Rednecks with Short Memories - West Virginia, Birthplace of Democratic Socialism

The Coal Town System West Virginia coal operators built small, company-owned towns for their miners to live in. The coal towns were almost always unincorporated; there were no ... (Image by YouTube, Channel: AmericanExperiencePBS) Details DMCA

I dedicate this article to my dear and respected friend Jerry Policoff who encourages and inspires me with his conviction that progressive is not extreme, it has only been framed as such by those who fear it.

The term redneck gets thrown around alot in West Virginia and is a common insult used towards West Virginians by those outside looking in. The word conjures up pejorative images of rough looking white men with big trucks, emblazoned with rebel flags, "hootin an hollerin" and shootin' their guns.

These images, disdained by some, worn as badges of honor by others, show the extent to which the word has been corrupted from its original meaning. The nature of human beings to have short memories only hasten the process.

When WV voted for Donald Trump, I can't say I was completed shocked. Obviously he successfully sold his brand of populist snake oil to the voters, preying on their sense of pride and hope for a better economic future. More importantly, he understood that Hillary's attack on coal, although perhaps a better environmental policy, was a direct attack on the history of West Virginians and showed her complete lack of understanding of who we are at our core- the working class.

The saddest part for for me was in realizing that many West Virginians themselves have but a vague remembering or no knowledge at all about how we became "rednecks". So many have forgotten the origin of the miners' labor movement, born from the exploitation, abuse and violence of their ruthless employers.

Given its history, West Virginia should be one of the most radically socialist states in the nation. So what happened? How did this state go from a vastly union supporting state to a state who overwhelmingly voted for a capitalist billionaire?

Let's go back in time...
They emerged from the tunnels, eyes squinting even in the subdued light of an almost setting sun. Their faces black, the shine of their hair dulled by the layers of thick coal dust caked into the very scalp. Their eyes, sharp and bright against the dark backdrop of their visage, spoke without words of the exhaustion they felt. Their bodies, from the youngest to the oldest, at differing stages on the path to destruction, would continue on the next day, as inevitably as the next coal car in its turn, eventually disappearing into the darkness of the mine for the last time.

The work is brutal. The days are long. Conditions are dangerous. Explosions and cave ins are common. Children work alongside adults.

It was the late 1800s. The life of miners in lower WV at this time in many ways, exemplifies in the clearest of terms, the great lies of capitalism. The capitalist mantras of "hard work is all you need to get ahead", "those who fail are just lazy" or "the free market is only the way to a free society" are all obvious contradictions when examined in the context of a time when capitalists made all the rules.

In rural mining towns, companies owned and controlled every resource. They owned the housing where the miners lived, the stores where the miners shopped. And to complete the cycle of control, the miners were paid in scrip, not money. The scrip was only good for the purchase of goods from the company store and the payment of rent in company housing.

This meant simply asking for higher wages would have no effect on their standard of living because the company could just raise the cost of rent and goods to equal that of the miners pay.

By the way, the coal company didn't pay by the hour. They paid by the ton of coal and work like shoring up questionable, dangerous passages were done without compensation. By controlling every aspect of the economic ecosystem the coal company could insure that the income of miners after paying expenses would always be less than zero. This put them in a perpetual state of indentured servitude. It was simply reinvented feudalism.

Of course the companies tried to portray this system as paternalistic. As "taking care of every need" of the miner. But in practice, mining towns were prison camps. The coal company also owned the land, the bridges, the roads and the private lawmen that were paid to mete out "justice", the notorious Baldwin-Felts thugs.

Striking workers were not permitted on company property, including roads and bridges, and the company guards were permitted to fire on and kill miners who dared to trespass. Advocates of capitalism often pontificate that workers who don't like their jobs should "vote with their feet", a ridiculous notion when one considers life under these conditions.

Not unlike today, these companies used their money to buy the compliance and assistance of politicians and law enforcement so they would have no resistance in their authoritarian control over this new breed of extractionist serf. This episode in history is one of the clearest examples of the conflict between bottom up democracy and top down corporatocracy. And it was the model in every area where mining was a major industry.

When the miners got together and began to demand safe working conditions, shorter work days, pay by the hour and payment in actual money, the company came against them full force. To show their solidarity, the miners in West Virginia tied red bandanas around their necks. And so they became known as rednecks.

It was not mere coincidence that the red bandana had been used in earlier worker party uprisings led by communists and socialists. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the concept of socialism and communism had not yet been demonized in the conscious of the average American and miners and farmers the world over were sympathetic to communist and socialist ideals. For many immigrants the fight for better work conditions was simply a continuation of struggles they had in the old country.

