Mamdani’s election win and the Sudanese civil war

Zohran Mamdani is the new Mayor of New York City. By running a campaign that promised to take on the billionaires and better the lives of working class New Yorkers, he tapped into anti-establishment, class anger that is growing not only in New York but across the world.

But the struggle has only just begun. Already, Trump has declared war by threatening to cut off federal funding to New York. Meanwhile, billionaires and Democrats are attempting to court Mamdani and get him to water down his programme. The question remains whether Mamdani will resist this pressure and carry out his programme.

Meanwhile, in Sudan, the RSF have taken control of El-Fasher, and are now carrying out a genocide against the population. Why is this happening? What can we do? And what can revolutionaries learn from the whole tragic path, from revolution to counter-revolution, that brought Sudan to this?

In this week’s episode of Against the Stream, Josh Holroyd and Hamid Alizadeh sit down to discuss these critical questions.Against the Stream is the Marxist current affairs podcast of the Revolutionary Communist International. It airs weekly on YouTube on Thursdays at 6 p.m. GMT.

Reading list

Sudan: the whip of the counter-revolution spurs on the revolution - Fred Weston

What next after Sudan's Million Man March? - Hamid Alizadeh

Sudan: No to a rotten compromise! Finish the revolution! - Hamid Alizadeh

The EU’s ‘Pact with the Devil’ - Investigative Journalism for Europe

Mamdani Seeks to Charm New York’s Most Powerful Capitalists

Zohran Mamdani wins: what’s next in the fight against the billionaires? - Revolutionary Communists of America

Transcript

Hamid
Is he going to succeed? Is it feasible what he's proposing, and how is he going to be be carried out?

Josh
It's like, you know, Antaeus in Greek mythology, who drew his strength from his mother, the earth, and the way that Hercules beat him was by picking him up and lifting off the ground, and then he could break his back and crush him.

The main conclusion that we draw from the discussion we've had about New York and the United States and about Sudan: we need a revolutionary party of the working class.

Hamid
Welcome to the Against the Stream podcast, the communist podcast, which analyses world events in order to reveal the class interests that shaped them.

While we aim for the highest objectivity, we do not claim to be impartial.

We stand unapologetically on the side of the workers, the youth and the poor, the ones who make the world go round.

This podcast is for them.

On Tuesday, we saw the victory of Zorhan Mamdani in the New York mayoral election. Mamdani is a left winger and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Meanwhile, in the past few weeks, we've seen a new chapter in the Sudanese Civil War with the fall of El-Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces and the brutal killing of thousands of civilians there.

While these two events might seem a world apart, in reality they reflect the same phenomenon, the complete dead end of the capitalist system, which is unable to provide a civilised existence for the majority of humanity.

My name is Hamid Alizadeh, and I'm here today with Josh Holroyd.

Welcome Josh.

This is the first time on the podcast.

Josh is a member of the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International.

He is also the editor of our theoretical magazine In Defence of Marxism, which will feature a long piece on Sudan, the Sudanese Revolution and the Civil War in fact.

When is it due Josh?

Josh
On the 15th of January.

Hamid
Okay, well, that would be great for our listeners and our comrades to read that and to have something to look forward to.

Now, Josh, we'll start with Zorhan Mamdani. I saw that communism was trending on Twitter yesterday. At least on my feed, it was trending number one.

It's quite a quite a result, absolutely. I mean, I can list out the basics here. I want to hear your comments.

The turnout was about double the amount of people who came out last, last time around for the election, for the mayoral, mayoral elections, and Mamdani got 50.4% of the vote, 1 million votes.

He was standing against Andrew Cuomo, who was a, who is an old Democratic aristocrat, we can say.

A Democrat for the Democratic Party and Curtis Silva who was a Republican who got 7.1 percent.

But Mamdani beat both of them. Both of the of the candidates of the establishment.

They had the support of the totality of the billionaire class.

The whole of Wall Street.

Donald Trump came out in support of Andrew Cuomo.

He was supposed to be... he was supposed to hate the Democrats. They were the deep state trying to get him!

But he came out in support of Cuomo. I don't know how much that helped Cuomo.

That might have actually undercut him and yet, Mamdani managed to win against all of these.

As a person was completely unknown. A year ago, he was polling at 1 or 2%.

And he managed to get a majority, not a plurality, a majority vote against both of these and the entire American establishment, political establishment, in reality.

What do you think that represents?

Josh
Well, yeah, I agree. It's a highly significant result.

And one thing, I think, one very clear thing that it represents is something that you've been talking about on the podcast for a very long time, actually, which is this accumulation of rage directed at the establishment as a whole, including the Democratic establishment.

I know that Mamdani ran as a Democrat, but they were not voting for the the National Democratic Party and the Democratic establishment.

And as well as this rage also an enormous desire for something better.

A lot of Mamdani supporters on results night were talking about finally, we feel... There was one quote in particular that I thought was quite significant, but one of his supporters is "Finally, we feel, at least here in New York, that we have some kind of control over our lives."

So in addition to just a kind of resentment and a rage at the elites, the ruling class that are constantly hammering them, humiliating them, treating them like dirt.

That it that is an important part of class consciousness, but that's only one side of it.

Rage and resentment alone is not enough.

What you're also starting to see is a sense of...

I'm talking about the beginnings of a process here, or maybe, you know, one or two steps on.

But a sense among working class people that actually we can do things to change this.

That if we fight we can surprise the establishment, we can out manoeuvre the establishment, and we can start to get results.

Of course, we're talking about electoral results and not necessarily policies being put into effect yet.

But I found that to be certainly very significant.

Hamid
Yeah, and I mean, the hysteria of the bourgeois was really palpable.

I, for my sin, subscribe to The Wall Street Journal. It's only $2 a month or something.

Josh
Other journals are available.

Hamid
But I mean the amount of hysterical articles in the past few months about Mamdani. The landlords were enraged.

They were talking about moving their business or business people were talking about moving their business out of New York.

There was lots of plots and schemes going on to how to undermine him.

23 billionaires poured in money into...

There were two Super PACs, so one pro Cuomo, which had loads of Republicans and Democrats in it.

And then there was one which is just anti-Mamdani,

Which got, like, I think, like, $7 billion or something like that in total, as far, sorry, million

In total, I think they, they raised around $40 million against Mamdani. Mamdani raised around 10 million.

What was he standing on? That's, that's, this is the dichotomy.

This is the absurdity of the situation.

What was he standing on?

The most known parts of his programme, which is what people saw, was a rent freeze for 2 million rent stabilised tenants.

I think there's 1 million.

Josh
1 million apartments.

Hamid
Yeah, apartments, too many people living there.

So rent freeze.

These are apartments that are under a special law in New York, which means that the rent increases are controlled every year.

There's like three, four or 5% increase, and there's a board that kind of determines that.

This means that they haven't gone up as much in rent price as some of the higher, highly priced market rent apartments.

They're still quite expensive, but compared to normal market rent, much cheaper, obviously.

He wants to freeze that.

He wants free buses and fast buses.

The average bus speed in New York is about eight miles an hour, I think.

I think turtles have been to walk faster.

And to get free buses.

There are people who commute in and out of the city, within the city who spend hours, spend hundreds of dollars a month on their commutes.

And also, he wants to have universal child care, free universal child care below the age of five.

He also, there's also minor point is not talked about that much, is he wants to set up five grocery stores owned by the city which can provide cheap, cheap produce for the citizens.

He was also known as a anti-Palestine, sorry, anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine candidate.

And this is what the establishment was frothing at the mouth over and, you know, railing against and this goes to what you see, you know.

This really painted out that the interests of the majority of ordinary people living in New York are not the same as the interests of the people who run New York.

That is, that is what's really come out of this.

Josh
And Trump calls that communism.

And people say, 'Well, if that's communism, maybe communism maybe communism isn't so bad' in the United States of America.

Hamid
Yeah. I mean, communism would be that and a lot more. Obviously a lot more.

He managed to... his campaign was like, unlike anything else.

I think the closest we can come to it is Obama's first election campaign, the way that it was organised.

But I think this was on a much higher level.

Towards the end of it, there was 104,000 volunteers.

They knocked on 3 million doors, 4.4 million phone calls up to election day.

And at the core of this was the Democratic Socialist of America, which is the left wing organisation which organises this.

Now, Mamdani stood as a Democrat, but he is also a member of the DSA, which has a policy of working within the Democrats.

We'll get to that.

But this is a, this is a huge force, the fact that they could activate 104,000 people.

Without any name, or any you know, from being completely unknown to ordinary people, and then beat off all of the establishment politicians.

That's a that's a huge thing.

As a socialist!

I mean, 20 years ago, being a socialist in America would be seen as... you have to hide that, or you have to be careful about where you would say that.

And now that is what the majority of voters in New York are voting for.

And a CNN polls shows that a quarter of people who voted called themselves democratic socialists, which is a lot, which is 250,000 people in America.

Which obviously goes to prove what we've been saying, that there's a massive radicalization going on underneath the surface, and there's a railing against the system, and people are looking for a radical way out, and socialist and communist ideas, by the way, are on their way up.

As you know, Trump has been attacking him for being, for being a communist.

People are saying, 'Well, if that's the case, why not?

Josh
Why not?

Hamid
Or let's find out what it is.'

Josh
Yeah. And on this, on the question of his campaign, I've been listening to podcasts, reading articles, where political analysts in the United States are trying to understand how he did this, this amazing thing.

Hamid
Yeah, as if it's the focus that got him the election, yeah, and not the message.

Josh
Oh, they're so simple and memorable, you know, freeze the rent.

And they're talking about his social media.

They're talking about is charisma, or they're full of praise the clarity of the message, the focus message, you know, the way that these politicos...

That's so... it trips off the tongue. How did he come up with that?

And one thing that I found that impressed me, and it's so simple as well, is after Trump was elected, Mamdani went to working class neighbourhoods in New York City.

And guess what? He talked to workers and asked them who voted for Trump.

This is interesting.

He talked to workers who voted for Trump and asked them why.

And then when they told him why, they talked about their conditions of living.

They talked about inflation, they talked about rents and so on.

And he listened to that and formulated it into a programme that it has its limitations, but it is genuinely trying to tackle those key issues which would make an immediate...

If they were actually put into place, they would make an immediate difference to people's lives.

As someone with young children, okay, I don't live in New York, but somebody with young children that free childcare would make an immediate difference to my life.

