Who Are the English? Michael Rosen Takes a Look.

I met an English guy from Durham recently and happened to mention I was English. When he found out I was born in Yangon (Rangoon) because my dad was in the British Army, he said I can't be English, I'm British. Needless to say, I didn't waste much time with this one.

Watching developments back home (England and the UK in general) I hear the right wing elements, the Reform Party types and the extreme right, who say the same thing; Pakistani's, Indians, Africans can't be English, only British, and there are efforts to bury that category. 

Unfortunately, this attempt to divert attention from the actual cause of social crisis gets an echo among sections of the population when there is no serious counter to the propaganda.  I went on to google images and typed in, English faces. Every image was a white person. Of course, the Irish can't be English, (not that they'd want to be) and they're white. White Chimpanzees, the British bourgeois referred to them on occasion. Skin color is the dominant means for undermining working class unity in the US and increasingly so in the UK it seems to me.

 

With immigrants being blamed for the economic crisis, we are seeing an increase in racism in the UK as well as Islamophobia. After all, England, like the US, is a white Christian country to these elements. And Islam is heresy. So is Judaism, and Jew hatred has a long history in England. The massacre of English Jews in York in 1190 is one of the examples of anti-Semitic assaults in England and it took an American Jew to inform me of that episode. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the UK as well as the US. I believe the cause of this to a great degree is the barbaric policies , including genocide, of the Israel state whose leaders claim to be the official voice of the Jewish people throughout the world. Fortunately, in the UK and the US, young Jews are in the forefront of the movement against Zionism and Palestinian rights; clearly the best defense against anti-Semitism.

 

Not liking the search in Google images, I asked chatgpt why black people can't be English and got this response below. Now that's more like it. Below the image is a piece that Michael Rosen*  posted to his Facebook page countering this false view that there is a set definition as to what English actually is. In the last analysis though, the dominant division in capitalist society is class. For me, the central aspect of my identity is that I am working class. My life activity that put food in my mouth and a roof over my head has been as a seller of labor power, not a buyer of it. Richard Mellor

 

 

Who Are the English? Michael Rosen Takes a Look.

By Michael Rosen *

July 13, 2026

 

I see that the people I might dub the 'Englishists' are busy at work on social media trying to reinvent the colour bar and fire people from the England team. As with a lot of racism, they rely on ring-fencing groups of people according to this or that migration or invasion. In this case, the 'true' Englander is, in their books, the descendant of the Germanic migrations to what is now England (these Germanic peoples went elsewhere as well but this particular bit of ringfencing is only interested in what is now England). 

 

According to some historians these Germanic migrations began after the Romans left. Some doubt this and say that logically, Germanic peoples must have sailed and rowed across from Germanic countries well before that. As it happens the genetic evidence seems to dispute that, as I'll show in just a moment. 

 

So what is the latest information (according to AI) on the waves of migration before the Germanic peoples arrived? I suspect that the word 'English' and the phrase 'ethnically English' is going to be used by right-wing parties in the near future. At present, I can see on social media that they seem to be talking about, descendants of the Germanic peoples. 

 

Why have these racial purists excluded the English Celts? (I'm leaving out the Welsh and Irish Celts for the moment!) What happened to them? Or are they still here? 

One story is that the Germanic peoples shoved them into Wales and Cornwall. Another story is that the Germanic peoples intermarried with the Celts in most of England but less so in Cornwall and Cumbria. 

 

But then, hang on, who was here before the Celts? After all, weren't they European invaders? Yep. But hang on again. Whoever was here before the Celts, were they invaders? So who was here before them? And so on and so on? 

 

Clearly, when it comes to choosing the England team on a blood and soil basis (as all good racists should) we should dispense with these recent Germanic invaders and fill the team with those with the highest percentage of English Celtic DNA (or, if possible) with the DNA of the folk who came before the Celts - unless they were wiped out, of course.) 

 

Of course, this is all ironic. As you know, this construction of 'the English' as a Germanic type is shot through primarily with hatred of people of colour. All I'm doing here is pointing up that to create this Germanic type (in essence a reinvention of the 'Herrenvolk') they have to dispense with different branches of the Celtic parts of what is now the UK. Most laughably, this includes the 'English Celts' ie those people who (the DNA folks claim) have 'markers' on their genome going back to Celtic settlement in England (not in Wales and Ireland). In other words this racism has to be also racist towards pre-Germanic settlers on 'this land'! 

 

No surprise it's racist towards Irish, Welsh and Scots Celtic peoples, but it's grimly funny that it has to be racist towards English Celts. (In terms of where such people are most likely to live today, it's Cornwall and Cumbria, say the geneticists.)

 

For people who hate all this DNA stuff, you have my sympathy. By no means am I trying to reduce people, culture, language, or politics to DNA. And we must never forget that DNA studies of difference are talking about tiny, tiny differences. 

And, as geneticists have always pointed out: differences in DNA make-up between so-called different 'races' are no greater than differences between people within an alleged 'race'. However, I am interested in the 'markers' that modern geneticists use as they do show, I believe, stories of migration. 

 

Below, when it says DNA - they are not talking about a whole genome (the whole DNA package). They are talking about one or several markers that belong to a given group, and which, they claim, are distinctive of that group. 

 

[Geneticists reading this, please feel free to dive in on comments below]

Anyway....

 

So what did AI tell me about all this?

 

As follows:

1. The Anglo-Saxon Profile is Clear and Localized

The study (Oxford University) tracked the genetic signature of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon migrations that occurred after the fall of the Roman Empire (around 450 AD).

 

The Genetic Marker: This parentage closely matches modern populations in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

 

The Concentration: This Anglo-Saxon DNA is concentrated primarily in central, southern, and eastern England, where it makes up roughly 10% to 40% of the modern local genome.

 

2. The Indigenous "Celtic" Profile is Fragmented

 

The most surprising discovery was that there is no single "Celtic" genetic group. Before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, the indigenous Celtic Britons were already highly localized.

