Appalachia is a cultural region in the eastern United States, nestled in the center of the Appalachian Mountains. The region and its people are some of the most misunderstood in the United States; they are known to the rest of America, the mainstream, and even sometimes to themselves, by stereotypes. Appalachia is one of the poorest regions of the United States, and thus, contrary to the mainstream view of the region, has a rich, sometimes outright militant, tradition of organized labor.
However, after McCarthyism, the New Left, and the rise of conservatism, organized labor in the United States has seen a dramatic decline. Decades later, Senator Bernie Sanders, although his movement was defeated, has rekindled the discussion on labor and socialism. Looking to the future, a socialist movement in Appalachia can only be successful if its practice is derived from a correct analysis of Appalachian history, culture, and economic conditions.
We cannot correctly analyze Appalachia without first understanding what it is. When the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was created in 1965, the definition of Appalachia was settled in terms of American political discourse. ARC was first theorized in 1960 when the Council of Appalachian Governors, governors from Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, met with John F. Kennedy to address the poor living conditions in the mountainous parts of their states.
However, legal and otherwise abstract definitions do not necessarily reflect the objective sociological conditions of the region. ARC was created by a group of governors seeking monetary aid, so one can imagine that ARC’s definition reflects political conditions and geography, rather than concrete social relations. It is undeniable that the cultural region of Appalachia does not extend into Mississippi or New York; the ARC definition is much too broad to be useful to us.
Our definition of Appalachia will be derived from the Appalachian studies scholarship, specifically from John Alexander Williams, Professor of History at Appalachian State University and former director of the Center for Appalachian Studies. Williams identified six “classic” definitions of Appalachia and determined three versions of the region: Core, Consensus, and Loose. We will use the Core definition for our purposes, as it is the only version of the three whose counties are found in all six classic definitions.
History of Appalachia
Early Migration
In 1603, King James VI of Scotland, through the Union of the Crowns, ascended to the English throne as King James I of England and Ireland. A year later he commissioned the King James Bible, and three years later, in 1606, he oversaw the creation of the Plantation of Ulster, the organized colonization of Ireland’s northernmost province. The Plantation was useful for the new Crown in three distinct ways:
- The creation of a large, taxable plantation.
- The suppression of Gaelic chiefs in Ulster, which was the least culturally anglicized province in Ireland and the most independent of English political and economic control.
- The stabilization of the Anglo-Scottish border region: the Scottish Marches.
It is estimated that 90% of Appalachia’s earliest settlers originated from the Scottish Marches, a region characterized by violence and instability as a result of border clashes between England and Scotland. In this environment, group strength and cunning was needed. Locals organized into clans, close families ruled by a patriarch. Clans, regardless of which side of the border they resided, would often swap which country they held allegiance to as it suited family interests.
Some families, Border reivers, survived by raiding. Appalachian culture, even today, is reminiscent of these clan structures. After the Union of the Crowns, the clans remained and proved difficult for James to control. For this reason, the vast majority of Ulster’s thousands of migrants were from the Anglo-Scottish border region. Within a few generations of the Plantation’s settlement, a considerable number of settlers emigrated to the North American colonies to escape attacks from the Irish, famine, and rising rents from absentee landlords. In America, their descendants are called Scots-Irish.
At the end of the French and Indian War, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlement west of the Appalachian mountains; already settled Europeans were ordered to return. In resistance, the settlers of Appalachia were almost unanimously in favor of the American Revolution.
Appalachia’s history of absentee ownership began even before the Revolution. Huge tracts of land were granted to favorites of the British Crown and to wealthy colonists. The process continued and by 1810, 93% of what is now West Virginia and at least three-quarters of eastern Kentucky were owned by absentee investors. Sharecropping was a very common way to make a living in Appalachia after the Revolution.
Despite unstable relations before the Revolution, the Cherokee Nation signed treaties with the newly founded United States. Some level of co-existence was enjoyed; the Cherokee Nation developed a writing system and a constitutional government, and, at times, Cherokees intermarried with white Americans and held slaves.
However, throughout this period, treaties with the US government gradually ceded away much of the Cherokee Nation’s land, and finally with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, all Cherokees, except for the Eastern Band, were forced out of Appalachia by the US government.