Hamid
$12,000 a year on average people pay for childcare in New York.

Josh
Yeah. And another thing that is less prominent in his campaign, but he also mentioned he was going to increase wages for childcare workers who are constantly squeezed.

These demands are not... you don't have to be.

I don't want to show any disrespect to Mamdani, but you don't have to be a genius to listen to working people and formulate simple demands that are targeting the problems that they face in life.

But all these establishment Democrats and political analysts are saying, 'Oh, what an amazing way to communicate the campaign.'

The reason is, I think he was skillful in the way he used social media.

Form does matter, but it's ultimately about content.

And the reason that those clips became so viral was because what he was saying connected.

It didn't just connect with people's general ideas about, am I a liberal? Am I progressive?

It connected to their real conditions of life.

And one thing he said about the campaign, yeah, millions and millions of dollars were thrown into stopping Mamdani at all costs.

But he had 1000s of people knocking on doors, and eyewitness reports were showing they were knocking on doors on the spot they were asking the people who answered, are you going to vote for Mamdani? What do you think?

But also, would you volunteer to do the same thing as me?

And thousands of people, at first contact on the door, said, Yeah, I'll join you.

That response came from the feeling that actually, this, this could actually improve things, which, let's face it, in in politics, not just in the United States, but throughout the world, politics has been utterly devoid of that feeling.

Hamid
Yes, at least he started the process.

I mean, we have to say that the participation in this vote was relatively low, but the fact that he managed...

Josh
But in terms of a mayoral election, the highest since 1969. Yes, relative to a presidential election.

Hamid
But the point is that he managed to galvanise and inspire hundreds of thousands of people, essentially.

And that is, if nothing, a good start.

He tapped into this, the rage against the super rich.

He also tapped in the rage against the Democratic Party establishment.

Because I think from what I can read, there's a big part of his vote that came for people who voted against Trump.

But there was a huge part of his vote who came for people who voted against the Democrats, because he was not seen as a part of this decrepit old elite that's been sitting on American and New York politics, for that matter, for decades since the beginning of it, and who've been running it like their own backyard for their own benefits, for themselves and their friends.

It, you know, it really highlighted the the crisis of the system in that way.

And by the way, people talk about Trump being a fascist, and now we have fascism in the US, and the US has gone to the right.

Where's the fascism here? It's the opposite.

And we, we explained this when Trump was elected a year ago, almost to the day.

We explained this is a distorted expression of a bubbling, seething class anger which exists everywhere in the states and everywhere in the world, for that matter, but everywhere in the States.

And just like, just like it was expressed through Trump, because no one else was giving it any expression, it could swing over and gain a left wing expression.

That's what we see here.

Josh
Yeah, that is what Mamdani has done to a large extent.

And actually, one thing that came to mind as you were speaking then, is an example, I think, of this rage, you know, working class voters turning to Trump depicted as, if not fascism, some form of just stupidity.

Oh, they don't know their own interests. They're voting for a fascist. How stupid?

Not talking to these people, not listening to them.

And an example of the class anger that you were talking about, I encountered in the Financial Times.

This journalist had attended a big meeting of Catholics, actually.

It was a big Catholic meeting to commemorate some edict from the Pope in 1891 I think it was about how unrestrained capitalism was bad.

Revolutionary socialism also bad, according to the Pope.

Therefore workers and bosses have got to work together.

That's what they were... so it was some kind of like cross class Catholic conference, a lot of alliteration there.

Hosted by the teamsters union, which has been relatively more favourable to Trump, so a workers organisation, but also attended by Democratic politicians, Republican politicians, all unified by Catholicism.

And anyway, this journalist interviews workers at this meeting from the teamsters union, and one of them, I think, made a very interesting comment.

He said, 'We know Trump is a greedy boss, but we'd rather have a tough, greedy boss than' what he described as 'Dogs in the Democratic Party who constantly put on pro labour clothes, claim they're doing this for us, and then deliver absolutely nothing.'

'We know what he is. We know he's a boss, but if he's going to raise tariffs and tackle immigration,' which for these workers, they saw as a link to increasing their wages and improving jobs.

'If he's going to do that in his own greedy boss interests, then better that than have someone pull the wool over her eyes one more time.'

Now, of course, there's another side to this that well, what happens when they're disappointed by Trump?

Are they, you know, are they just irresistibly veering towards fascism, or is this an expression of working class anger?

It might have confused aspects. It might be misdirected, but it is clearly a class anger.

And actually a Democratic politician, somewhat hypocritically I think, who attended this meeting went on to say, when workers, when trade unionist and so on, have turned to Democratic politicians and claimed things are getting worse for me, what establishment Democrats have tended to do is come back to them say, 'Ah, but we passed this bill and passed that bill'.

But none of those bills have either finally got through or made any difference their lives.

And she says something which I think is actually quite pithy, which is, 'you can't eat an idea, you can't eat words, all these empty promises.

And I think that there was exactly that that motivated people voting for Trump, and it's something that's motivating people from voting for Mamdani.

Hamid
People feel disenfranchised.

People feel the system and the parties of the system don't represent them.

I got a quote from Mamdani's acceptance speech.

There's a lot to be said about that, but I think the opening is quite significant.

He says, "For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well connected that power does not belong in their hands."

"Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on warehouse floors, palms calloused from delivery bike hand handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns."

"These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power."

"And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater."

"Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it."

"The future is in our hands, my friends, we have toppled a political dynasty."

Now one thing is the fact of what has happened and has the dynasty really been toppled or not?

But these words are like fire if you're a worker.

If you're a worker, you're not involved in politics normally, because you've been told that you don't understand it.

You think you don't understand it.

The people who run it are running rings around you and acting towards you in a condescending and arrogant manner.

And then this guy comes and says, your hands, your labour, your thoughts, it matters, and you should have power.

You should grasp power.

Josh
It's a powerful statement.

Hamid
That's a powerful statement, and it resonates in the embryonic, how do you say, class interest of the working class.

Well, it's not an embryonic, it's a class interest, but it's not being expressed yet.

But it actually brings it to the fore.

And for a lot of people, this will resonate with them.

This will they make they're going to feel 'This is exactly what I've been feeling but not been able to vocalise.'

And so it's a powerful statement, and it is kind of a damning indictment of the whole of the ruling class and their system that hasn't been able to do anything.

I mean, this guy had everyone against him.

Trump was against him. Democratic Party establishment, Wall Street, the super PACs.

And what have they shown now? It's that you can take on all of these people and you can win.

That's what the working class is taking away from this, an extreme level of confidence in their abilities.

They no longer think of themselves as mealy little worms or insignificant, whatever, that they're told that they are.

But that no actually, if you go for it, you can achieve things.

And I think that's an incredibly powerful thing that the bourgeois are more afraid of than any programmatic demand that Mamdani might have.

Josh
Yeah, absolutely.

Hamid
But obviously, this is also happening at a time where nothing, none of the things that that brought Trump to power, has been solved.

There's been an increasingly large wave of layoffs, job cuts.

Amazon has just announced they're going to cut 30,000 jobs, 10% of their workforce.

Most major companies are either stopping hiring or cutting.

I talked with some of our US, one of our US comrades yesterday, and he said that there's been 1 million jobs lost over the past year.

They're just jobs, just disappeared. Repossessions are at a record high.

The cost of living. Inflation has not subsided. It's still biting.

Josh
It's about 3% now I think.

Hamid
Yes, and, and now you have this, the government shutdown, which is, like barely spoken about.

I mean, it is in the US, obviously.

Which is the civil war between these parties, which has now led to the end of food stamps, a cut in food stamps, which means...

I spoke to another comrade today, who has a friend in a poor neighbourhood in the Bronx, who was saying that everyone is panicking because where are they going to get their food from?

This is something that millions, 43 million people rely on to get stable food.

Josh
I've seen pictures of long snaking queues outside food banks, with people in uniform, as in military uniform outside.

Hamid
The whole system is falling apart and Trump has obviously not solved anything.

Josh
Yeah, one thing I wanted to mention actually, in relation to the cost of living.

We were talking about freezing rent and grocery prices and childcare.

I saw one report that said the average, so the median, New York renter, will spend 54%.

54.52% to be precise, of their monthly income on rent.

So the majority of their income is already going on rent.

Your average family in New York with children is spending as much as a quarter of their monthly income on childcare.

Yeah. So you're a young working class family in New York, three quarters of your monthly income is already taken up by these completely basic...

That's before food, that's before transport, before bills!

How can you? How can you live on this basis? You can't.

The pressure is absolutely enormous.

And I think that you know that that touches both on the points that have already been raised, in terms of the the enthusiasm for Mamdani, but also the depth of the crisis and just how little has changed obviously since Trump took power.

But another thing that I wanted to bring up is this question of the shutdown.

I mean, it's a pretty amazing it's a pretty amazing phenomenon, really, in US politics.

This is now the longest government shutdown in history, so Trump proving himself a record breaker yet again.

I think it's on 37 days now.

Yes, snap, the food stamps has been disrupted.

A court ruled that they can't just cut them, can't just stop them completely, but there's a limit to how much... they're not going to be able to pay the full amount.

So people are going to go hungry, and people are...

They have been laying off people using the shutdown as a cover.

Again, the court said they couldn't do that, but people clearly are being laid off as a result. The chaos!

I mean, I saw one report from JP Morgan. Important part of the ruling class, as I understand it.

They said that for every week that the government shutdown continues, 0.1% is shaved off GDP.

This is at a time when the Federal Reserve is going to cut interest rates.

Even though inflation is still higher than they want it to be, they're going to cut interest rates.

Why? Because they're worried about these job losses.

You're talking about a slowdown in the economy, the prospect that the economy might at some point go into recession.

So you've got all these pressures.

You would think, and you'd be correct to think, that purpose of the bourgeois state is to maintain the stability of bourgeois rule, political rule, but also to maintain the stability of the economy, to make sure the capitalists are making money.

And usually that is absolutely what it's for.

But with this shutdown, you're seeing a point where the two wings of the US political establishment...

Really the Republicans and the Democrats, they're not so much like political parties or democratic structures.

They're more like just parts of the state itself, factions of the bourgeois state and its bureaucracy.

Their clash is creating even more danger for the economy itself, which is, of course, not what all these different rules and constitution constitutional, you know, jiggery pokery were designed for.

