By M. A. Booth, Red Phoenix correspondent, Kentucky.

The Central Appalachian region of the US has a long history of coal mining going back nearly two centuries. The region itself encompasses approximately 29,773 square miles of land in five states: Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Southwestern Virginia, East Tennessee, and Western North Carolina. Nicknamed the “coal basket” of America for its super-abundance of the raw material, Central Appalachia has provided its lion’s share of the coal that built our nation since the Industrial Revolution. This is a fact many Appalachians and miners are proud of, but one that hasn’t come without its consequences for the people and the land. For generations, capitalism has hyper-exploited the working people of Appalachia and deliberately underdeveloped the region as a whole. Massive profits were reaped for the owners of the coal companies while the working class was kept in perpetual poverty and suffering.

In the last few decades, a new form of mining has taken off in Central Appalachia called mountaintop removal, sometimes referred to as “strip mining on steroids.” This “innovation” in mining cuts down on the amount of labor necessary to harvest coal from the Earth. With the old method of coal mining, a company had to hire hundreds of miners to go underground. Now they simply blow up the mountain with explosives, then move the dirt and coal away using bulldozers, excavators, and dump trucks, and later sort the extracted materials. This technique costs much less than traditional mining methods. This is a barbaric practice because it destroys the physical geography and any ecological balance. Under capitalism over 10% of the land in Appalachia has been turned into surface mines, or “reclaimed” surface mines. This adds up to over a total of well over 1.9 million acres of land! 

This is a completely unsustainable practice that puts the entire ecosystem at risk of collapse. Streams and rivers are polluted, animals lose their habitats, and species go extinct. As horrible as this is for the environment, the problems don’t end there. Human beings are inevitably affected as well. Serious health problems and conditions are directly linked to the activities of these mining ventures. As the coal barons buy up more land, more working people are displaced and forced to move from their homes. The people are dependent on the very same jobs that are destroying their land to eke out an existence for themselves and their families. This results in a situation where the working class people of Appalachia are forced to cannibalize their own homeland in order to survive. The entire region has been, and continues to be, one of the largest sacrifice zones in all of America.

Life under capitalism is increasingly untenable and ripe with contradictions. A large portion of the Appalachian working class knows they’re being fleeced by the system, but their legitimate class grievances are minimized by the bourgeoisie and the capitalist press. They are constantly bombarded with all sorts of bourgeois narratives and propaganda, from the neo-fascist Trump and his lies about “bringing back coal,” to the so-called “Green New Deal” of the Democrats; and from the anti-communist “Democratic Socialist” trend to Biden’s pathetic calls to “Build Back Better.” These are all political illusions crafted to misdirect, misguide, and keep the subjectivity of working class people in shackles. The proletariat is caught in the crossfire of bourgeois propaganda from every direction. It remains our job as Marxist-Leninists to reach out to the masses of working people to instill in them a firm understanding of class-consciousness, wherever they may be found. The rural and urban people of Appalachia are no exception to this rule. Until millions of workers understand class struggle, their relation to it, where their interests lie, and how their labor is fundamental to the relations of society, we will be stuck within the confines of the ruling class and their capitalist machinations indefinitely.  

We live under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Simply put, capitalism serves the interests of the rich at the expense of the poor. There is no legislative or regulatory path out of the crisis we are facing in Appalachia, or in all of America. As soon as reforms are passed, the ruling class seeks to repeal them. With one hand concessions are given to the workers, and by the other they are taken away. Reformism, in all of its manifestations, is a dead end. Only an anti-revisionist, Marxist-Leninist vanguard party is capable of leading real revolutionary change in this country and internationally. It is only through the construction of socialism and communism, where workers are in control of their own destiny, that a path out of the crisis in Appalachia and every other sacrifice zone across this country can be found.

Categories: Environment, U.S. News