The Civil War
The Civil War has defined Appalachia as culturally and historically, possibly more so than any other event. Due to the Appalachian mountains’ rugged terrain, commercial agriculture was rare, and thus slave ownership was considerably lower than in other slave-holding regions of the US. “Consensus” Appalachia can be very clearly seen in a map of county-level slave population:
Due to the lower prevalence of slavery, Unionism was strong in Appalachia during the Civil War, although not necessarily for moral reasons; the local population was impoverished and detested the slave-holding elite of the Upland and Deep South. West Virginia seceded from Virginia to avoid joining the Confederacy. East Tennessee made a similar secession attempt in 1861 at the East Tennessee Convention, but the Tennessee State Legislature denied this request and sent the Confederate Army to occupy the region. Due to this contradiction, the Republican Party, the anti-slavery party, became deeply entrenched in the area, despite a later political realignment; even today East Tennessee Congressional districts are some of the safest Republican districts in the country.
Labor Militancy
After the war, industry expanded into the South and demand skyrocketed for two key resources abundant in Appalachia: timber and coal. By the early 1900s, newly constructed railroads gave lumber and coal companies greater access to land, which had been mostly owned by absentee investors for about a century. Appalachia had entered industrial capitalism.
Capitalism in Appalachia was entirely unfettered, and communities were isolated, meaning companies had more or less exclusive political and economic power. Company towns were common practice; that is, companies would plan settlements near a resource, such as a coal mine, that would include stores and housing, also owned by the company.
Workers were paid in a currency that was only accepted at the company store, and, without competition, company stores charged exorbitant prices relative to what was paid in cities for the same goods. If workers made any attempt to unionize, they were evicted from company housing and forced to live in tent colonies. Many former company towns still exist, for example, Gary, West Virginia is named after steel magnate, Elbert Henry Gary, and Alcoa, Tennessee, is named after the Alcoa Corporation.
In this environment, living conditions were poor and working conditions were dangerous. Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor, compared West Virginia’s conditions to those of Tsarist Russia:
Until some limitations are placed upon the absolutism of these absentee coal operators in West Virginia, the government of West Virginia will continue to be Russianized and the people can be naught but serfs. Organized labor has forced these conditions and perversions of justice upon public attention and now demands that the wrongs be righted.
To prevent unionization, coal operators hired private detectives and even local law enforcement to intimidate, harass, spy on, and even assassinate those involved in union organizing. The most notorious were agents with the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency; at times, Baldwin-Felts agents were deputized within local police forces. In response to these conditions, from circa 1890 to 1930, Appalachian workers were involved in some of the most militant labor disputes in American history; the series of uprisings are now called the Coal Wars.
There were many violent labor disputes in Appalachia, but the most significant were the West Virginia Coal Wars. In Kanawha County, West Virginia, from April 1912 to July 1913, thousands of coal miners went on strike around Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMW). Mining companies responded by forcing workers into tent colonies; hiring strikebreakers, armed guards, and hundreds of Baldwin-Felts agents. They even built an armored train, equipped with a machine gun, to fire on the workers’ tent colonies. The famous labor activist Mary “Mother” Jones and the Socialist Party of America visited the strike to bring organizational support and to provide weapons to the miners. Eventually, the governor of West Virginia declared martial law to ease tensions.
The West Virginia Coal Wars finally came to a head in 1921 at the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in US history. Up to 15,000 coal miners, led by UMW officer, Bill Blizzard, gathered at Lens Creek Mountain and began marching towards Logan County. They were seeking to bring UMW to un-unionized counties: Logan and Mingo. Many of the miners, around 2,000, were Black, contrary to stereotypes.
Sheriff Don Chafin, known for being funded by coal companies, organized a paramilitary force, nearly 2,000 men strong, at Blair Mountain. Days into the conflict, Chafin employed private planes to drop explosives and chemical weapons, leftover from World War I. As the miners neared Logan County, the governor requested aid from the federal government. The West Virginia National Guard was sent to confront the miners, aided by aerial surveillance from the US Army. The miners considered themselves patriots and often flew the American flag; many were World War I veterans. Thus, they were unwilling to fire on US troops and were directed by Bill Blizzard to end their campaign. There were similar uprisings, albeit to a lesser scale, in Anderson County, Tennessee, and Harlan County, Kentucky.
Even today, mining continues to have disastrous effects on Appalachia’s people and environment. Areas with mountaintop removal have nearly twice the rate of birth defects compared to non-mining areas, for example.