One thing I find very interesting in this situation, something that's been emerging for some time is how all of the instruments of maintaining the stability of bourgeois rule, all these checks and balances, things like the filibuster rules, where you can basically just kill, even if the government has a majority, you can kill one of their bills.

And they actually don't just need a majority. They need 60% of the Senate to get this budget through, to override these filibuster rules.

In the old days that was designed to, well, it still is designed, that the establishment are able to and the different wings are able to come to some kind of compromise so that nobody goes too far, and the stability of the whole show continues.

Now, a rule that's intended for stability is turning to its opposite.

It's turning into actually a factor contributing to the crisis of US capitalism.

And I think we have to take special note of that, because that is a sign of something that we as Marxists identify as the ruling class actually losing control of its own system, really.

The ruling class no longer been able to rule in the way that it become accustomed to in the past.

Hamid
Yeah. And the result, the political result, is clear to see.

We saw the Republican Party.

The ruling class lost control of the Republican Party.

Trump is a billionaire. He's a capitalist, but he's kind of an outsider.

He's a break off from the capitalist class, in that sense.

He's a bit of a renegade, and he took over the party.

And here you have a similar situation happening in the Democratic Party.

It's not that the you know now the socialists are taking over the Democratic Party.

But it's clear that the Democratic Party establishment, traditional establishment, they've lost control.

They can't control the situation as they used to.

Josh
Because they're so despised, yeah?

Hamid
Now some of them are also thinking, well, we can maybe use this as a left cover to rebuild authority.

But nevertheless, they are in a deep crisis.

In fact, the Democrats, this is interesting...

I mean, Trump has been in power for a year. He's not solved anything.

Besides expelling lots of immigrants. I don't think he's actually carried out any of his promises to the full. Even the tariffs are...

Josh
Not successfully anyway.

Hamid
Definitely not with any success.

And yet, Trump is more popular, has more favorability than the Republicans and the Democrats.

This is a rolling average of polls made by real clear polling which says that Trump has a favorability of 44.2% and unfavourable 51.4%.

So still most people are against him.

That's a that's a spread of minus seven.

The Republican Party is 40 versus 53 so that's a spread of 13.4.

The Democrats are the most unpopular of these three institutions.

33.4% favourable. 59.4% unfavourable. At 26% spread. They despised.

And deservedly so.

Josh
Yeah, and actually reminds me about something in the reaction to Mamdani's victory that Schumer, Chuck Schumer, who did not endorse Mamdani at any time, was celebrating his victory, as well as the victory in other elections in Virginia and New Jersey Governor elections.

These are more like establishment Democrats. One of them was a former CIA agent.

These are not like democratic socialists.

They also won due, in no small part, to dissatisfaction with Trump's failings.

But Schumer was lumping all three of these together and saying, Ah, see this shows that, you know, sensible opposition to Maga extremism and Trump.

Basically, there's a new wave behind the Democrats.

And also I saw in the bourgeois press, in Financial Times saying, like, Yeah, talk about the Democrats were on the mat, and now they get...

Lumping it all together as a rejuvenation of the Democrats.

I think this is a case of spin and wishful thinking, to be honest.

The point you already made is absolutely correct that, in reality, the vote for Mamdani.

We saw it in the primaries, and I would say the the actual election was a continuation of the primaries in this respect.

It was a vote against what people see as the real Democrats, well, correctly see as the real Democrats.

Hamid
And that's the significance of this election. From our point of view, the point of view of communists, the significance of this election is that it shows the anger, the revolutionary potential that exists in society.

Now, of course, another key question is, is he going to succeed?

Is it feasible what he's proposing, and how is it going to be be be carried out?

Now he has proposed these different things.

The New York Times made a calculation of how much it would cost to incorporate Mamdani's election promises.

And they calculated around, I believe, $9 billion per year it would cost to...

In particular, the biggest part of this was the childcare, which would mean the setting up of probably several thousand nurseries, kindergartens, and the hiring of thousands of people, although they said that would be on a very, very low wof $38,000 per year, which is the average now.

Which is very low for New York. It should be almost twice that, at least for a living wage,

Anyway, they made a series of other other calculations as well.

Now you would think, okay...

And Mamdani has said, we will carry this out with by raising taxes on anyone making more than a million dollars a year by 2% and raising the highest corporate tax band, I believe, by 4% from 7 to around 11%.

Now, on the face of it, you would think, Okay, This should be this should be doable.

But there is a huge opposition to this.

The landlords, the landlord class in New York, is a big, big thing.

Donald Trump himself is a member of that.

They've come out vehemently against, threatening a strike of capital, essentially.

Saying, Well, if you're going to freeze rents on these houses, then we don't have any incentives to invest.

I mean, I don't know what investments they make, basically maintenance, yeah, you're just going to... which they haven't done, as far as I understand for a long time anyway.

And there's lots of schemes of trying to undermine this.

They are trying to talk with different lawmakers to veto it.

They're talking about... and they're the powerful class.

They're talking about using the governor of New York, New York State.

What's the name Cathy?

Josh
Cathy Hochul or Hockul.

Hamid
We're not, we're not quite sure how you say that.

And using different committees and commissions and the city council to stop these and to veto these things.

I think the main thing that they're afraid of is the idea that you can have someone come into power on this programme and actually deliver.

Because in and of itself, it's not the end of the capitalist system.

Josh
No.

Rent stabilised apartments are roughly a quarter, maybe just over a quarter, of the total housing stock in New York.

So he's not freezing the rent on all the apartments.

I think it's 44% of rental accommodation significant, but he's not freezing the rent on all apartments.

So you're right. It's not going to completely eliminate but landlordism in New York.

Hamid
But landlordism is now becoming this kind of rentierism. Yeah, it's like parasitic renterism.

It's big business in the west now. Much bigger than it used to be 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

So therefore, the idea of freezing or even lowering and intervening in the market, so to say, is obviously something that capital shirks from.

It irritates capital and they react.

Josh
And appetiete comes through with the eating. Workers see that they can freeze the rents. Well, why don't we set the rents ourselves? Why don't we decide...

Hamid
We've built these houses. We've paid for them over and over and over again. Surely, there's no there's no debt remaining or mortgages remaining, for the majority of the big landlords.

We're the ones who are using them.

We're the ones who are maintaining them and keeping them probably because the landlords are not doing it.

Why do we actually need the landlords? You know?

Which is a great question.

Josh
Another thing on that is with the grocery stores.

Mamdani says, well, because it's on city land, so they don't have to pay rents, or they pay very low rents, these city owned grocery stores are not going to sell for profit.

Which is a challenge to capitalism, basically.

And they're going to buy and sell at wholesale prices.

Well, if I were private grocery store owner, I would be thinking, Well, how am I going to make profit then?

If people can just go to the stores?

Okay, there's only five of them, yeah.

But if I'm if I'm charging substantially more than these competitors that are subsidised, effectively subsidised heavily by the city, that's not fair.

That's not fair trade.

And I'm going to see that as a threat to my core interests.

And I think what will happen is the big store owners and the big landlords are going to hide behind the little landlords.

You know, the kind of the elderly couples who have a second home, that kind of thing, and say, you're ruining these people.

Weren't you talking about ordinary people in New York? These are also ordinary people.

I've already heard things like that coming out of them.

Hamid
No, we talked about this on the podcast last week in Venezuela, that you had nationalised companies under workers control, but in a sea of capitalism.

And just the idea of it, because the idea was such a threat to the ruling class, that there was a strike of capital, and there was sabotages all levels of the economy.

Suppliers, creditors, you know, landlords, all, everyone, the whole, the totality of the capitalist class was mobilised to protect their core interests.

And when it comes to their core interest, which is private property over the means of production, their right to extract, extract profits in this society, they have no divisions.

And this is what we see.

They all came together behind Cuomo.

These guys are hating each other.

They burning down Congress.

They are taking each other to court, attacking each other, but when it came down to battling the idea of socialism and the idea that you could touch private property, you could touch the privileges of the rich and powerful there was no divisions between them.

And it's clear that this is what they're preparing now as well, to sabotage, bring him in, undermine him.

And there's a big campaign rolling now.

The New York Times wrote a very disgusting editorial.

Josh
Very patronising.

Hamid
Oh, we didn't support Mamdani to begin with, but we hope, we wish him all the best.

And here is a little bit of advice from inexperienced...

Josh
He's an inexperienced young kid.

I quite like this point about experience you had before that you had Cuomo, yeah, disgraced politician.

No, sorry, but just before, we had Eric Adam, completely corrupt.

And in the past, you've had Rudy Giuliani.

Well, I think, and in the White House itself, the Democrats happily kept Joe Biden in power when he was visibly losing mental capacity.

So I think if they can do it, then Mamdani could probably can do it.

It's only when you have somebody, you know, on the left putting forward these kind of ideas that they talk about experience.

Hamid
And what is it they have experience in? Lying, stealing, looting, exploiting.

That's what they have experience in.

Nothing to be proud of. Yeah, it's nothing to blizzoon.

Yes, they said....This is what New York Times said.

He said, "He can win at least some of his sceptics. He can win us over by getting results as a mayor."

"He should start by building a leadership team light on democratic socialists and heavy on officials with records of accomplishment and proven management skills."

Proven skills in managing the capitalist system. Of course, of the capitalist.

That's their advice.

Josh
And billionaires who were pumping millions of dollars into stopping him, like Bill Ackman, who was really virulently opposed to him, labingham and anti Semite and all this kind of stuff.

When he won, he said, If you need my help for the city, I'll be there. All of us.

And actually, I would say this is more dangerous and worrying from the standpoint of the ruling class.

Hamid
I mean, I would say this, if you are building a campaign against the billionaire class.

The whole billionaire class mobilises to attack you, and then those same people, that same billionaire class, then comes to tell you, says to you, okay, you won now. Now here is our advice.

Whatever that advice is, you should not take it.

I mean, a child of six should understand that is bad advice, right.

Josh
It's not well meant.

Hamid
Is he taking that advice or not?

And here's where I think some of the warning signs, or the danger signs, are creeping up.

Number one, the biggest thing that was debated before the before the the election, was the police commissioner.

Jessica Tisch, who is a billionaire herself.

She's from the 43rd richest family in the United States.

She was the candidate of Cuomo.

This is what the New York Magazine writes. Says "Tish is the favourite of the city's business and financial elites."

"She's also very popular with the right wing New York Post."