 

Distinct Tribes: The study found that Celtic parentage in the UK splits into vastly different genetic clusters. For example, the Celtic people of Cornwall, Devon, Wales, and Scotland are among the most genetically different from each other.

 

The Welsh Isolation: The Welsh genetic cluster showed almost zero Anglo-Saxon input, remaining the closest living match to the original, post-Ice Age indigenous settlers of Britain.

 

3. Anglo-Saxons Intermarried Rather Than Replaced

For centuries, historians debated whether the invading Anglo-Saxons completely wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England. The study settled the controversy:The Anglo-Saxons intermarried with the existing Celtic population.

 

Even in eastern and southern England—the heart of the ancient Saxon kingdoms—the remaining 60% to 90% of the DNA is still indigenous Celtic Briton. The incoming Saxons contributed a minority percentage to a massive, pre-existing Celtic genetic baseline.

 

Summary of Differences

The survey proves that Anglo-Saxon parentage (Germanic/Continental Europe) and Celtic parentage (Indigenous/Ice-Age Briton) are fundamentally different branches on the genetic tree. 

 

However, they do not exist in separate people today. Modern English parentage is a story of the two lines fusing together.

 

A DNA study of Britons has shown that genetically there is not a unique Celtic group of people in the UK. According to the data, ``(BBC Who do you think you really are? A genetic map of the British ...19 Mar 2015) — There was no single 'Celtic' genetic group. 

 

When is it thought that Celts started inhabiting what is now England?

 

The mainstream scientific consensus is that the people who became the Celts began inhabiting what is now England during the Middle to Late Bronze Age, specifically between 1400 BC and 800 BC.

 

For decades, historians believed Celtic culture didn’t arrive until the Iron Age (around 600 BC) via a sudden military invasion. However, a groundbreaking Harvard-led ancient DNA study completely reshaped this timeline:

 

1. The Bronze Age Genetic Shift (1400 BC – 800 BC)

By extracting DNA from nearly 800 ancient skeletons, scientists discovered a massive, peaceful migration from continental Europe (mostly modern-day France) into southern Britain (England and Wales).

 

 

This migration was sustained over centuries and was so significant that it altered half the genetic ancestry of England's subsequent population.Rather than a violent conquest, it was a steady integration of continental people who brought new ritual practices, trade links, and crucially, early Celtic languages.

 

2. The Iron Age Flourishing (800 BC – 43 AD)

While the genetic foundation was laid in the Bronze Age, the distinct "Celtic culture" we recognize today—hillforts, distinct curvilinear artwork, complex metalworking, and Druidism—became fully dominant during the Iron Age.

 

By 320 BC, Greek explorers like Pytheas sailed around the island and explicitly documented that the inhabitants were culturally and linguistically Celts (Keltoi).

 

3. "Continuity" Rather Than Arrival

It is important to note that the term "Celt" is largely cultural and linguistic rather than a biological group that suddenly showed up. The people inhabiting England did not just cross a border as "Celts"; they were a mix of the indigenous Neolithic stone-circle builders, Bronze Age migrants, and continental traders who slowly evolved a shared Celtic identity over a thousand years.

 

What do we know of the genetic make-up of who was living in what is now England before the Celts arrived?

 

Before the Celtic migrations arrived in what is now England around 1400 BC, the island's genetic landscape had already undergone two distinct, total population replacements.

 

Ancient DNA extracted from skeletons has revealed a detailed timeline of the people who occupied England during the millennia before the Celts:

 

1. The Bell Beaker People (2400 BC – 1400 BC)

Directly before the Celts, England was inhabited by the "Bell Beaker" culture (named after their distinct, inverted bell-shaped pottery).

The Genetic Horizon: 

 

Arriving around 2400 BC from the river deltas of northwestern Europe (modern Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium), they were part of a massive westward expansion of people carrying Eurasian Steppe ancestry.

 

The Turnover: 

A landmark Harvard Medical School study proved that the Beaker folk replaced 90% to 100% of the British gene pool in just a few centuries.

 

Physical Traits: The Beaker people brought the genetic variants for lighter skin, blue eyes, and lighter hair to the island. They also introduced the paternal DNA haplogroup R1b-M269, which became the dominant genetic signature of modern 

British men. 

 

By the time the Celts arrived, England's population was almost entirely composed of these Beaker-descended communities.

 

2. The Early Neolithic Farmers (4000 BC – 2400 BC)

The sophisticated society that the Bell Beaker people replaced consisted of the Neolithic Farmers, the very communities responsible for building iconic monuments like Stonehenge.

 

The Genetic Horizon: This population arrived around 4000 BC, tracing their deep ancestral origins back to Anatolia (modern Turkey). They migrated across the Mediterranean and continental Europe, bringing agriculture and livestock to Britain.

 

Physical Traits: 

Skeletal DNA shows that these Stonehenge-builders typically had olive-brown skin, dark hair, and brown eyes. When the Beaker folk arrived, this Neolithic genetic signature was nearly entirely wiped out, possibly due to a lack of immunity against continental diseases like the plague.

 

3. The Western Hunter-Gatherers (10,000 BC – 4000 BC)

Before the farmers arrived, Britain was populated by a sparse group of post-glacial Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

The Genetic Horizon: They re-colonised Britain after the glaciers receded.

 

Physical Traits: Famously epitomised by "Cheddar Man," this population possessed a genetic combination rarely seen today: very dark skin paired with striking blue eyes. When the Neolithic farmers arrived in 4000 BC, they caused a 90% genetic replacement of these hunter-gatherers, leaving only a tiny fraction of their DNA in the subsequent farming populations.

 

Summary of the Pre-Celtic Genome

When the Bronze Age "Celts" began crossing the channel around 1400 BC, they were not entering an empty land or encountering the people who built Stonehenge. They were stepping into an England populated by Beaker-descended communities who had light skin, high rates of the R1b gene, and deep roots in the continental European Steppes.