Now that we have established Appalachia’s distinctiveness from the American mainstream, let us bring a more formal, Marxist analysis of the Appalachian community into the discussion.
Appalachia: A Nation?
Some American Marxist groups have considered Appalachia to be an oppressed nation, two examples are the Communist League and the Revolutionary Organization of Labor. Overall, however, this is a contentious viewpoint due to the prominence of racism in the United States and its economic consequences. We will use the following Marxist definition of a nation to perform our analysis:
A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
–Marxism and the National Question
Historically Constituted
We must be abundantly clear that ethnicity plays no part in national character.
This community [a nation] is not racial, nor is it tribal. The modern Italian nation was formed from Romans, Teutons, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, and so forth. The French nation was formed from Gauls, Romans, Britons, Teutons, and so on. The same must be said of the British, the Germans and others, who were formed into nations from people of diverse races and tribes.
–Ibid.
Appalachia is often stereotyped as white, but the reality is that Appalachia is more diverse than many in the American mainstream believe. Scots-Irish is the majority ethnicity, but Germans and Irish also comprise major settler groups in the region.
Black Appalachians, termed Affrilachia, have been instrumental in the development of Appalachian culture, from the cuisine to the music. North Carolina is home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and in recent decades the region has seen a significant arrival of Mexican immigrants seeking industrial jobs.
Finally, Appalachia is home to a unique ethnic group, the Melungeons, thought to have European, African, and Indigenous ancestry. Federal records show that Melungeons were generally well-integrated and enjoyed the same legal rights as white Appalachians, although they may have experienced racial prejudice. They often held property, voted, and served in the Army. The Melungeons, due to the material conditions of the region, have a different, more Appalachian history relative to ethnic minorities in the American mainstream.
Thus, a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people.
–Ibid.
Due to geographical isolation, the unique pattern of migration by early settlers to the region, the distinct political tendencies of the region throughout US history, the intensity of class struggle, and the existence of Appalachian cultural identity, it is evident that Appalachia is a historically constituted, definite community.
Stable Community
On the other hand, it is unquestionable that the great empires of Cyrus and Alexander could not be nations, although they came to be constituted historically and were formed out of different tribes and races. They were not nations, but casual and loosely-connected conglomerations of groups, which fell apart or joined together according to the victories or defeats of this or that conqueror. Thus, a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people.
–Ibid.
During the Civil War, Appalachians were separated into two states, but the strength of Unionism in Confederate-occupied Appalachia suggests resistance to this division. Thus, Appalachia is a stable community of people.
Common Language
What distinguishes a national community from a state community? The fact, among others, that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a state need not have a common language.
–Ibid.
Appalachian English is spoken throughout Appalachia.
Common Territory
But people cannot live together, for lengthy periods unless they have a common territory. Englishmen and Americans originally inhabited the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Later, one section of the English emigrated from England to a new territory, America, and there, in the new territory, in the course of time, came to form the new American nation. Difference of territory led to the formation of different nations. Thus, a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation.
–Ibid.
Appalachia is a contiguous territory.
Common Economic Life
But this is not all. Common territory does not by itself create a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic bond to weld the various parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such bond between England and America, and so they constitute two different nations. But the Americans themselves would not deserve to be called a nation were not the different parts of America bound together into an economic whole, as a result of division of labour between them, the development of means of communication, and so forth. Take the Georgians, for instance. The Georgians before the Reform inhabited a common territory and spoke one language. Nevertheless, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for, being split up into a number of disconnected principalities, they could not share a common economic life; for centuries they waged war against each other and pillaged each other, each inciting the Persians and Turks against the other. The ephemeral and casual union of the principalities which some successful king sometimes managed to bring about embraced at best a superficial administrative sphere, and rapidly disintegrated owing to the caprices of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Nor could it be otherwise in economically disunited Georgia … Georgia came on the scene as a nation only in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of means of communication and the rise of capitalism, introduced division of labour between the various districts of Georgia, completely shattered the economic isolation of the principalities and bound them together into a single whole. The same must be said of the other nations which have passed through the stage of feudalism and have developed capitalism. Thus, a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation.
–Ibid.
The development of capitalism in Appalachia has lagged behind the rest of the United States, due to its isolation. Throughout its history, economic life throughout Appalachia has been more or less common. The geography forced its population into subsistence farming and sharecropping for a longer period of time than the US as a whole, which, again, led to its culture of Unionism during the Civil War. Later, the Appalachian economy was primarily extractive capitalism and absentee ownership.