So she's a candidate of Cuomo.

She's a candidate of Trump, because that's what New York Post represents.

And she's also Governor Kathy Hochul's preferred choice.

She is the establishment pick, right, who was there from before.

And already in advance of the elections, Mamdani announced that if he was elected, he would continue with that.

This is, by the way, the same police department that he accused correctly of racism and abuse against black people or other minorities and all sorts of things, crimes and violence and repression of all sorts.

He's withdrawn some of those statements about the police being racist, and he's trying to appease this.

And he said that he would keep...

This is the billionaire class. In every way, not just in person and also the apparatus, right?

This is not the candidate of change. This is continuity.

And his transition team that he announced yesterday.

He announced it as an all female team.

Now that is obviously the headline grabber.

That's meant for the headlines.

Oh, yes, women are oppressed in this society, which is true, women are oppressed.

And therefore I'm gonna put women in my administration.

Josh
They must be progressive. Inherently.

Hamid
That must be progressive. We must support that.

But these people are Maria Torres Springer, Lina Khan, Grace Bonilla and Melanie Herzog.

Who are all members of the administrations of the previous mayors of New York.

The same people that he's denounced!

Bloomberg, Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio.

And they are tied through and through to the New York City establishment, to the New York City Government, to the bureaucratic establishment.

And for Grace Bonilla, who is a nonprofit boss, she's heavily tied into big business, all of her main clients, and people that she works with, donors are Fortune 500 companies.

They're through and through, wedded with the establishment.

These people that represent the class interests of your opposition, and they're gonna, they're gonna carry that out.

They're gonna, they're gonna act accordingly.

And so this is obviously not a very good thing, because in order to carry out your policies, you need people who represent the class interests of the people you want to carry out the policies for.

Josh
These are the people who are supposed to be carrying out your programme, and they're opposed to it.

And the people who they're tied to by a thousand threads, are opposed to it.

And this, this raises something of a contradiction in Mamdani.

In reality, there are two Mamdanis.

Not, not necessarily because he's a dishonest guy, or he's two faced or anything like that.

I don't know him.

But frankly, in all reformist politicians, there is this dualism.

You saw it in Corbyn as well, where it's the the politician who speaks to the workers and maybe honestly sees their problems and puts forward bold solutions and wants to mobilise them, fill them with confidence.

You see that in his social media. See that in his speeches.

But then also, there's the other, the other Mamdani, which is the patient listener who's willing to build bridges with big business.

One comment he made before his victory was...

He's had these private bridge building meetings with Wall Street and business owners.

Hamid
All of the leaders of big business in New York, even even the head of JP Morgan that you mentioned before, he had a meeting with him.

Josh
You know, to represent all New Yorkers.

And at that meeting, he said that he was ruling out any ideological litmus test.

Now, what does that mean?

Often, reformists will talk about, oh, it's not about ideological purity.

It's not about ideology. It's about getting things done. It's about pragmatism.

I know what I want to achieve and he says, he told them, I know what I want to get done, but I'm wide open on how to do it.

Like Groucho Marx said, these are my principles. If you don't like them, then I've got others.

He's effectively saying that. He's saying, I'm not wedded to raising taxes.

How are you going to fund this programme? He wants to raise taxes by a fairly modest amount.

Kathy Hochul. Hochul says, Well, I'm going to veto that.

A Democrat, by the way, the Democratic Governor of New York State, says, well, that's not going to happen.

So he said, Well, I'm not wedded to that.

If we have to fund it with cuts. Well, where are these cuts going to come from?

Already, this ambiguity is seeping in even before he takes power, and that is a very concerning sign.

And that team, which, Mamdani, is that team going to represent?

Is it going to represent the Democratic Socialist or the Socialist Mamdani, or is it going to represent the capitalist politician that is inherent within the system.

Let's not be naive, the way that the mayor's office works is not that you have this all powerful Mayor who just decides things, and then all of a sudden, policies are put into place.

There's an enormous bureaucracy. I saw the police force alone is larger than the Belgian army.

I think there's 300,000 people who work for the city of New York.

And within that, you have working class people, many of whom, I think will have voted for Mamdani and who would support his programme, and who have the management skills, whatever technical skills required, to actually run this city on a working class basis.

But then at the top, you will have career bureaucrats that you've already listed, and more, more than just the people you've listed, who are completely tied to the capitalist system, both in terms of their material interests and their outlook, who are going to resist you and undermine you at every turn.

Trump is a capitalist politician. I think we're all agreed with that, even he has been resisted big time by the state bureaucracy.

How is Mamdani going to overcome that?

If he overcomes that by basically having nice backdoor meetings with them, or back room meeting sorry, and convincing them, 'No, we can get along. We will find a way to muddle through together.'

Or is he going to get his policies through by purging that reactionary layer within the state bureaucracy?

And then, of course, that raised the question, how do you do that?

What vehicle do you need to do that?

Hamid
Yeah. I mean, Lenin explained, and Marx and Engels explained that this idea of a division of powers in tthe state, that the legislative and the executive powers is separate, is actually a fig leaf for the real state of things, in that every bourgeois democracy is a dictatorship of capital.

And the enforcer of that dictatorship is a capitalist state, a tiny minority of which is elected, although they have lots of strings attached, and there's a very refined method, like there's an attempt happening to Mamdani now, to pull him in.

But 99.9% of the state apparatus is not democratically elected and is not held account democratically.

They're held to account to the capitalist class.

It doesn't. It doesn't include the police officers on the ground and the firemen and, you know, social workers and all of these people who work for the state.

But it does apply to the upper crust of the state bureaucracy who serve one master only.

Josh
And run the show.

Hamid
And we see that every time there's a left winger.

We saw this again, referring to the Venezuelan revolution.

Here you had a revolutionary movement.

The president was elected again and again and again with like 60, 70% of vote.

Had the support of millions of people, and yet because he didn't touch the old state apparatus, the programmes and the initiatives that he took were constantly undermined and sabotaged from inside by the state bureaucracy who was still tied to thebourgeoisie.

Josh
And that's why Lenin says you got to dismantle the state bureaucracy.

Hamid
You got to dismantle them and replace them with an entirely different... We'll get to that in a minute.

But I want to say this, this thing of, you know. There's two ways of fighting Mamdani.

There's the direct assault, which, you know, Trump has tried. 'He's a communist!' And that Wall Street has been trying to do so far.

But there's a more dangerous, more insidious one, which is trying to embrace him, to bring him in.

I saw that Obama called him twice, and has been leaked.

Unknown nefarious forces have leaked this.

And offered to be his sounding board, right?

And there's a part of the Democratic Party establishment which realises which way the wind is blowing, and thinks that we can bring these guys in, co-opt them and undermine them, to detach them from their base on the ground.

But also to use their charisma and their appeal, to revitalise them, to bring them back into power, essentially to reestablish their power.

In a way that's what they've done to Trump as well, you know.

There's like, there's a similarity, at least in the sense that the Republican Party establishment has bided its time.

You know, we again, we've talked about this.

They bided their time, and as they sabotaged, they kind of stopped him from carrying out some of the things they didn't want him to.

To end the war in Ukraine.

Absolutely clear, for one.

Not that he has the interest of the working class at heart. He's a reactionary.

But he wanted to end the war in Ukraine.

They didn't allow him to do that, and they used the disappointment that set in from that to pull him in deeper.

Now clearly a faction of them are pushing him to a confrontation with Venezuela.

Another faction is now pulling him in towards Nigeria. 'We need strikes in Nigeria.'

This is Ted Cruz and the evangelicals and all of that.

And he's becoming more and more a hostage of these guys.

The base of support that he used to have when he came to power, he had a huge base of support.

He would call them in any time any Republican would go against him.

He would just unleash the dogs, so to say, the mass of people, of workers and poor and so on who supported him to come in and unseat them or do whatever they wanted to.

But now, as those layers are becoming more and more dissatisfied and disappointed, the establishment is now gaining the upper hand, and they're pushing him more and more to do what they want, not that what he would do was more progressive in any way, but they kind of tie him down.

Now with Mamdani it's going to be even more.

They're going to talk to him about moderation.

They're going to talk to him 'Well, you see, these are really great ideas, but we have to have all of the different points of view, and we have to make sure that, you know, the books are balanced, and we can't do this because of this and because of that'.

And they're going to undermine his programme, and the more he drifts into that, the more disappointed his base of support is going to be, and the more power they're going to have over him.

Josh
Because the more isolated he becomes from his base, then what else has he got to resist them with?

That's all he can rely on.

Those are the only people he can trust.

It's like, you know, Antaeus in Greek mythology, who drew his strength from his mother the earth.

Actually that base, the activists, the volunteers, and a section, at least a section, the most active section of the people who voted for him, that's all he has, really.

And the way that Hercules beat him was by picking him up and lifting off the ground, and then he could break his back and crush him.

And that, that's exactly what they're trying to do, and they've done it many times before as well.

This is something they're very, very skilled in doing, and it's something that any socialist, democratic or otherwise, should be able to recognise.

Let's face it, we are in a war, in a class war.

And when the enemy is shelling you and charging at you, it's quite obvious you're in a war. And you can, you know, get up for the fight.

When they take a tactical retreat and all of a sudden start inviting you for negotiations and pouring sweet words into your ear.

There's still a war going on. They're still your enemy.

And that's exactly what's happening now.

Hamid
What is the way forward? I think that's important, because we can come here and be clever and criticise and say, that's not going to work, that's not going to work, but we should, we should, we should point a way forward.

Now. Let's start with housing.

The New York Times has a few interesting articles about how he's been charming the landlord class in New York, and one of the statements that he came out with was that he appreciates, 'he does appreciate, the role of the private sector in housing.'

Now, the question we have to ask, first of all, what is the role of the private sector in housing?

What is the role of the private landlord, besides just sucking off resources, funds, money, out of ordinary people.

What is the role of the landlords?

They are the most parasitic you can get.

They don't do anything, they don't produce anything, they don't develop anything.

They don't make anything run.

They just sit on their asses and they take rent income.

Why should they exist?

They didn't build the houses. They don't make them run.

The only people who maintain the housing stock in New York is the janitors and the workers and ordinary people who live in the houses.

They play no role whatsoever.

And surely, once the attack of these guys...

First, I mean, this should happen without an attack, but they will mobilise to attack and undermine Mamdani and his programme and his initiatives.