 

By they way, you may know that apart from my common ancestry with all human beings (which is the large proportion of all our DNA) my markers (and it is only specific markers) aren't part of any of this! I'm culturally 'Ashkenazi' and, say the geneticists, there are significant markers on my genome that says that these originate in a mix of the 'Levant' and what they call 'southern Mediterranean Europe' (ie Italy, Sicily, Malta and Greece.) More on that in my next post.

 

*Michael Rosen is a writer that writes children’s books and poetry. He has also directed plays. You can find out more about him by going to his website at; MichaelRosen.com.UK  He also has a You Tube channel: Kids’ Poems and Stories With Michael Rosen 

Depression is a natural response to Capitalist Madness

Depression is a natural response to Capitalist Madness

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
July 13 2026

You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel depressed at times. We’re living through a period of capitalist decay, a social system that has reached the limits of what it can offer ordinary people. Much of this depression comes from a familiar feeling — the sense that we can’t influence events, that history is happening to us rather than with us. The Institute for Labor and Mental Health once called this surplus powerlessness, and the term still fits.

Part of the problem is that there’s no national organization with real social power to turn to, no broad network of militant groups like those that existed in the 1930s. It’s easy to feel isolated in the absence of visible leadership or mass movements.

But that doesn’t mean we’re incapable of acting. We can start small: talking with friends, co-workers, and neighbors; studying the rich traditions of working‑class history; learning how past generations fought racism, sexism, and division to build unity. Despite the history of racism and sexism injected in to society by the ruling class in order to undermine workers’ unity, the U.S. labor movement has a deep well of experience, and it’s ours to draw from.

We can also use the organizations we do have. Our unions can become vehicles for change. If we are in a union we can build rank and file caucuses and adopt fighting programs that demand what workers actually need —not what the Democratic Party or its allies atop organized labor deem is acceptable. 

The strategies that built the CIO and industrial unionism in the 1930s weren’t magic; they were practical, collective, and rooted in workers’ own initiative and power.

The antidote to political depression begins with accepting that the world we live in can be changed. History shows that systems end and new ones are built. Acting consciously at whatever level our resources allow is how we break the isolation and helplessness that capitalism produces.

And we should be clear, mass movements aren’t created by charismatic individuals or tiny groups claiming to have all the answers; a healthy democratic mass movement cannot be manufactured. They emerge because the capitalist class is compelled to attack workers, and workers respond. That dynamic hasn’t disappeared.

I have no doubt that the working class will rise to meet the challenges ahead. There are no guarantees — there never have been — but we are very much alive, and history is still ours to shape.

Workers of all countries unite.

Exposing US Poverty: How a Rich Country Keeps People on the Edge.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

Thought I'd share this video from Catherine Liu.  I think the talk is in response to the view gaining some traction in China that there is a "kill line" in the US, as the introduction to the talk states: "The idea of a U.S. “kill line” is going viral in China, fall below it, and the system lets you die. Is that actually how America works? Catherine Liu examines how a wealthy country produces mass poverty, turns everyday life into profit for capital, and fragments society through identity politics while class struggle is pushed aside."

 

Ms. Liu argues that a small number of powerful corporations dominate major sectors of life in the United States — from agriculture and food production to health care and the mass media. This concentration of ownership shapes not only the material conditions of society but also how Americans understand our own country and its role in the world. 

 

The same individuals often sit on the boards of these corporations, reinforcing a unified worldview that serves the interests of the ruling class.

 

Through these media institutions, we are encouraged to believe that success is purely a matter of individual effort — the familiar myth that anyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” When this narrative clashes with lived reality, people are pushed toward the conclusion that poverty or hardship is a personal failure rather than the result of structural forces. This internalized blame contributes to social crises such as domestic violence, addiction, and other forms of self‑destructive behavior, turning people against themselves or others who are struggling, “It’s their own fault”.

 

Ms. Liu also criticizes the liberal left, particularly the Democratic Party, for its fixation on identity politics. By dividing people into competing groups seeking a slightly fairer share of an unequal system, this approach fragments the working class and undermines the possibility of building a unified movement capable of resisting corporate power. Recognizing the specific forms of oppression faced by different groups is essential, but genuine liberation requires solidarity on a class basis. As Malcolm X observed, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” Ending racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression ultimately depends on global working‑class unity.

The Efforts the US Mass Media Goes to in Order to Deny There is Such a Thing as a US Working Class.

Richard Mellor

I received a message from someone who had just seen this on my You Tube channel and liked it. I can't remember if I posted it to the blog here and couldn't find it. So I thought I'd repost it as it is about the class question that is so often obscured or outright hidden in US society. The obsession with identity politics is one of the methods used to avoid promoting the class issue in the US. They have done a good job of it, the mass media has convinced millions of Americans that they are middle class and this term is used to describe workers in the media. The serious journals of capitalism like the WSJ or Business Week use it though, they know that most working people never read them. 

The eight hour day movement and the origins of Mayday

Mayday 1886, source

Richard Mellor

Let's hope today, May 1st 2026 will see one of the largest Mayday's since 1886 and that as opposed to passive protests and rallies, millions of workers take strike action. Mayday is about shutting down production. hitting them where it hurts most----profits. 

 

Mayday is International Workers' Day. When I first came to the United States from Britain in the early seventies, most American workers I spoke to thought May Day was a Soviet or Russian holiday. But Mayday is as American as apple pie as they say. It is a workers' holiday officially celebrated throughout the world but not here. 

Mayday has its roots in the history of the American working class movement. During the later half of the 19th century there was an ongoing struggle for the eight hour day and fewer work hours in general. Craft Unions, where workers organized around their individual trades, was the dominant form of organization and the brutality of the employers was widespread. 

