Coal miners’ militancy and consciousness
Published Jun 4, 2006 1:33 PM
David Hoskins
WW photo: Lal Roohk
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From a talk given by David Hoskins, a FIST organizer, at the
May 13-14 conference on “Preparing for the Rebirth of the
Global Struggle for Socialism” in New York City.
The
technological revolution transformed what was once a pivotal foundation of
modern industrial capitalism by automating coal mines and revolutionizing
production methods. In the early days the occupational hazards of mining were a
defining characteristic of the work. Young boys and girls were sent into the
dark and damp mines at an early age, where they either fell prey to mortal
accidents or devel oped debilitating diseases such as rickets.
The harsh
conditions they worked under gave rise to a spirit of militancy against the
capitalists who owned the mines and the states that protected those capitalists.
The hallmark of that militancy can be found in the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars
of 1912 to 1921. Ten thousand miners, well disciplined and well armed, tied red
handkerchiefs around their necks and battled a force of 1,500 police officers
and private detectives hired by the coal companies. The battle ended a week
later when 10,000 regular U.S. Army troops, aerial troops and chemical warfare
troops brutally overpowered the miners.
As time went on a section of the
United Mine Workers leadership would eventually become complacent and seek
compromise with the capitalists. As they did, a section of the workers would
have their consciousness muddied. Rather than blame capitalists and their
implementation of technology as the source of their job losses, some of them
scapegoat immigrants.
There is one thing the ruling class fears more than
anything: when workers begin to make connections between their struggles. That
is, when miners, immigrant workers, the oppressed who suffered through hurricane
Katrina all begin to see the ruling classnot each other—as the
problem.
For a period many coal miners began to be perceived as a
so-called labor aristocracy. But if a worker ever forgets who he or she is, the
ruling class will be the first to remind them.
And so on Jan. 2 of this
year an underground explosion in a mine in Sago West Virginia trapped 13 coal
miners. The blast killed one instantly. Twelve others died slowly from carbon
monoxide poisoning. One other barely made it out with his life.
At a
meeting in a small church in Sago, W.Va., exhausted miners, righteously angry at
the capitalists responsible for their fellow workers’ deaths, issued calls
to arm themselves and exact justice against the company officials.
For an
instant they were conscious of their common interests as workers. It is our job
as revolutionaries to find that spark of realization, that revolutionary impulse
in every worker and oppressed individual and to develop it into its historic
potential for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and establishment of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
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