Well, the response should be we can't afford you guys, and therefore we must expropriate and take over the housing stock.

There's thousands of...

One of the comrades was on social media. It was a very, very nice clip.

Maybe we can link to it. Maybe we can tell our technicians there to link to it in the description.

But he was saying, yeah, there's thousands of empty flats, speculation flats, but also apartments... That's what they that's what they call them over there. We call them flats here.

But also apartments which is taken off the market because the landlords don't feel like they can make enough profits to keep the rent artificially high.

Josh
And that's the point of all this, the profit.

Hamid
It's just profit.

The point of housing should be to house people and give them a base of a civilised existence.

But the point of housing in New York and in most of the world for that matter, is to make profit for a tiny group, clique of people who play no productive role as society whatsoever.

So the number one thing that you should put on the agenda if you want to solve the housing crisis: expropriate the landlords, nationalise the housing stock of all the major landlords, not the people who have one or two flats, but the major ones.

And then also expropriate the construction companies in order to set in motion, a programme of building houses, renovating, modernising the housing stock.

Josh
Yeah?

On this point someone might say, 'Okay, well, yeah, the landlords that have already existing housing stock, okay, their only job is to maintain the apartments.'

There's also the role of the developers. So Mamdani has acknowledged the need to build more housing, yeah, not just rent freezes.

Hamid
200,000 he's promised.

Josh
New York Times estimated that, I think it was something like 500,000 more apartments are needed in the space of the next 10 years, if I remember correctly.

And so he has said, Well, yeah, the private sector has a part to play.

So not just in maintaining current housing, but in building housing.

But these developers, these so called property developers.

Why are they building flats or apartments? To make a profit.

And he's talked about 100% fixed rent, rent stabilised apartments.

Well, if they can't get a big profit from building these and speculating on rents being higher and higher and the value of this property being higher and higher so they can sell it on, they're not going to do it.

We see this in London. London is covered in half built apartment blocks where some property developer, just pure speculation, has started throwing them up and then goes to the council, sometimes they're building a council land, and they say, 'Oh, well, we can only really make this work economically if you let us build more stories and if you give us a higher proportion of just free market prices.'

And so the proportion of what's called social housing, or affordable housing that was originally agreed is slowly but surely undermined.

Why? Not to provide housing for people who actually need it, but just to create profit for these developers.

Apartments are being built in London, but clearly it's not doing away with the housing crisis, because it's they're only being built for people who can afford to pay super high rents.

And I get the impression that the same thing is happening in New York as well, probably on a bigger scale, actually.

Hamid
Exactly. And you have the the infrastructure, the question of the buses.

I mean, New York. I was in New York.

20... How old am I? Three or four years ago.

And what surprised me, I haven't been there since.

What surprised me back then was how the whole city was falling apart.

The public transportation system, the roads, the houses, it's just...

And as far as I understand, not much has happened since.

It's a decaying city in a decaying system, basically.

Because the bourgeois have just been busy, again, just sucking out profits as much as they can.

No one is interested in developing and modernising much.

Obviously, the same would then apply to there.

Developers, who sit on these huge productive forces, machinery, expertise, workforces and organisations that they suck profit out of should again be taken over and used as one nationalised developing company which could mobilise tens and hundreds of thousands of people to modernise the city from the ground up.

And In doing so, also replace it with good infrastructure: buses, subways and and whatever else is needed.

He's also talking about tax the rich.

Taxing the rich has become a big slogan, but how do you carry out taxing the rich?

You can obviously, we're not opposed to progressive taxation.

But the thing is, you can't control how the how the rich, how do you, say, manage their wealth?

They can move it out. They can do a strike of capital.

You can be sabotaged through the political system, through the state apparatus who's supposed to pass these things.

And it's clear that they're going to resist this as much as they can.

So how do you actually carry out all of these, these programmes, if not by mobilising, precisely what you talked about: your base.

Because the state apparatus, the government apparatus and the top echelons, are not going to carry any of this.

The 100,000 workers who came to canvas with you can be the backbone of a movement to support and build up a movement that can actually carry these things out.

They're going to resist it with any force they can.

So you need to build a movement. You need to build a political party.

And what's interesting is that this campaign was run entirely by Democratic Socialists of America, which is a left wing organisation, according to itself.

Calls itself socialism, wants to fight for socialism.

It was not carried out by the Democratic Party.

It's true that they use the platform of the Democratic Party.

That probably did give them a boost, but their their membership in New York alone has gone from five to 10,000.

And I think the potential is far more than that.

Why link yourself to a party which is through and through, wedded and controlled by the ruling class?

If you want to carry any of these things out, we can see the only way to carry out your promises is by challenging the ruling class where it counts.

Head on, on the question of property.

Who controls the means of production? Who controls the wealth in this society?

We're not talking about property rights of a small family or a small shopkeeper or a small whatever business person, but the big businesses, the big banks, Wall Street, the big developers, the big landlords, who do not contribute anything to the society, then rot.

And the only way to actually build up a movement against them is to mobilise the base on a clear working class programme.

You cannot do any of this if you do not break with the Democratic Party.

And as long as mandani is wedded to the Democratic Party, he's bound to be sucked in and fail, in fact.

And then you're going to see massive disappointment setting in with him and the idea of socialism, with which there's nothing, nothing wrong with. Yeah,

It's not socialism that's the problem.

Josh
At the beginning of this segment, you quoted Mamdani's acceptance speech, where he talks about the hands of the workers grasping towards power.

Being told by billionaires, power is something for us, not for you.

He's raising the idea of workers power in a vague, rhetorical way, but he's saying people like you can actually have control over society.

What you've just spelled out in a programme that could actually change conditions for workers in New York.

What you're talking about is giving the working class of New York control over their city, real control over the economy, over property.

The planning of production and infrastructure in New York, which requires the working class being in control of the city, and obviously beyond.

But then how do you... And you know that is obviously not what Mamdani is fighting for, but that's the idea that he's raising people's mind.

How do you square that, then, this idea of the workers having power, whilst at the same time rallying support and trying to basically rejuvenate, arguably the main party of US capitalism?

In a rally, in a campaign rally speech in October, before he took power, before the election, Mamdani actually quoted Thomas Sankara, the Burkina Faso revolutionary leader, saying that fundamental change only comes from the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.

Now is running, not only running as a Democrat, but ruling as a Democrat with exactly the same bureaucrats that were in charge before, with the same billionaire police commissioner that was in charge before, is that a new formula, or is that an old formula?

Is that putting working people in power, or is it only putting them in power in a purely rhetorical sense which people will eventually see through?

There is there is a serious contradiction there, that is, as you say, it is simply impossible to achieve what Mamdani states that he wants to achieve, both in terms of his specific reforms and in his broader project, his stated project of actually elevating working people in New York, and why the United States it's impossible to achieve it in a party like the Democratic Party.

He talks about in the same campaign rally, in the same speech he quotes Sankara, he talks about the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.

Now, what are we fighting for here?

Are we fighting for working class power and socialism, or are we fighting for the soul of the Democratic Party?

Because those are two different things.

What is the soul of the Democratic Party.

To the extent that the Democratic Party has any soul whatsoever, it is the soul of US capitalism and US imperialism.

This is the party of the Vietnam War, let's not forget.

This is the party of Bill Clinton incarcerating millions of black Americans.

At no point has the Democratic party ever been a party of the working class.

Yes, it has lent on the working class. It's relied on the corrupt leadership of the trade union movement.

It has working class voters. That's a different question.

It's never been a party of the working class, and it's certainly never been a democratic socialist party.

So the idea that you are going to somehow convert the soul of the Democrats, a party which is tied by a million threads to the same billionaires that...

In the same speech, he says, 'Bill Ackman says that I'm an existential threat to the billionaires. Well, he's right.'

Is he right? Are you going to take a party of the billionaire class in the United States which has complete control over the structures of the party...

It's not some party where you can go to a conference and just vote out the billionaires and the representatives.

You're going to turn that into a vehicle for workers power?

It's simply not possible.

The only way that you are going to put the working class in power is with a Workers Party and a revolutionary party.

Hamid
Yeah. I mean, I can only agree.

Now I have a quote for you because, well, I have two quotes...

Josh
A battle of quotes. Mamdani does like a quote.

Hamid
I have a quote of a quote, because Mamdani quoted Eugene Debs, who is an American socialist, who stood as an independent socialist candidate in the early 20th century several times.

And on one occasion, 1921, a million votes votes, while being in prison for his anti-war stance on World War One.

By the way, Mamdani quoted Eugene Debs in his acceptance speeches, where Eugene Debs said, "I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity right now."

I don't know much about Eugene Debs, but I looked up some of his speeches, and I found this quote, which I think is quite striking.

It says: "We are today entering upon a national campaign of the profoundest interest to the working class and the country.

"In this campaign, there are but two parties and but one issue.

"There is no longer even the pretence of difference between the so called Republican and Democratic parties, they are substantially one in what they stand for.

They are opposed to each other on no question of principle, but purely in a content for the spoils of office.

"To the workers of the country, these two parties in name are one in fact.

"They, or rather it stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation of the workers and for wage slavery.

"Both of these old capitalist class machines are going to pieces.

Having outlived their time, they have become corrupt and worse than useless, and now present a spectacle of political degeneracy never before witnessed in this or any other country.

"Both are torn by dissension and rife with disintegration.

"The evolution of forces underlying them is tearing them from their foundations and sweeping them to inevitable destruction."

This was in 1912 but I think it applies more to today than back then. Probably.

There's no way forward on the basis of a pact with the establishment.

Only an independent, working class position can show a way forward for the American people and for the world, as we'll see now.

I think we should continue to...

We've already talked too much, but we'll continue to the next point on the agenda, which is Sudan.

Now we've seen in the past weeks...

On the 27th of October, the city of Al Fashir , which had been besieged for more than a year by the RSF militias (the RSF is a Rapid Support Forces in Sudan) fell.

And there's been a lot in the media talking about the massacres that's been taking place, the thousands of people bodies lying on the streets, extreme sectarian violence, anti-black African, racist violence, rapings, torture, beatings.

And all of a sudden the bourgeois media has suddenly discovered what's going on in Sudan, which is an absolute catastrophe, which is not reduced to the past couple of weeks, it's been going on for years.

As of November, which is now, 12 million people have been forcibly displaced by a civil war that's been raging for more than two years.

7.2 million of these are within Sudan.