At a meeting of the Central Labor Union of New York City on May 18th 1882, P.J. McGuire, a socialist and founder and General Secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, introduced a resolution for a day of festivities and parades in New York commemorating Labor and it proposed the first Monday in September. The first national organization that supported a day of celebration in honor of Labor was the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions at its convention in Chicago in 1884 and it was these developments that led to Labor Day.

“To capitalists, bankers and their hirelings” the Federation announced. As workers, “..drudge and toil your away your lives for a bare existence, these idlers and non-producers live in luxury and debauchery, squandering with a lavish hand that which belongs to you ---that which your labor produces..” (Sound familiar?)

“They have tried to deny us the right to organize---a right guaranteed by the constitution of this government. Therefore we call on you to show that we defy them; that you will organize; that you have organized; that the day of your deliverance is approaching. To do this we ask you to join the our ranks in celebrating the day.”

The Federation went on to proclaim: “The Trades and Labor Assembly proclaims labor’s annual holiday the first Monday of September. Leave your benches, leave your shops….”

The first national observance took place in September 1885 and the US Congress adopted Labor Day, the first Monday in September, as an official holiday on June 28th 1894. The bill was introduced by a member of the Typographical Union.

Alongside these developments, every Labor demonstration at the time, including the Labor Day celebrations, had the eight hour day as a dominant theme, “Eight Hours to Constitute a Days Work” was a prominent slogan and at the same Federation’s 1884 convention where a national Labor Day was proclaimed, another resolution was passed that stated:

“Resolved by the Federation of Organized Trades Labor Unions of the United States and Canada that eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1st 1886, and that we recommend to labor organizations throughout this district that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named.”

So May Day has began and always been associated with the struggle for the eight-hour day and the movement around this struggle that arose in the 1880’s and culminating in May 1st 1886.

Prior to the Federation’s resolution, struggles had been taking place around the eight-hour day and shorter working hours in general. Some bosses had conceded and some city councils gave public sector workers the eight-hour day. But like today when we sign a contract, the minute the ink is dry the bosses are trying to violate it. In addition, the bosses would often reduce pay by 20% to compensate for the lost time so they actually lost nothing at all.

It became clear then, as it is today that workers cannot rely on legislation, capitalist politicians or their parties to defend our economic and material interests. All the social legislation that came out of the great upsurge of the 1930’s the occupations and the CIO and the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s from sick leave to title 7 were already rights taken in the streets through mass action; they were simply forced to legitimize them on paper and then write history to show that legislation and “responsible” political lobbying is what produces results.

If they wanted the eight-hour day, “The way to get it” Carpenter’s leader P.J. McGuire said, was “….by organization. In 1868, the United States passed an Eight-Hour Law, and that law has been enforced just twice. If you want and Eight-Hour law, make it yourself.” McGuire added, “We want an enactment by the working men themselves that on a given day, eight hours should constitute a day’s work, and they ought to enforce it themselves.” **

So it was the Carpenter’s that introduced the resolution stating May 1st 1986 as the first day for the establishment of eight hours as the legal workday. Another proposal stated that votes be taken in all Labor organizations for a “universal strike” for an eight-hour workday on May 1st. A writer for the well known Labor journal John Swinton’s paper who was covering the convention, wrote:

“It is useless to wait for legislation……A united demand for a shorter working day, backed by thorough organization, would prove vastly more effective than the enactment of a thousand laws depending for enforcement upon the pleasure of aspiring politicians or sycophantic department officials.” ***

“To accede the point that capitalists have the right to eight hours of our labor is more than a compromise, it is a virtual concession that the wages system is right” the anarchist journal wrote.

But the working class took up the idea seriously and revolutionaries of all types, including anarchists joined the movement and played a crucial role in the success of May day, especially in Chicago which was a hotbed of radical activity. Agitation for the eight-hour day was everywhere and rallies and protests, parades and gatherings took place throughout the country prior to Mayday. By mid April, 250,000 industrial workers were involved and in the face of the movement and to head it off, many bosses made concessions on hours.

They responded with the stick and the carrot as they always do and always will. In the mass media that they owned then as now, their propaganda said that society would collapse, the country would go broke, the money not there. The eight-hour day was “communism, lurid and rampant” . they claimed it would encourage “loafing and gambling, rioting, debauchery and drunkenness.” (they think we are like them you see) They wrote that it would bring “lower wages, poverty and degradation for American workers.”

But there was no stopping the movement. Foner points out that workers were smoking eight-hour tobacco, buying eight-hour shoes and sang the following eight-hour song:

We mean to make things over;
we’re tired of toil for nought

We sure don't have this today

But bare enough to live on; never
an hour for thought.
We want to feel the sunshine; we
Want to smell the flowers;
We’re sure that God has willed it,
And we mean to have eight hours.
We’re summoning our forces from
Shipyard shop and mill:
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.

On May Day 1886 some 350,000 workers in more than 11,000 workplaces went on strike for the eight-hour day. 40,000 went out in Chicago. These are impressive figures for the time and the conditions and the limited Union organization. 45,000 workers were granted the eight-hour day without striking. The city of Chicago was paralyzed and the meatpacking workers, some of the most abused in the city won the eight-hour day with no reduction in pay, a huge victory. May Day 1886 was also a great organizing tool and thousands of workers joined Labor organizations. The same happened during the great strike upsurge that led to the CIO as millions joined Unions.

The bosses won much of this back but there were permanent gains made as hours were lessened in many industries. But May Day terrified the bosses and they responded with extreme violence attacking gatherings continuously. Then on May 3rd at the McCormick Harvester factory where workers, members of the Knights of Labor were locked out for striking for the eight-hour day, scabs, escorted by hundreds of cops were brought in. As the workers demonstrated against the strikebreaking, the cops shot in to the crowd and killed four strikers. The following day, a meeting was called in Haymarket Square to protest the brutal killings and indiscriminate violence by the police. It was a peaceful rally until the end of the day when it was almost over. A couple of hundred cops waded in to the crowd to force them to disperse despite it being a legal gathering and attended by the mayor who had left earlier.