Common Culture
There is an undeniable, distinct Appalachian culture. The region boasts its own musical tradition and even its own instrument, the Appalachian dulcimer, popularized by the “Mother of Folk”, Jean Ritchie. The American Counseling Association published guidelines on how to properly counsel clients of Appalachian culture; they describe Appalachians as an “invisible minority” with a collectivist culture compared with American mainstream individualism.
Therefore, technically speaking, in Marxist terms, Appalachia is a nation. Yet, despite the essence of national character in Appalachia, there has never been an independent Appalachian national identity, even during violent labor uprisings. In fact, when polled, Appalachians are highly likely to report having “American ancestry.”
Thus, Appalachians in the early 20th century may have considered themselves “more American” than the absentee capitalists exploiting them. In order to properly organize a socialist revolution in Appalachia, we need a clearer understanding of the Appalachian quasi-nation’s relationship to the United States overall.
A Peripheral American People
In the climate of the 1960s New Left, some radical academics and activists in Appalachia were attracted to an interpretation that Appalachia is an internal colony of the United States; this is the most intuitive conclusion after recognizing that Appalachia is a quasi-nation. For example, Helen Matthews Lewis, the “grandmother of Appalachian studies” expressed this view in her book Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case.
Lewis was a professor at East Tennessee State University but was fired at the behest of the coal industry when she spoke publicly about patterns of unfair tax advantages in its favor and the environmental damages of mining. Much of the attention on this model in the 1960s was its cogent analysis of economic and cultural domination of Appalachia by the American mainstream.
Two important examples of cultural domination come to the front of the discussion. First, the missionary movement in Appalachia. From 1880-1940, capitalists and missionary intellectuals, primarily from northern states, came to the region in an attempt to “modernize” Appalachia by bringing mainstream American culture to the region. This “modernization” effort is constituted in the historical and economic development of capitalism in the United States; the ruling class needed a modernized workforce in order to expand into Appalachia. The local population was already devoutly Christian but followed older denominations, and, thus, religion became the ideal method of cultural domination.
The second example of cultural domination is the perpetuation of stereotypes, which have existed since the region was first settled. The Scots-Irish were always considered “savages” by the Anglo-American elite. British historian, Arnold Toynbee, featured on the cover of Time Magazine, had this to say of the Appalachian people:
The Appalachian ‘mountain people’ today are no better than barbarians. They have relapsed into illiteracy and witchcraft. They suffer from poverty, squalor and ill health. They are the American counterparts of the latter day White barbarians of the Old World—Rifis, Albanians, Kurds, Pathans and Hairy Ainus; but, whereas these latter are belated survivals of an ancient barbarism, the Appalachians present the melancholy spectacle of a people who have acquired civilization and then lost it.
Due to sensationalist journalism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many stereotypes of the region still exist. Two particularly harmful stereotypes come to mind. The first is the disdain of Appalachian speech, despite it being the oldest living English dialect and entirely linguistically valid.
The second is the myth of inbreeding, which has been used by some pundits to blame Appalachians for their economic situation. A 2008 genetics study found no greater prevalence of inbreeding in Appalachia compared to the rest of the United States. These stereotypes have been harmful enough for Cincinnati, Ohio, which has a particularly large Appalachian diaspora (20-30% of its population), to adopt a human rights ordinance banning discrimination against Appalachians.
Despite its success in analyzing cultural and economic exploitation in Appalachia, the internal colony model began to come under scrutiny as Appalachian studies evolved. The model breaks down in two places. First, under capitalism, colonialism tends to be associated with racism. White Appalachians have never fallen into a legally-sanctioned, racial caste system. There has never been an “internal government,” like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to rule the so-called colony of Appalachian people.
Second, prejudice against Appalachians is intimately tied to class. For example, Black politicians can experience racism in basically the same way as working class Black Americans, but politicians in Appalachia are not stereotyped as “hillbillies.” For the internal colonialism model to work, there must be domination of a group’s workers and capitalists.
David Walls, an academic and activist who has made significant contributions to Appalachian studies, prefers the internal periphery model. Under capitalism, the various regions of a country will necessarily develop at an uneven rate. Underdeveloped regions, peripheries, perform two important functions for advanced capitalism. First, they provide cheap labor for more developed regions to extract profit from, similar to a colony. Second, in the US, keeping certain peripheries in poverty is crucial for advanced capitalism, as it reduces workers’ bargaining power in other regions.