4.2 million have escaped out of the country into South Sudan and Egypt.

There's reports of 150 to 200,000 people killed in this civil war.

25 million people are facing acute hunger.

It's an absolutely disgusting, barbaric situation that the people of Sudan have been forced into.

And the two forces that are fighting the Civil War are, on the one hand, the Sudanese Armed Forces, which is the traditional military of Sudan, which in April, took hold of Khartoum, the capital.

They hold now the centre and the east of the country.

And the Rapid Support Forces the RSF, which is led by a guy called Mohammed Dagalo Hemedti. I think that's what a Sudanese comrade once told me that's how he pronounced it.

I think it's, I hope I pronounce it correctly. Hemedti.

He leads the RSF, which is a militia.

We'll come into more what it's about.

They now control the whole of the, more or less the whole of the Darfur region.

I think there's one hold out still in the West, and they've declared a new government for the whole of the country.

So basically, what you have now is the de facto partition of the country in the East and West, with two governments claiming the whole, by the way, so it doesn't seem like the war's ended.

And when I was trying to read up on this, because it's been a while since I've been looking into Sudan, what really stood out was how the media, in particular, in the West, are talking about the United Arab Emirates, who support the Rapid Support Forces.

By the way, they're the ones who carried out the atrocities in in Al Fasher.

they are very, very reactionary militia based on tribal, very backward tribal elements, lumpen elements, child soldiers with an extremely reactionary, racist and religious ideology.

And the people who were kind of called out as the main perpetrators of this is the United Arab Emirates, who are the backers of the RSF.

They do not want to negotiate.

They don't they don't want to give in.

They don't want to have a ceasefire.

There was a ceasefire called a few months ago, after which the RSF did what they did.

So they basically used it as a cover to buy time. They can't come to an agreement.

And the other side is reasonable, we're set to assume.

The reasonable supporters of this of the central government, which is mainly Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

But other countries also support the central government.

De facto America, because of its allies there, is leaning towards the central government, although it's not taking sides.

Ukrainians, even the Russians, have some collaboration with the central government.

But first of all, I think we should discuss about the hypocrisy of all this.

Now, who caused this situation?

Who have been intervening in Sudan for decades?

First of all, Sudan was a colony of Britain.

Josh
As was the UAE.

Hamid
As was all of all of these countries.

Kept in backwardness even after independence.

There's a history of sabotage and intervention, counter revolution supported by the imperialists of all sorts, by the Americans, by the British.

Omar Bashir, the previous dictator who was overthrown in 2019 he fell out with the West.

He kind of supported Islamic, Islamist forces.

But Obama, our good friend, Obama, who's a friend of Mamdani, by the way, he lifted sanctions on Bashir.

Why? Because the CIA asked him to.

They had a very big headquarter in Sudan, in Khartoum that they really liked and and therefore they asked him to end it.

He was then, and his soldiers, some of them which are RSF, were then enlisted as a part of the war in Yemen, which was waged by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Americans and the British, by the way.

And they pay $2.1 billion in return for the favour of sending these mercenaries.

Then you have the EU, who has been funding, literally funding and training the RSF for years. As what?

As a means of acting as border guards from preventing refugees from going through Sudan to Chad and to then to Libya, basically.

Josh
Which is their policy all over Africa as well.

Hamid
This is something they've been doing until recently, until until the Civil War broke out in 2023

There's an article in something called investigative journalism for EU.

It's a very damning article.

It's called the EU's pact with the devil.

The RSF originally came from a group of militias called the Janjaweed, which means Devils on Horseback, because that is what what they were known for.

And they say, "in the current context of of massive human rights abuses, western democracies can no longer have an openly good relationship with him."

They're referring to the Hemedti, the head of the RSF.

"But his emissaries are still received discreetly in European chancelleries, yet most Europeans are unaware of this, and the European state's good relationship with Hemedti has consequences today that they hadn't planned."

"Without the EU's recognition, Hemedti would most likely not have the legitimacy to claim the power and launch his country into a deadly civil war, a war that might endure for years to come."

In other words, they all participated in this.

They all participated in the building of the RSF, and we'll go into the why's as well.

There's lots of interest here.

There's the stop of the flow of immigrants.

There's general looting of the oil and gold and minerals of Sudan.

And there's also the defeat of, the crushing of the revolution in 2019 which was done by the hands of the RSF. But I think it's...

Josh
And the responsible official state.

Hamid
The so called responsible army.

That's the other thing, because they say, 'Oh, the RSF is carrying out human rights abuses,' but so does the army.

It's true that some of the methods and the kind of the ideological basis of the RSF is particularly, especially reactionary, reactionary, bloodthirsty.

But raping, torturing, indiscriminate killing, terrorising with killings, summary executions, bombing of public like places, like marketplaces, just bombing them indiscriminately.

That's something that the army has done as well.

But obviously the army is not the one that's popping up in the media, grabbing headlines at the moment.

They're trying to hide behind the Weston establishment, basically.

Yeah, what do you think? Do you have any comments?

Josh
Well, I think I probably speak for a lot of people following these events and listening to the rap sheet that you just gave of the indescribable horror.

I know you gave some examples, but in reality, it's indescribable.

Hamid
Actually, what I said is a very mild reflection of what really happened. Because it is horror without end, that's what it is.

Josh
We'll never know the full extent of it. I think.

I read one thing that aid workers in refugee camps expecting a huge influx of people from El Fasher were surprised at how few people have arrived so far.

The conclusion they said, is that well, that's because they're either dead or still forced in hiding in the city.

People, you know, mothers and children walking for days on end without food or water.

Children completely traumatised, as you'd imagine from witnessing, who knows what.

Destruction on the same level, in fact, probably on a greater level of what we've been witnessing in Gaza. Just going on.

The reason why I say, I think I speak for everyone, is because I think at first sight, when you look at this, it seems utterly bewildering.

The sheer scale of the atrocities and the horror and the convoluted mess of different local and world powers all getting stuck in and just creating a complete wilderness in Sudan.

You already gave the quote.

There's a quote from Lenin that we quote so often that almost it becomes a bit of a cliche, doesn't it, that the continuation of capitalism, particularly in the colonial, now ex-colonial countries, is horror without end.

That is what is taking place in Sudan.

And we don't just mean horror without end from 2023.

This is not the first civil war that Sudan has experienced.

I believe it's the third third since independence, which isn't that long ago.

It's not the first genocide that Darfur has experienced.

At the beginning of the 21st Century the then Janjaweed carried out a genocide against African farmers in Darfur.

And it's not the first time that counter revolution has crushed the valiant, heroic struggle of the workers and youth and the masses of Sudan, which we're going to cover in a little bit more detail in a second.

I think something you said that really is really important and should be remembered by everybody, is that this has been a long time in the making.

The RSF hadn't just popped up from the desert and suddenly started wreaking havoc.

The RSF, what is now called the RSF, has been groomed and cultivated and funded by imperialism and various different powers for decades.

Even actually, going back to Gaddafi in Libya, helped to fund these.

He's not the main player in all this.

But what, what really comes across is a feeding frenzy of different reactionary, bourgeois, capitalist states, all of which have their own narrow, exploitative interests, who see an opportunity in poor old Sudan.

What Sudan's crime to have had decades of atrocities inflicted on it?

Its crime is, unfortunately, it's situated at a junction between the Middle East and Sub Saharan Africa, which is a strategic location on the Red Sea, with vast amounts of highly fertile agricultural land along the Nile, with oil, certainly before the separation from South Sudan, even more. Gold.

In other words, is too rich.

It's like the Congo.

It's got too much natural wealth.

It has too much potential to provide for the people that live there.

And so that means that other powerful, some more powerful than others, capitalist states, want a piece.

And as soon as see an opportunity, they will support all manner of atrocities and reaction in order to get there.

It is a poetic, it's a disgusting, but it's a poetic indictment of the capitalist system as a whole.

Not just reactionary Arab states, but even the well heeled, cultivated British bourgeoisie that historically had the biggest role to play in all this.

Hamid
Yeah. And in fact, you know, we're always told about Arab countries and African countries, that these are backward areas, and there's a lot of racist kind of stereotyping that's spread around about these these countries.

Sudan, has had three major revolutionary movements at least since independence.

It had a very powerful communist movement.

Josh
A Communist Party, an official Communist Party.

Hamid
Hundreds of 1000s of people organised in trade unions controlled by the Communist Party.

Has a very, very revolutionary tradition.

Now, the sort the source of this particular situation goes back to the revolution of 2019.

I think that's an important...

We don't have a time to do deep dive into that revolution.

As I said, we have a very interesting article coming up in the next issue of the In Defence of Marxism magazine, specifically dealing with that revolution.

But I would say this. I followed it at the time, and I think that was, after the Venezuelan revolution, which was a very deep going revolution, this was the most powerful revolutionary movement we saw on many levels we've seen so far in this in this century.

It started without any political leadership.

It was led by a group of kind of lawyers and doctors who've been striking.

Josh
Engineers and teachers.

Hamid
It's called the Sudanese professional association.

It's like an umbrella group.

We should say that while these are middle class layers in Sudan.

To be middle class in Sudan...

They're white collar, but they're workers.

And they waged a series of very, very radical struggles in the run up to the to the revolution in 2019 and therefore they were seen as a fighting body.

In particular, the ranks of it had very high authority in the eyes of the masses.

And in 2019 because of the extremely dire economic situation you saw, with the rise of bread prices, you saw a massive insurrection movement just erupting out of the blue, running out of the control of everyone.

And the Sudanese professional association being kind of thrown at the head of it.

Now we don't have time to go into the whole of what happened, but basically what you have was a day to day advance of the movement on a very high level.

Councils being set up across the country.

Workers, poor peasants, you know, middle class people.

Josh
And women, in particular.

Hamid
Women. A huge effort, mass effort by the Sudanese masses against the dictatorship of Omar Bashir.

They were unstoppable.

The army tried to intervene, swept aside.

In fact, they had to pull the troops back into the barracks because the troops were fraternising with the revolution on several occasions.

Josh
Incidentally, that's why the RSF is so important in all this, because when, when the rank and file soldiers were starting to waver, you have to bring in these hardened reactionaries in order to do the job.

Hamid
exactly, and

but

The one thing.... they organised time after time the most impressive actions.

At one point had 800,000 people gathered outside of the, I believe, Ministry of Defence.