A bomb was thrown at the cops killing a bunch of them and the cops responded by shooting in to the crowd killing a number of workers and wounding hundreds. In the aftermath of the bombing, hundreds of workers were arrested, tortured and beaten. The cops eventually chose the prominent anarchist workers’ leaders to put on trial. These were among the most successful organizers and were hated by the employers and the cops. They were accused of murder even thought they weren’t at the rally because the “unknown” bomb thrower must have been influenced by their speeches.

Haymarket Martyrs

The accused were found guilty in a rigged trial and sentenced to hang. Protests and support poured in from around the world which did force them to commute some sentences but four of the workers’ leaders, including Albert Parsons, were executed.

Throughout the struggle for Labor rights, and the eight-hour day culminating in May Day, the tendency is for workers to overcome the barriers that the bosses use to divide and weaken us. “Every worker who toiled for a living would be welcome. No distinction of color will be made; race prejudice will be ignored; religious differences will be set aside; but all men will be on an equality provided he earns his daily bread” proclaimed the New York Central Labor Union in its appeal to all Labor bodies to support Labor day. It is a reflection of the times that the mention of women is not as prominent which reflects the terrible legacy of sexism but we learn through struggle.

The reason May Day is ignored by the officials, legislators of laws, and the Democratic and Republican parties, is that it was an independent movement of the working class in this country. As McGuire said, we have to take independent action if we want something. The same applies today. The leaders of the organized working class today are also terrified of independent working class action, either direct action like strikes or political action like a mass workers party as they support capitalism, they have the same world view as the boss. Labor Day is a legislated day that they were forced to approve and they even hide that history but it is the "official" and safe holiday where we eat and drink and support the Democrats.

May Day is a uniquely American creation. May Day began as our day but we share it with the rest of the workers of the world because we are not simply “one” with other workers here in the US,  we are “one” with workers of all countries. The history of US Labor is a rich and militant one. We have faced incredible violence and survived it. Despite the history of racism and sexism that the bosses introduce in to every institution and pore of society in order to divide us, we have come this far.

Back in May 2006, some of the most oppressed and abused sections of the US working class, a couple of million immigrant workers reminded us of the importance of this holiday to our class. We thank them for it. 

Happy Mayday.

* St Paul Globe Democrat, 8-16-1855 Quoted in P Foner, History of the Labor movement of the United States Vol.2 p97
** ibid p 99
*** ibid P99

Labor History: The Real History of the New Deal: Reform From Below

Just listen to the commentary and the bias in reporting.

A friend shared a Robert Reich article with me criticizing the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who spoke at a public event recently blaming the “progressive era” and I assume progressives. For the “worst crimes of the 20^th century” Reich is correct to take Thomas up on this but then goes on to praise Theodore Roosevelt and his grandson Franklin D Roosevelt as the forces behind the progressive era. I respond to this false argument below, it is propaganda really in order to negate the role of the US working class in changing history.

 

The Real History of the New Deal: Reform From Below

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444 retired

Robert Reich, one of the architects of NAFTA, invokes the New Deal while leaving out its most important dimensions — the explosive class struggle that actually forced Roosevelt's hand. Liberal labor leaders and Democrats love to cast Roosevelt as the friend of the working man, the hero who saved capitalism from itself. The real story is more uncomfortable for them.

The legislation of the 1930s — the National Recovery Act of 1933, the Wagner Act of 1935, the WPA and the broader social legislation of the era — was the capitalist class codifying what workers had already won in the streets and workplaces of America. Roosevelt didn't lead the working class. He managed the crisis it created.

The Ground Shifts

After the 1929 crash, industrial production collapsed by 48% between 1929 and 1933. The early strikes of the period were led by the American Federation of Labor, but the AFL was a craft union federation with little interest in industrial workers, who were considered unskilled and unorganizable. John Lewis's United Mine Workers stood as the major exception. Those early strikes were defeated.

The Depression ground people down, and radicalism filled the vacuum. The Communist Party organized in auto and steel, led rent strikes in working class neighborhoods, and recruited thousands. It was building a base in the most strategic sectors of the economy.

Then came 1934 — a turning point in American labor history that deserves to be remembered the way July 4th is remembered, and isn't.

Three general strikes erupted that year. In Minneapolis, 40,000 workers took to the streets in a truckers' strike led by organizers who would go on to found the Socialist Workers Party. They battled police in pitched confrontations and won. In Toledo, workers struck the Auto-Lite plant — and critically, the unemployed joined them on the picket line, refusing to be used as scabs against their employed neighbors. The left-wing Lucas County Unemployed League was central to that solidarity. In San Francisco, longshoreman Harry Bridges led a general strike that shut the city down. Socialists and Communists played leading roles in all three. All three won.

Legislation Follows Power

It was in the aftermath of this upheaval that Roosevelt passed the Wagner Act in 1935, guaranteeing private sector workers the legal right to organize. This sequence matters. The law didn't create the movement — the movement created the conditions under which the law became necessary.

The AFL, shaken by events, made a belated attempt to organize auto workers. But its craft union structure was incompatible with industrial unionism. The break came dramatically when John Lewis — heading what was then the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL — punched the Carpenters union president and walked out. The CIO was born. Lewis, a shrewd tactician whatever his politics, used Communist Party activists as his organizers. At the CIO's height, roughly 43% of its affiliated unions were led by CP supporters. Critically, the CIO had no color bar. Black workers joined in enormous numbers, and the impact on Black working class life was substantial and lasting.

Flint

In 1936, workers took on the world's largest corporation. General Motors had vowed it would never recognize a union. It paid workers in company scrip. Workers lived in GM-owned houses and bought from GM-owned stores. It was a company that owned people's lives.

