Thoughts on Zohran Mamdani’s Victory

Image via the PSL on X

By Subin Dennis

Zohran Mamdani, who describes himself as a “democratic socialist”, has won the New York City mayoral elections. He is a vocal critic of billionaires, ran on a plank to make the city affordable to the working people, and took a firm pro-Palestine stand in a country whose government is the staunchest supporter of the genocidal Zionist state. His campaign overcame the challenges posed by the propaganda fuelled by billionaires and the Zionist lobby. This, therefore, is a moment for cautious optimism.

Why optimism?

Optimism, because of the reasons stated above, and because such victories and campaigns (the other most notable campaign in the recent decades being the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020) have helped make the term “socialism” less taboo in the US, a society where scaremongering about socialism and communism has been widespread, and where those suspected of communist sympathies have been witch-hunted. This, along with a campaign plank calling for greater taxation of the billionaires, is something to applaud.

Why caution?

Because we have repeatedly seen “democratic socialists” who have campaigned for the Democratic Party ending up endorsing the imperialist agenda pushed by the US ruling class. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (AOC) are the best examples of this trend. It took two years and a huge barrage of criticism for Sanders to admit that what is going on in Gaza is a genocide, and even then, he added falsehoods to tone down criticism of the Zionist state. AOC even voted against a legislative amendment to cut $500 million in funding to the Israeli military.

They are also often quick to condemn socialist countries such as Cuba, and those with socialist-leaning governments such as Venezuela, as “authoritarian”. Zohran Mamdani himself recently stated that he believes both Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Miguel Diaz-Canel of Cuba are “dictator”, no less.

This weak-kneed position on socialism and lack of a firmly anti-imperialist stand are basic traits of social democrats.

“Democratic socialist”, or “social democrat”?

Social democrats, particularly in the advanced Western countries, have by and large been pro-imperialist, often failing to oppose imperialist wars (e.g. the wars against Syria and Libya in the recent decade and a half).

Note that many social democratic parties call themselves “Socialist Party”, “Social Democratic Party”, “Labour Party”, and the like. While in government, they have pursued imperialist policies, and often actively led imperialist wars (e.g. the leading role of the Labour Party government under Tony Blair in the War on Iraq).

Social democrats in Western Europe never built socialism, but they did build welfare states during a time when the socialist bloc was powerful and the “threat” that socialism might win seemed real. Eventually, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they actively pursued neoliberal policies, cutting taxes for the rich, selling off public sector enterprises and privatising public services. Another example worth recalling from the recent past is that of Syriza, a supposedly “radical left” party that came to power in Greece in 2015 promising to end austerity, and ended up reinforcing austerity, privatising airports and seaports, and undermining social security.

The situation in the US has been somewhat different. None of the two major parties in the US call themselves socialist or social democratic. Both of them have actively pursued horrendous imperialist wars. Both of them have implemented neoliberal policies in the past four and a half decades. The socialist and communist movements were significant forces in the past, but were weakened by the McCarthyite witch-hunts of the late 1940s and 1950s. In recent years, particularly with the campaign of Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic Party candidature for US presidential elections, socialism as a positive term has re-entered the political discourse in the US. As an aside, the term “liberalism”, often used to denote the political inclinations of the Democratic Party, has been a source of confusion for many. In the US, with a historically weak socialist movement, “liberals” are often thought of as “leftists”, even though liberals have been consistently imperialist, and neoliberal in economic policy in recent decades. The worldwide influence of the US media has meant that this confusion has been imported into the discourse in many other countries. In countries of the Global South with relatively more powerful socialist movements, such movements don’t consider US-type liberals to be leftists at all, although many even in the Global South do tend to get misled.

The term “democratic socialism” is used by those who claim to uphold it in an obvious attempt to distance themselves from the socialism that has actually existed and which actually exists, which also explains Mamdani’s lack of solidarity with the revolutions in Cuba and Venezuela.

One could of course argue that socialism in the US doesn’t have to be and will not be a carbon copy of socialist experiments elsewhere. The problem here, however, is our concrete experience that the “democratic socialists” who became prominent figures in the Democratic Party have ended up taking the same position that social democrats elsewhere have taken.

In the light of this experience, it will be foolish for those of us in the Global South who are the main victims of imperialism to not be cautious.

Even with these caveats, we can hope that Mamdani would make a sincere attempt to make good on his promises to make New York a more affordable city for the working people. He would definitely face many obstacles put up by the Trump administration, the Democratic Party establishment, the bureaucracy and others. Whether he would hold steadfast, or go the way of Sanders and AOC, only time will tell. An optimistic take would be to say that just as the mass pro-Palestinian movement made it possible for Mamdani to maintain a pro-Palestinian position, an organised mass movement could possibly help him stay the course.

Excited about Mamdani’s victory? Join the Left and help build it!

The Mamdani campaign has excited a lot of people worldwide. While most people outside New York saw the brilliant, slick social media campaign, within the city itself, the campaign was powered by about 90,000 volunteers who knocked on 3 million doors.

If you are somebody outside the US who has become excited about Zohran Mamdani’s victory, join a left organisation where you are (if you haven’t already), and help build it. That will bring some positive change in your own society, and by extension, in the world. We see a lot of people from various parts of the world commenting below Mamdani’s social media posts, “my mayor (I’m from X country)” and so on. The fact of the matter, of course, is that no matter how much I wish, if I don’t live in New York City, Zohran Mamdani is not “my mayor”. If I want a socialist mayor/government and if I don’t have it already, I have to contribute by working for that outcome. And I must recognise that it is not just somebody else’s job to put in that work.

Subin Dennis is an economist and researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

See also: Zohran Mamdani and the Sorcery of Soft Rebellion: The Limits of Left Power Inside the Democratic Machine