And within a few weeks, the government just fell, and the army had to step in.

Al Burhan, who is the head of the army now, who is now head of the central government, had to step in together, with Hamedti by the way, to push aside Al Bashir, because if they didn't push him aside, they would lose everything.

The ruling class to to do that.

So in order to save the system, they shoved aside the top.

This is something we've seen quite often.

But the movement didn't stop, and it completely it increasingly clashed with the military.

Because they represented continuity, like we see in New York City. It's a common thread here.

They represented continuity.

Later on, they were organised in the forces for freedom and change.

Didn't see it as their task. Didn't understand that the main problem here was the ruling capitalist class of the country and their apparatus.

There's a parallel here, again, with New York City, although it's very different worlds.

They constantly tried to negotiate with the army.

The army representing the ruling class, which was very clear on its interests and what it wanted.

It wanted the masses down, pushed into submission.

Josh
It's worth pointing out that the army itself was a major property owner in Sudan as well.

Part of the capitalist class.

Hamid
Huge, huge property owners the tops of the Army, not the ranks, which are normal class people, poor people and...

98% of the state apparatus adhered to the strike call.

Now what does that tell you? Who is the government of the country?

Is it the official government appointed by the army, or is it the strike committee?

You essentially had a dual power situation.

The working masses had power in their hands.

They had committees that had sprung up, the popular resistance committees.

There were hundreds of them all over the country, although they weren't connected.

Josh
3000 across the country. 700 in Khartoum alone.

Hamid
Yeah, and they they controlled huge parts of the economy, the running of society.

Josh
Transport, going back to buses in New York.

Hamid
Yeah, much better than the bourgeoisie could do it.

Josh
Groceries. They were controlling grocery distribution.

Hamid
And all it would take for the revolution to take power was for the SPA to say, 'We are the government now, and we're going to organise our own elections.'

'And the army. We appeal to the soldiers to come over to the side of the side of the revolution, shed the army tops, and we'll repopulate the top, the controlling tops of society with people elected by the people and who work for the people on a worker's wage and whatnot.'

But they didn't do that. Instead, what happened was, at the last...

I believe, the general strike. The first general strike. The first general strike was on the 27th ofMay, 2019

Josh
28th of May.

Hamid
They called it off and called for elections with the army tops, who represented nothing right?

What was the response of the army tops? Was it to sit down and negotiate with them?

On the third of June, I remember this.

I was very moved by this event.

Third of June, the encampment, the revolutionary encampment in Khartoum, 5am in the morning, was infiltrated by Janjaweed, RSF soldiers.

As you said, the army couldn't trust the soldiers to crush the revolution, they had to bring in these hardened counter revolutionaries.

Broke in and killed hundreds of people, maimed hundreds.

They spread throughout Khartoum, spreading terror, raping, killing, just randomly, random people, brutalising in every way you can possibly imagine.

And, and what did the leaders of the RSF do?

You have another wave of protests and strikes.

And this is an important point.

Josh
The masses still didn't back down after that. In fact, in case anyone listening is thinking, Oh, that's the defeat of the movement. There was a whole other wave after that!

Hamid
There was an even bigger wave of revolution.

Josh
1 million people came out on the 30th of June.

Hamid
And what was the response of the SBA?

It was to form a government with the head of the army and the head of the RSF, the Transitional Council, which was to be transitioning for 19 months.

I don't know why. Why couldn't they just organise elections

Josh
For order. That's why. You need order. For democracy, you need order. And what does order mean? The army back in control.

Hamid
And they put this, this idiot, liberal, UN official, listener, Hamidok as a figurehead.

But all power was in reality, in the hands of Abuhan and Hemedti.

And we said that this is this is this is a mistake, this is a crime, and they're biting their time to strike back.

I remember, Fred Weston, who's a regular host here, wrote something, said that the ruling class will not shy away from any means to in order to restore order over its system.

And we were proven correct.

What are your comments?

Josh
Well, I think one thing, to take one step back, because I think it's a relevant point, is you mentioned about bread prices and bread subsidies.

There was a period under Bashir, Al Bashir, when an oil boom gave the regime a certain room for manoeuvre and gave out quite high subsidies, and there was a certain, at least stabilisation in the cost of living.

That was massively undermined when the country was divided into what is now Sudan and South Sudan, a completely reactionary partition stewarded by what?

The United States of America.

So just touching back on this question of the role of the West...

Hamid
They provoked that split deliberately. They didn't want China to get access to that oil.

Josh
South Sudan very oil rich. What's happened since in South Sudan?

Has American protection resulted in peace and prosperity? I think we know the answer.

There's been a vicious, bloody civil war, which has also spilled over into Sudan itself.

That was just one small point.

The other one is this point about I think you're absolutely right when you raise the question, 'Well, if 98% of the workers who actually make the state run support the strike, who runs the state?'

Hamid
Who's the government?

Josh
Is it the so called government, or is it the head of the leadership of the strike?

The leadership of the strike, those who called the strike was the Sudanese Professionals Association. It was the SBA.

And I just want to give some evidence of that.

You know, don't take our word for it.

This is what a strike committee in Port Sudan, important city, now the capital of the SAF the official army regime.

They say this: on the 28th of May 'we reaffirm our readiness and responsiveness to all the decisions by the SPA in the context of restoring full civil authority and sovereignty, and declare our readiness for civil disobedience and an open political strike until the handover of authority into civilian hands', in other words, the overthrow of the army.

'And as we have previously said, the instructions are with you, the SBA, and the deed is with us.'

So that's that's the strike, saying 'You are the government.'

It reminds me of the situation in Petrograd in 1917 where the Soviets were basically saying that we will follow the orders of the the Soviet, not the government.

The government basically doesn't exist.

Is illegitimate in our eyes. Yeah.

One other quote just to draw this out, this is a quote from the Financial Times, not from marxist.com.

"One cannot know for sure what Russia felt like in 1917 as the Tsar was being toppled, or France in 1871 in the heady idealistic days of the short lived Paris Commune, but it must have felt something like Khartoum in April 2019.

Just to underline what you were saying, that was the potential that existed in that situation.

And to read this now in the present situation is only more devastating, really, to see what could have been and what was lost.

I mean, just briefly, on the question of Darfur and the atrocities taking place now. When the Al Bashir regime, before was toppled, when the Al Bashir regime was deliberately trying to whip up racism to divide the masses using the question of Darfur, protesters...

Hamid
This was during the revolution.

Josh
During the revolution, protesters held up signs saying, Al Bashir, you arrogant racist. We are all Darfur.

What a contrast.

That is the real face and the real voice of the masses of the revolution.

Once that voice was cut off and extinguished by the counter revolution, then all manner of barbarism was unleashed.

And this, this question of...

So one detail we haven't mentioned is the SPA wasn't the official political leadership of the entire revolution.

What they did was they cobbled together, or they formed a part of what you'd call a Popular Front called the forces for freedom and change.

So you had the SPA, were trade unions, right? You know, trade unions who played a leading role in the movement.

Liberals, even some Islamists.

Basically just a hodgepodge of everybody who was nominally for freedom and change, whatever that means.

An extremely broad front who were the political leadership.

And the SPA leadership said, 'Well, we're just trade unionists, so we can't play the role of this political leadership', and thus handed over leadership to the liberals, who proved to be just as reactionary, because the liberals require order and the army in order to maintain bourgeois rule.

And so the coalition, if you like, the body that stitched up this agreement after these incredible movements by the masses, time and time again, was the FFC, and each time the SPA, who could have formed an alternative, they could have formed a revolutionary working class alternative to this, threw up their hands and said, 'Well, we're part of the FFC. We have to do, as they say, basically.'

So you see this again, radical, you know, fairly radical, at least, terminologically radical leaders who have the support of the masses, hog tying the workers to to the ruling class.

And what was the justification for that?

Another reason was, well, if we break, if we have any breach of the FFC, if we don't have unity amongst democratic forces, then those divisions will be exploited by the reaction, and there will be civil war and violence and bloodshed, and so in the name of peace and stability, we're going to avoid that bloodshed, protect everybody by only aiming for the minimum, absolute minimum.

So some transition to have civilian elections and so on.

And that that paved the way for more violence, as we can see. Even in terms of the programme quibbling over...

A comrade who was present in the resistance committees told me that Western NGOs infiltrated that movement, were highly present, preaching pacifism, saying that people should be focusing on the question of whether Alcohol should be legalised or not, and not focusing on social demands.

And the key question which was being debated in the resistance committees of should we approach rank and file soldiers and get them in a systematic, organised way, to break with the army and get their arms!

If the movement had been armed, then actually, that would have reduced bloodshed, because once the reactionary new they could just walk through the city and slice people to pieces that incentivized them, didn't it?

And so the Liberals couldn't have played a worse role in this.

Hamid
And while the liberals were trying to pour cold water on the masses, basically, and dampen the mood and tie them and kind of blunt in the movement, Hemedti, who was the head of the RSF, he was brought in by the by the ruling class.

He was always an outsider, by the way.

He's a camel herder, ex camel herder.

And he has a long... he's very ambitious, very opportunist.

At one point, he was fighting for Al Bashir in Darfur against the rebels.

And then he switched sides and started fighting against the central government.

And then Bashir brought him in as a presidential guard, and used him to weigh up against the army.

But he always had this kind of... very, very ambitious person.

But he's also very astute, and while the liberals were kind of trying to blunt the movement, he was walking around preparing the political ground for the counter revolution.

He was going, I remember this.

He was going around to chiefs, imams, all of these backward elements that represent pre capitalist formations, backward pre capitalist formations in Sudan.

And what was he telling them?

He said, 'Oh, the revolution means democracy, which is the threat to your traditional position.

'The revolution means freedom of women, which is the threat to your stranglehold over, over your women. The revolution means this, and'...

All of the things that, yes, that was, that was what the revolution was!

The revolution was, it was a threat to their class interests, right?

And he prepared the ground. He was walking around holding big lunches and big kind of meetings, building up political support, and then they would provide him with soldiers, arms, funding that he would then use to crush the revolution.

That is what the revolutionaries should have done.

Should have gone, said the counter revolution is going to crush you.

We said that on many occasions, again and again and again, that the counter revolution is biding his time and wants to crush it.

If the revolutionaries had done what you said. Said, "We cannot trust the generals. We are the revolution. We are the people. We are Sudan.