On December 30, 1936, workers occupied the Fisher Body plant in Flint, Michigan. Sit-down strikes spread across GM facilities throughout the country, echoing the great French sit-downs of that same year. The occupation lasted 44 days. Women organized a network outside the plant walls, passing food through windows and holding the line against police. The GM bosses were reluctant to storm the plants — the workers were sitting beside the dies and tooling, and could destroy them. The Michigan governor threatened to send in troops. The workers' response was unambiguous: if soldiers came in, the blood was on his hands and they were prepared to die.

GM capitulated. The UAW was recognized. It remains one of the greatest victories in the history of American labor.

The War and What Came After

The economic crisis deepened again in 1937. What ultimately rescued the capitalist system was not the New Deal but the Second World War — at the cost of 57 million lives.

Roosevelt was an astute ruling class politician. He forced GM to retool its factories for war production — a private corporation compelled by the state to produce what the state required. During the 2008 financial crisis, the same logic applied when the government effectively nationalized large sections of the financial industry, calling it "conservatorship" to avoid the political freight of the word. The lesson in both cases is the same: through public ownership and democratic control over production, societies can produce what people need rather than what generates profit. That is the fundamental contradiction the New Deal exposed without resolving.

The Lesson

Twenty years after Flint, the gains of the civil rights movement followed the same logic. Legislation came from pressure in the streets, in the churches, on the buses and at the lunch counters — not from the goodwill of politicians. Politicians responded, sometimes reluctantly, to power they could not ignore.

That is the consistent lesson of this period. Legislative gains that benefit working people come from organized power from below. They are then managed, institutionalized, and where possible, defused by those above. Understanding that sequence clearly is the beginning of not being fooled by the next Robert Reich who invokes the New Deal while burying its actual history.

For Further Reading

• Sit-Down — Sidney Fine
• Labor's Giant Step — Art Preis
• Strike! — Jeremy Brecher
• Poor People's Movements — Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward

Facts For Working People Blog: An Appeal to Readers

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

4-23-26

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money. Marx

 

 

The so called free press, some 90% of our news comes from these ten corporations: source

 

Comrades, sisters and brothers,

 

My blog Facts for Working People seems to have a respectable audience. Last month it had 94,000 visits and as of today, 4-21-26 61,000 visits. In September last year it had 147,000, a record. Someone is reading it. I used to pay FB to get a wider audience or to direct a commentary at a specific area but that has become increasingly more complicated. 

 

I do not monetize the blog or its Facebook page. I am held to that by the old adage, “He who pays the piper calls the tune”. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of the blog traffic comes through Facebook.

 

According to Statista, total US ad spending was estimated at $455.93 billion by the end of 2025, and is expected to rise this year. Primary advertisers like Google, Amazon, drug companies, the health industry and others determine the content of the so-called news we get on television and in the print media. The coverage of Israel’s genocide and the present illegal war on Iran is an example, how strikes are reported for example.

 

I like The Andy Griffiths show here in the US, but it’s an old show and they know that seniors are watching it. So the viewer is bombarded with ads about ailments, some real and some concocted in the boardrooms of drug companies, that affect seniors and the advertiser has the drug you need; if you don’t think so, just ask your doctor.

 

I recall when the English singer Petula Clark had a show in the US and one segment had her doing a song with Harry Belafonte. She touched his arm or there was some physical contact and the Chrysler representative tried to stop it being aired; it might offend the southern viewer. Chrysler paid for the episodes through advertising. That shows us the root of racism and its society and its ruling class. There were no ads on our TV at that time and I thought it so strange a car company could do that.

 

I do not write for the blog like I used to as I always wanted it to be very much a working people’s platform and I think the readers are overwhelmingly working class and our allies. Among the middle class and academia. I initially hoped working people would send stories about life and work which hasn’t occurred; it’s just that working class people especially the blue collar sector in which I spent my working life, are not so familiar with writing in this way and some just don’t feel confident not only about writing publicly but also about defending what they write.

 

And while I would identify myself as a revolutionary socialist I do not have a sectarian approach to this and any contribution that is at least socially conscious, not racist or sexist can be published. The bottom line is does it advance the interests of working class people, does it help strengthen our class consciousness and working class unity.

 

But for numerous reasons I cannot write as much as I used to, not that I am skilled at writing but I did keep it going when it was getting maybe 100 visits a week.

 

I now publish pieces by writers whose work I think is important to the working class, or the class struggle in general, quite a few I subscribe to and others I would get off Facebook. I always have checked with the author’s initially even though they are in the public domain.

 

I subscribe to a number of sources, individual and institutional like the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and until recently Foreign Affairs and the Financial Times. I would like to subscribe to the FT print edition but it is just too expensive, and it’s fairly costly for a digital subscription.

 

I also have Zoom that is used for meetings of some of the folks that are around the Blog or support it and I just paid $170 to renew that.

 

I am not broke but if you appreciate the political commentaries that I post to Facts For Working Peopleblog that I share on its Facebook Page at: http://www.facebook.com/FactsForWorkingPeople   or my Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/richard.mellor.58/  I would greatly appreciate some help financially. 

 

I spend a good 6 -8 hours a day, sometimes more if I can and while I realize I benefit from it as it’s my only political outlet these days, if you are reading this and you are a regular reader of the blog can you afford to donate some funds to help? There is a donate button on the blog and it is easy to use although it is rarely used otherwise I wouldn’t be appealing here. 

 

If a few people donated a small amount that would be helpful. Of course, I have had dreams of having some professional help me with design for the blog and building a You Tube channel that can be linked to it but I’ve given up on that. The blog and its FB page is fine.

 

Thanks for any help you can be in this regard.

 

Richard Mellor

 

 

How Liberals Monetized Trauma: Catherine Liu on Marx, Trump, and identity politics

Richard Mellor

I have not heard of this woman before but I really enjoyed this video and agreed with much of her analysis and her criticism of the elite liberals and identity politics. She’s spot on regarding the Democratic Party. She also raises the need for a working class political organization as well. It will be interesting to hear what others think.

