course, the heartless closing of the medical facility makes access to medical care extremely complicated, difficult and sometimes impossible for the poor people of the community. More than 100 years of the steel industry located in the community has released untold toxins causing widespread illness and disability among the residents. Houston, which has the largest number of industrial jobs in the United States currently, is also plagued by industrial toxins and its residents suffer untold misery from medical afflictions as a result.
In order to understand the cruel actions delivered to the community by the powerful, it is essential to understand the workings of capitalism. One must answer the question “Why would a capitalist build a healthcare facility in a working-class neighborhood?” It is important to understand that the most important motive for capitalists is to continually increase profits. Marx and Lenin showed that when a capitalist enterprise fails to increase profits, it is doomed to closure. When profits do not increase, the capitalist takes the capital to another business where profits will increase. Clearly, this is what happened in Braddock.
Marx also showed scientifically that the key to increasing profits under capitalism is increasing worker productivity while reducing worker’s wages. From the capitalist’s point of view, the only purpose for a hospital is to improve or maintain the health of its workers so that productivity and profits continue to increase. When there is no profit driven industry in a community or country, for that matter, there is no need for hospitals from the capitalist’s point of view. Similarly, from the capitalist’s point of view there is no need for infrastructure such as education, highways, law enforcement or any other community service which might serve to enhance working families’ existence.
Of course, when capitalist politicians conspire with their capitalist benefactors to shut down services, working people and the poor become outraged as their communities are devastated. Their outrage becomes the front line of the class struggle.
Another concept which this outstanding and compelling exhibition illustrates clearly is Lenin’s “Law of Uneven Development under Imperialism.” Leontiev, in his book “Political Economy” explains this on page 213 “In the capitalist system individual enterprises, individual branches of industry and individual countries develop unevenly and spasmodically. It is evident that with the anarchy of production prevailing under capitalism and the frenzied struggle among the capitalists for profits, it cannot be otherwise… This unevenness of development is manifested with particular acuteness in the epoch of imperialism, and becomes a decisive force, a decisive law.” The uneven development of individual branches of industry gets expressed in communities and this is being seen across the globe today with devastating effects to people.
When industries depart and jobs plummet, the remaining residents of a community must find a way to survive. Some may resort to extraordinary means such as crime. Others may seek compensation in other ways. The fabric of the community is consequently ripped to shreds in a variety of ways and this is the central theme of Ruby Frazier’s exhibition WITNESS. The exhibition will be at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston until October 13. The exhibition will be on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston from November 12-March 2, 2014. If you are in either of these cities during these times, do yourself a favor and visit the exhibition. It will definitely open your eyes.