"The Army must come over. They must, instead of the old, decrepit, rotten ruling class and state bureaucracy and general staff, we must elect our own from the people who can represent the interests of the people" and prepared the path for a proper revolution.

All of this could have been avoided.

And what happened was exactly...

Josh
There would have been conflict, there would have been violence.

But the point is that the workers and the revolution would have been infinitely stronger.

And one more thing I'd add is that this conflict between a revolutionary workers army and the more backward layers, reactionary layers that have been whipped up in the more remote parts of the country, that also could have been undermined by...

One of the weakness of the revolution is constantly just focusing on the liberal democratic demands, which did have a role. We don't dismiss those.

But introducing social demands that could have revolutionised the conditions of life of farmers and herders, whose lives have been destroyed by things like climate change and by imperialism, they could have actually won over part of the base.

Again, the Bolsheviks were able to do that, use politics and use the revolution itself in order to actually win over the poorest layers and therefore drive a wedge within the reactionary forces.

It's not the case that the the peasantry or nomadic peoples are some homogenous reactionary block, but you can't do that if your movement has been stifled and tied up and then ultimately crushed because of the limitation of your own programme to appease people who were always your enemy

Hamid
And what happened was this: the liberals were used as a figurehead for the regime, which was a continuation regime. This continuity.

For all intents and purposes, the regime remained.

The social contradictions remained, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, unemployment, decay, falling apart of society, barbarism, everything remained.

The revolutionary elements were tired out gradually, and also, a lot of people swung to the other side.

What did the revolution give us? I'm sure millions of people would have thought.

What did the revolution give us?

A smiling face to carry out the same crimes against us, right?

And therefore, in that situation, the army and the and the RSF were just biding the time.

And predictably, as we predicted. You go and read our articles, we'll link to some of our articles.

That happened and they moved in, and they removed Hamdok, they kind of disposed of him, when they used him and took power themselves.

But no honour amongst thieves.

Then you had Hemedti, an outsider of the ruling class who's always been looked down upon, but who carries the responsibility of saving the regime.

He thinks himself as the proper heir of that regime.

And the traditional ruling class, which doesn't trust him, doesn't like him, sees him as too, you know...

I imagine that the German capitalists viewed Hitler a little bit like that.

You know, having having built this this creature, to crush the revolution, they lost control over him.

And other countries started to intervene.

You had the EU still supporting the RSF, training them up until just right up until the civil war in 2023.

The United Arab Emirates, which has begun to play an independent role in Yemen, it took a different stance than the Saudis, now is doing again here.

They have an interest in the gold. They have an interest in in generally throwing out their weight building up, kind of, chips for playing against other, other bourgeois forces.

Josh
And Russia, at that time, was involved with the RSF for the gold.

Hamid
Russia switched. Ukraine was on the side of the Army, and then you had Russia switching to the other side, fighting on the side of the Army, with the Ukrainians!

And the Egyptians obviously want stability.

They're engulfed by countries falling apart.

They want stability. They supported the central state.

That is what's led us here.

That is what's unleashed this barbarism.

American imperialism. You know, you sent me an article which is interesting by Foreign Affairs, which says, This is the future of wars.

Wars that never end as a result of a decline of American imperialism.

Josh
Relative decline.

Hamid
Relative decline of American imperialism, which means other powers suddenly start flexing their muscles, powers which were previously much more controlled.

But the point is, by the Americans, such as the Emiratis and the Saudis and the Egyptians, three American allies, by the way, right?

They are fueling this civil war.

But the question that comes to my mind is, no, the Americans still...

And this is what you see in every podcast you listen to, every article that you read, 'Oh, we must stop this humanitarian crisis.'

'The only people who can do it are the Americans.'

'They are the backers of Egypt. They are the backers of Saudi Arabia. They are the backers of United Arab Emirates.'

Yes, why are they not doing it?

Because there's too much at stake.

Because Trump needs the Saudis and the Emiratis.

Their investments are fueling this huge AI boom that's taking place now.

They have investments in the US.

They have other business deals.

Who cares about Sudan.

Josh
And ta role to play with the Abraham Accords and trying to stabilise the Middle East as well.

Hamid
They want Egypt and Saudi Arabia to sign the Abraham Accords.

They have no interest in this. They have no interest...

Let's put it like this. They might want to stop this.

They might see it as a nuisance, but their interest in keeping their allies on board weighs higher than the interests of the working class and the poor and the peasants of Sudan and anywhere in the world.

And that's why you see this capitalist system, which is just descending in parts, in particular in Africa, in parts of the world, into barbarism driven by these individual bourgeois who have only...

You know this is this kind of like the concentrated essence of capitalism, the short sightedness, the extreme short sightedness and the anarchy of the system based on profit.

This is kind of the crystallised essence of that process.

Josh
To give an example of that, neighbouring Chad, they've had, I think, about a million refugees come in from from places like Darfur, which is causing a lot of strain.

This is not a powerful economy.

Not only that, is creating social tensions, because many people in Chad are so poor that they actually think that the refugees coming into camps are getting better conditions than them.

So it's actually undermining the base of the regime.

But the regime in Chad is actually supporting the RSF in part because it is tied to and benefits a lot from investment and aid from the UAE.

And so you have an example here of a completely decrepit, reactionary ruling class in Chad, which is being forced, not entirely against its will, into a situation which will later lead to barbarism in its own country.

And bear in mind that, Chad, you know you talk about Egypt being hard pressed on all sides, which is correct.

Chad, you've got Libya to the north, which is a failed state, similar to Sudan, actually, the situation that's emerged there, where there's a de facto partition the country amongst warlords.

To the West, you've got Niger, which is under a huge amount of pressure from Islamist armed groups.

South you've got the Central African Republic, which is almost a failed state.

And into the East now you've got Sudan, not a great place to be.

And they're actually contributing, from the standpoint of stability of the state, they're actually contributing to the further undermining.

So you're looking at an entire region of the Earth, fairly large part of the world, which is being dragged down into total state collapse and unimaginable horror.

And, yes, this is not some kind of exception to capitalism.

Oh, if only there were more capitalist.

This is the direct consequence of the continuation of the capitalist system in Sudan, in terms of the stifling and the betrayal and murder of the revolution, but also the maintenance of capitalism in the in the so called advanced civilised countries like Britain and the United States.

Hamid
Yeah, yeah. I mean, just to kind of tie it in, we might be fighting in different places. We might be talking about the US, Britain, Sudan, Palestine.

But we're fighting the same beast, the same Hydra headed beast, the capital of which is in New York City and in Washington, by the way.

Without American imperialism, none of these parties which are intervening now...

I mean, Russia plays a minor role in the Civil War. It's not, it's not the main party.

American imperialism and its allies are the ones that have been dragging Africa down into the ground.

Now, Russia and China are entering the fray.

They also have a responsibility, to some extent, in particular China.

But the main criminal in dragging Africa down into the barbaric morass that it's in is American imperialism, and then European imperialism.

I mean, just... we don't have much time, but just the fact that these were countries that were divided up specifically in order to rule them through race, ethnic tension, right?

Josh
And border disputes, enclaves and just generally, weak states that can't maintain their own border.

Hamid
That was the purpose of the way that the Africa was given, so called independence, right?

So that the West could rule them.

And the way that they've ruled them, on the basis of capitalist, bourgeois, short sighted interests, is what we have.

Barbarism.

But you see, there is, there is a choice here.

And I think the reason why we're dealing with the revolution is this: there was a fork in the path for Sudan in June 2019.

The masses had power in their hands.

The working class, the poor, the peasants, the shopkeepers.

The mass of the population had power in their hands.

But they weren't conscious of it. They weren't conscious enough. They weren't organised enough.

Their leaders betrayed them.

And that led directly down the path of barbarism.

And so what Marx said, and Engel said, and Rosa Luxemburg said that socialism or barbarism is what lies in front of humanity.

That is a very concrete question in Sudan.

The fact that they didn't take power, allowed the counter revolution back in to drag the country down.

And that's why it's important to study revolutions.

To study, you know, how the dynamic of a revolution and what is necessary.

Because if you don't finish what you started...

We can't decide whether revolutions start or not. Revolutions start. The system causes them. Capitalism causes them.

But we can have an impact on whether they are successful or not.

Humans have that.

And if you don't learn from the mistakes of countries like Sudan, you will have a very, very dear cost to play.

And a whole generation is lost.

Because that's what we're looking at in Sudan, a generation of barbarism.

We don't know when it's going to come back.

And the hope for Sudan now...

Yes, the people of Sudan have very revolutionary traditions, and they will not die down.

But they are condemned to barbarism for a long time to come.

And the centre of attention moves elsewhere.

In Egypt, we have a powerful working class.

In South Africa, in Nigeria.

These are the three main kind of working classes of Africa.

In Algeria, in Tunisia, in Morocco, as well. Kenya.

In Tanzania. You have movements here.

For now, the movement is up.

But if you have a successful revolution in one of these countries, one of these near, near abroad countries, then that will have a massive impact inside of it, and that can change the situation.

And in the final analysis, we need to take this struggle to the belly of the beast itself, to the heart of the capitalist world, to the advanced capitalist countries.

It's the same struggle. It's the same struggle against the same system.

We live in different countries, but we're part of the same class and the same movement, essentially.

Do you have any concluding remarks?

Josh
I do. I I completely agree with everything you've just said.

And listening to you, it comes to mind that, really, everything we've been talking about...

We have to learn the conclusions of all this.

And actually, the main conclusion that we draw from the discussion we've had about New York and the United States and about Sudan and the wider crisis in Africa is fundamentally the same.

We need a revolutionary party of the working class.

Why was the movement betrayed by the leadership?

Because it didn't have a leadership that was accountable to the working class.

It didn't actually have a vehicle for completing the revolution you're talking about.

Right now in the United States, there is the potential for a Workers Party, a Socialist Workers Party, in in the United States of America.

That potential exists all over the world.

More and more and more people, particularly young people, are coming to that conclusion.

It's never been more necessary for communists to organise, to create the basis for those parties.

Because this is the only way that we can take the right path and that that fork in the road towards socialism, that was what was missing in Sudan.

That's what's missing in the United States right now.

We have to build it. We have to build it.

We have to build it everywhere, and we have to build it now.

Those are perfect words to end on.

Thank you very much, Josh, and thank you very much for everyone tuning in.

This was Against the Stream.

We'll be back again next week, Thursday, 6pm UK time.