 

In relation US her description of the hatred of the liberal class by working people on the one hand definitely has some basis in the support for the right. As she says, US workers know we're exploited, but if that's the case, the open naked exporter is less repulsive than the do gooders whose motives are rooted in the view that they are deserving of their higher social status as they worked hard for it and are smart. Consequently their compassion and caring for the poor and those below them is based on the view their role is to help those of us that are lacking not due to a system that is inherently unfair but due to their failings.

 

When she talks of care workers that are among the lowest paid of the workforce she stresses the need to organise and to recognise that they have a set of skills rather than just being a carer in the abstract. I recall a few years ago when hotel/motel maids were forming unions or attempting to form a union due to the extreme exploitation of the work but also the constant threats of sexual harassment or violence as they find themselves in the living quarters and bedrooms of many males. 

 

Folks might remember the African hotel worker that was raped by a 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was the head of the IMF some years ago. The hell she had to go through. I have spoken with housekeeping staff many times and they shared similar stories with me. They liked that I told them I didn’t need the sheets changed and stuff like that so they could get a break and they thanked me but reminded me not to tell the front desk otherwise they would simply give them more work to do.

 

There is no doubt that Identity politics has been undermined somewhat over the past few years and it’s a step in the right direction. I do not have the writing skills to articulate my objects but they go as far back as intersectionality when I was called a class reductionist by some liberal for my objecting to its origins and application. I have to say, myself and many others are relieved that the pronoun fad has subsided.

Michael Roberts: US economy: jobs and AI

US economy: jobs and AI

by Michael Roberts

The US economy expanded only at an annualised 1.4% in Q4 2025, well below forecasts of 3%, the advance estimate of real GDP showed. And over the whole 2025, the US economy expanded 2.2%, or below the 2.4% rate in 2024. The boasting of Trump and his advisers of a US boom doesn’t look quite so convincing after these data. Investment in equipment and software products rose more than 8% in 2025, probably the result of the AI investment boom. Without that, US real GDP growth would have been well under 2% during last year.

US economic growth in 2025 was certainly faster than the other top  G7 economies, which are still stagnating with growth rates barely above 1% a year.  But an annual growth rate of 2.2% in 2025 is still less half that of China’s and one-third of India’s – although the latter are ‘emerging economies’, not ‘mature’ capitalist economies.

The official consumer price inflation year-on-year rate has been falling during 2025, but several studies have shown that the official measure of consumer price inflation in the US is biased downwards. One study pointed out that mortgage and financing rates are left out of the costs for consumers in the official index. Including such costs would double the inflation rate.  In a previous post, I have shown studies that reveal how the official index does not account for the real rise in prices for American households.  If it did, using a ‘value rate of inflation’, (that Mino Carchedi and I have developed), it would show that real household incomes have fallen some 20% since 1960 and 4% since the end of the pandemic.

The Trump administration claims that the tariff hikes on imports into the US since last April (now judged illegal by the US supreme court) have had no effect on inflation.  But the latest analysis suggests that this is not so. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that US companies and consumers are now bearing 95% of the increased tariffs, particularly on imported foodstuffs.  The tariffs on food imports have risen 44%, in effect, a 12% tax on consumers.  This analysis was backed up by the New York Federal Reserve, which concluded that “US import prices for goods subject to the average tariff increased by 11 percent … more than those for goods not subject to tariffs” and “U.S. firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025.”  Higher tariffs, labour and health-insurance costs had pushed many businesses to raise prices. “After holding the line on prices for several months, companies—big and small—have begun a new round of increases, in some cases by high-single-digits.”

On reading this, White House adviser Kevin Hassett was so irate, that he called this “the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve System,” and said that “the people associated with this papershould presumably be disciplined.”

Headline consumer price inflation on a three-month basis is still 3%. The latest GDP data for Q4 measures what is called the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index for inflation.  This is the measure that the Federal Reserve follows to adjust its policy interest rate.  And the core PCE (excluding food and energy) is also above 3% on a 3-month basis (Furman source).

In 2025, retail prices rose faster than average consumer incomes. So stagflation is still in place.

That meant that in 2025 Americans only sustained their consumption needs by running down savings and increasing debt. The personal savings rate fell to 3.6% of income in December, down 1.9pp since April 2025.

No wonder most American households, apart from the very rich, feel depressed about their lot. It’s what is called a K-shaped economy.

But what about jobs? Does the current relatively low unemployment rate lend the lie to stagnation? The official rate may creeping up, but it is still way below where it was at the end of the pandemic slump. 

January’s jobs growth figure looked good on the surface, up 130k. But rises in November and December were revised down.  More important, there were even larger revisions to 2025 as a whole, which showed that last year was the weakest year of job creation outside of recessions in two decades. The US economy only added 181,000 jobs in 2025, or just 15,000 extra jobs per month.

Outside of leisure & hospitality, private healthcare, and government – the US economy has been consistently losing jobs.

Manufacturing employment notably fell. So Trump’s economy is not exactly delivering the “manly jobs” that he promised.

Ironically, the health sector desperately needs staff, but Trump’s draconian deportation policy has removed the very immigrant staff that the sector relies on. Immigrant labour has not taken jobs from native-born workers, but instead filled the gaps where native-born labour was unavailable. Foreign-born workers are heavily concentrated in low-paid occupations, like health and social care.  

So far, the unemployment rate has not risen too much. But 2026 is likely to change that. Job cut announcements have hit their highest levels since 2009, while vacancies have fallen to 2020 lows. Last month, US employers announced over 108,000 job cuts, the highest start-of-year total since the 2009 Great Recession, with layoffs rising 118% year over year and over 200% from the end of 2025. Many of those cuts were in white-collar professions. Amazon has implemented multiple rounds of cuts, eliminating around 16,000 corporate jobs in January as part of a broader goal to trim some 30,000 white-collar roles. Meta continued layoffs in its Reality Labs division and other teams, with hundreds of positions already cut in early 2026. So the vacancy-to-unemployed ratio is now near 1.0. This is a critical point that will indicate rising unemployment from hereon.