For example, unionization struggles in the “mainstream” United States may be compromised by the threat of moving jobs to Appalachia to take advantage of the cheaper labor. Walls notes that the federal government has denied ARC the capability to develop its subregions evenly; the Central subregions, very similar to William’s “Core Appalachia”, have not had the same level of assistance as the Northern and Southern subregions. This view also has greater compatibility with Appalachia’s history; it was a very early settler group in the United States that has, even in the time of the Revolution, long considered itself American. Due to a century or so of isolation in the mountains, has become an “indigenized” people, who do not have the nomadic essence that the American mainstream has. That is to say, most Americans are more likely to move around the country, but Appalachians are more likely to have connection to place, and may experience anxiety and depression if separated from “home.”
Physical Quality of Life
Now that we have established what Appalachia is, we will quantify its level of development. Because it is a quasi-nation, especially with its unique economic history, we will compare it to the level of development of countries. Our metric will be Physical Quality of Life, similar to this American Journal of Public Health study that compared the level of development of capitalist countries and socialist countries. The study states:
Economic development is a widely studied historical process that exerts profound effects on the physical quality of life (PQL).
PQL Index is given by:
Where:
- LiteracyRate: The percentage of the population that is literate.
- InfantMortality: Infant Mortality out of 1,000 births.
- LifeExpectancy: Mean number of years a population is expected to live.
Country-level Index was calculated with these data sources:
To calculate Appalachia’s PQL, PQL Indices were calculated for counties in Core Appalachia, and those indices were averaged. Data sources:
The calculations and graph generation were done by a Python script.
Results
Appalachia had a PQL Index of 86.4, similar to countries like Algeria, the Philippines, and Venezuela. However, the United States (including Appalachia and counties whose majority population is an ethnic minority) as a whole had a PQL Index of 95.1.
Appalachia and Socialism
To build socialism in the United States, we should, ideally, find a socialist movement that has successfully taken state power, in a country with similar conditions, and tailor their method to something that will work in America.
Nicaragua
The United States is a union-state, a union of nations under one central government, similar to Russia and China. Both of these countries had successful socialist revolutions, and a key component of their movement was to appeal to the various nationalities and ethnic groups that their countries are composed of. In contrast, the United States is not in a situation that would warrant a violent revolution. The Bolivarian socialist countries: Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have taken power, more or less peacefully, but have still transformed the nature of the state in a revolutionary way. Thus, socialists must win the trust of the various ‘nationalities’ within the US, but with legal methods.
In terms of revolutionary praxis, Appalachia has remarkably similar conditions to Nicaragua, led by The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a Marxist and Christian socialist political party. First, it is worth noting that Nicaragua and Appalachia are similar in terms of economic development, with PQL Indices of 86.2 and 86.4, respectively. Second, Nicaraguans, like Appalachians, tend to be socially conservative and deeply religious; FSLN won with the motto: “Christianity, Socialism, and Solidarity.”
A Christian socialist message would likely be well-received by the Appalachian working class. Third, Nicaragua has significant rural poverty but does not force rural Nicaraguans to move to cities for opportunity.
Instead, FSLN employs a strategy they call “grow as you are planted,” where the economic development of rural areas is emphasized. As discussed previously, Appalachians may experience adverse mental health effects, or, in the case of Cincinnati, discrimination, when moving to cities. They simply do not want to leave Appalachia, and a message like “grow as you are planted” would resonate with them.
Modernization of Appalachia
Two institutions have played a dominant role in modernizing Appalachia: The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). TVA is a state-owned enterprise, established in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, that brought electrification to the Tennessee Valley. ARC is a federal-state partnership, established in 1965, with the purpose of economic and cultural development in Appalachia. Since its creation, ARC reduced infant mortality by two-thirds and doubled high school graduation rates in its constituent counties.
ARC reaches its goals by developing and executing five-year plans, similar to the Soviet Union and China, but on a smaller scale. American socialists should make clear to the Appalachian working class that the free market only brought colonial-style economic exploitation, environmental destruction, and cultural domination, and that Appalachia could only be developed by state planning.
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves the much higher consideration.
-Abraham Lincoln, 1861