Many coal miners from Ireland, like my ancestors, settled in West Virginia because mining was being done here and because the rolling green hills reminded them of Ireland. Lots of them were familiar with the struggles of coal miners in Ireland and many were socialist in their thinking.

But many immigrants who came to the United States were not unified under any common idea that America was intended to be a capitalist adventure. Not only that, but the history of capitalism in the United States had already shown its heavy reliance on expropriation of native lands and forced slave labor. That along with repeated cycles of boom and bust where the boom generates profit for the wealthy but no benefit to the poor and the bust generates hardship for the poor while leaving the wealthy untouched, gave the communist and socialist movements credence and they gained credibility and members, even in West Virginia.

In 1893 there was a financial crisis called the "Great Panic" Investors and speculators suffered great losses and as a result took what they could out of the market leaving the poor to bear the brunt of their bad investments. Sound familiar?

In WV and in other mining areas, the impact was felt as wage reductions and further repression of the coal miners. These conditions helped to further catalyze the labor movement. The miners realized there was no recourse, no justice to be found for them, even at the highest level of their elected government.

With the local, state and even federal government waging an all out war against them, the miners looked for leadership and inspiration from many groups. The most prominent of these was the UMWA and the Socialist Party of America. In a time where mobilizing all the support it could get for the miners cause, the two worked together, but there were distinct differences in their politics and their methods. The UMWA sought the political process of electing union leaders and negotiating. But under the brutal conditions, where the miners were made refugees living in tent cities, terrorized and attacked by company guards, beaten and murdered, the thought of negotiating was not realistic to many. The miners couldn't think politically or trust negotiations when they were being shot at.

The Socialists, like Mary Harris aka "Mother Jones" connected with the workers, empathizing with their desperation and anger and telling them they were in fact at war, and they had better arm themselves like they were. She knew in a completely one sided war, they would just be slaughtered. This was no exaggeration. Examination of the mine wars in West Virginia, Colorado and across the country showed that the mining company, with the government's full support had no issue with murdering workers if that's what it took.

The miners really didn't want to wage war. It was only a matter of necessity, a desperate act against the circumstances. Many sided with the the more radical socialists because they felt the socialists understood their suffering. But as Socialists, through their bravery, sacrifice and hard work, advanced the cause of workers, the violence began to subside because it looked like progress was being made.

As soon as the violence had subsided, the industrialists and many Union leaders quickly dispatched with the Socialists. They had served their purpose and were now subject to red baiting and propaganda campaigns describing how "dangerous" they were. Socialist Parties would gain popularity from time to time, red bandanas appearing again, usually after a serious abuse of power was exercised by the industrialists. But as soon as there was a recession from the brink, or the memory of such an event faded into obscurity, the red bandanas disappeared. The ideals on which they rest are eternal, however, and are only kept in the shadows by the constant fear mongering of the right and the reliable acquiescence of the corporate press.

The devastating blow to the Democratic Party in the election of Donald Trump can not be said to be a result only of his fabulous branding. The greater part of it was the utter failure of Wall St. Democrats like Hillary Clinton to understand the roots of what made the democratic party what it was at its strongest - its origin as workers party.

The party has sold out to the arrogance and elitism that is the monaker of their corporate dominators. If corporate Democrats had not looked down their noses at these "deplorable rednecks" and demonized their legacy of hard work as "dirty ruiners of the environment", if they had EVER actually talked to them, they would have discovered in these people an honest, proud and hard working, community at their core. A people who have shown they will lay down their lives for the belief in the decent and fair treatment of workers.

By merely demonizing our entire state as destroyers of the planet, the opportunity of Democrats to appreciate their history of hard work and move them towards a cleaner energy future was lost. There no reason that our workforce can't move into the future if given the opportunity and direction.

Incidentally, Sierra Club funded the making of a documentary about the coal mine wars and the coal miners - why? Because residents and historians interviewed were trying to stop against the destructive style of extraction called strip mining that threatens to destroy the environment and destroy an important historical monument to labor history, the location of the Battle of Blair Ridge.

The Battle of Blair Ridge was the largest armed conflict since the Civil War. Where federal troops were sent in to wage war on workers. And when I say war, I mean war. With weapons of war left over from WWIl. It still shocks me every time I have to say it. Our government, from the president on down, waged a war against its own people on behalf of the capitalists.

That war continues on today. Through Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

So whenever people seem surprised to find Social Democrats like me in West Virgnia, I would say, "Why is that? We rednecks started it all."

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