And this brings us to the impact of AI on the economy and jobs.  The debate on the impact of AI continues.  First, there are the optimists. Stanford University economist, Eric Brynjolfsson predicts that AI will follow a ‘J-curve’ in which initially there is a slow, even negative, effect on productivity as companies invest heavily in the technology, before they finally reap the rewards. And then the boom comes. Such a J-curve was seen in US manufacturing productivity growth, which fell in the mid-1980s and then after the recession of 1991, accelerated sharply until the mid-2000s. 

Brynjolfsson now reckons that US productivity rose 2.7% last year, a near doubling from the sluggish 1.4 per cent annual average that characterised the past decade.  BJ raised his ‘J-curve’ theory again. “General-purpose technologies, from the steam engine to the computer, do not deliver immediate gains. Instead, they require a period of massive, often unmeasured investment in intangible capital — reorganising business processes, retraining the workforce and developing new business models. During this phase, measured productivity is suppressed as resources are diverted to investments. The updated 2025 US data suggests we are now transitioning out of this investment phase into a harvest phase where those earlier efforts begin to manifest as measurable output.”

But the latest Q4 2025 data throw that prediction into doubt. Another mainstream economist Jason Furman forecasts just a 1.7% rise in productivity for 2025, which would be better than the historic annual average of 1.4%, but a full point below Brynjolfsson.  And remember, changes in the productivity of labour depend on two factors: output growth and employment growth.  With employment growth near zero in 2025 and 2025 output growth now measured at 2.2%, the maximum rise in productivity will be no more than 2%, and will mainly be due to jobs disappearing, not output rising.

Moreover, is even this current productivity rise in 2025 due to AI? A recent study of how AI adoption affects productivity and employment across more than 12,000 European firms found that AI adoption “increases labour productivity levels by 4% on average in the EU, with no evidence of reduced employment in the short run”. But the productivity benefits, however, were unevenly distributed, benefiting mainly medium and large firms that possess the resources, technical expertise, and economies of scale needed to absorb integration costs.  “Moreover, the Ai impact tapered to a one-off effect – rather boosting than long-run productivity growth.”

Another study of 6000 CFOs, CEOs and executives across the US, UK, Germany and Australia found that while 70% of firms actively use AI and two-thirds of top executives regularly use AI, their average use is only 1.5 hours a week, with one-quarter reporting no AI use. And these firms report “little impact of AI over the last 3 years, with over 80% of firms reporting no impact on either employment or productivity”.  The executives reckoned that by the end of this decade, AI will boost productivity by 1.4%, increase output by 0.8% and cut employment by 0.7%.  This is not anywhere near as large an impact as the optimists expect, and moreover suggests that job losses are just as contributory as any output rises.

According to a new report by the OECD, AI use by companies is rising across OECD countries. In 2025, 20.2% of firms reported using this tool, more than double in comparison to 2023. However, adoption is not the same as productivity.  The study shows that AI is like any other technology introduced by capital – it will only be adopted widely if it enables capitalists to shed labour and raise profitability. As Karl Marx observed in Capital, machinery and automation are deployed not to lighten work but to deepen capital’s grip on labour. “The constant aim of these improvements is to diminish the manual labour for a given capital, which, thanks to these improvements, not only requires fewer laborers, but also constantly substitutes the less skilled for the more skilled”.  So when the optimists claim a boost in productivity from AI, they are ignoring the impact on jobs and labour’s share of new value created.

Indeed, PIMCO, the giant bond investment managers, reckon if there is any increase in productivity from AI, it is likely to come from shedding jobs rather than from increasing output.  In the technology boom of the 1990s, PIMCO says, output rose and workers (at least in the expanding tech sectors) saw real wages rise. 

But this time is different. Workers’ real wage growth in 2025 slowed to a pace barely above 1%. This helped drive down labour’s share of U.S. income to its lowest level in decades of reported history.

Any productivity gains from AI will come from job losses and any new value will swing to the owners of AI capital, not workers. Indeed, PIMCO reckons that “AI-related job displacement is already happening, although so far it’s been relatively limited. Entry-level hiring stalled in 2025 in the most AI-exposed sectors. And since 2022, we estimate that cumulative U.S. employment in the most AI-exposed sectors has already declined by over 1% versus a 4% increase in employment across other sectors.”

And more and more studies praising AI do so from the point of view of reducing human labour time.  We are told that AI-powered “agents” are cutting the time taken to produce research and forecasting reports. Goldman Sachs recently announced it was working with Anthropicon, an AI agent, to automate roles at the bank. The company says Uber, Netflix, Salesforce and Allianz also use its models in a similar way.  PIMCO estimates that approximately one-third of tasks performed by workers across the U.S. economy could be handled by the current LLMs. “If AI hypothetically were to displace only a small 2% share of these workers, it could lead to nearly one million fewer U.S. jobs and the unemployment rate rising by 0.5 percentage points (assuming none of these workers leave the labour force).”

Meanwhile, in 2025, technology investment reached levels unseen in decades. The big 7 tech companies—Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple and Broadcom (8 if one counts Tesla)—have announced $700 billion new spending in AI for 2026 alone, after having invested $450 billion in 2025. Google said it plans to double its capital expenditure this year to as much as $185bn. However, cash flow from existing businesses is increasingly insufficient to meet investment demands from the ‘hyperscalers’ in an industry that requires constant reinvestment, and whose returns may not justify the scale of expenditure.  The likelihood of a financial bust remains high.  And the jury is still out on the productivity impact of AI.

The US AI tech giants are increasingly banking on achieving super-intelligent models that would transform capitalism – they are searching for this ‘holy grail’ (which remember, was a fiction). The aim is the removal of human labour altogether. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in one to five years. Just this month, Microsoft’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman predicted most white-collar work “will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”   The US economy is still “one big bet on AI”.