United States: Zohran Mamdani stuns establishment – is this a step toward a socialist NYC?

In a major political upset, Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. The 33-year-old defeated former governor and establishment favorite, Andrew Cuomo, winning 43% of the first-choice votes against Cuomo’s 36%. As the Wall Street Journal observed, “the epicenter of global capitalism may soon have a socialist mayor.”

[Originally published at communistusa.org]

Mamdani’s victory is yet another sign of the times, as the global crisis of capitalism forces millions of workers and young people to search for new political answers.

His victory shocked not only the well-heeled Democratic party elite, but also the titans of Wall Street. In an opinion piece titled, “The People’s Republic of New York City,” the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board fretted about the possible rise of “leftwing economic populism,” while hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb wrote on X, “It’s officially hot commie summer.”

Whether Mamdani will win the general election in November remains to be seen. Incumbent mayor Eric Adams is also in the race as an independent, and the now-defeated Cuomo could run as an independent too. Still, a self-described socialist is the chalk bet to be the next mayor of America’s largest metropolis, and one of the most economically and culturally important cities in the world.

With over four months until the general election, the ruling class is already attacking him, threatening capital flight, and accusing him of antisemitism due to his mild opposition to Israel.

However, what the ruling class is afraid of is neither Zohran himself, nor his mildly progressive policy proposals. He ran on a soft left-liberal program, on the capitalist Democratic Party ballot line. What worries them are the people who voted for him, and what his victory represents. They’re afraid that a section of the working class will feel more confident and emboldened by Zohran’s victory.

Why did Mamdani win?

Zohran won support by putting the city’s cost-of-living crisis at the forefront of his campaign. His program promised to freeze rents, make buses fast and free, provide free childcare, and more.

The primary results reveal a mood of deep anger and frustration at the Democratic Party establishment. Zohran’s main opposition was New York state’s scandal-ridden ex-governor, Andrew Cuomo. Son of three-term Democratic governor Mario Cuomo, he seemed to have every advantage: name recognition, experience, the backing of his party—including endorsements from Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg—and millions in campaign donations. While Zohran was polling 1% in February, Cuomo gained a 40-point lead when he entered the race.

But at a time when the Democrats are more discredited and unpopular than ever, these connections actually worked against him. Ordinary New Yorkers, especially young people, were eager to vote for someone they see as a political outsider. This attitude was summed up by one Queens resident who told The Communist, “​​I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little happy about Cuomo getting endorsements from both the Democratic Party and The New York Times, then getting his teeth kicked in.”

Zohran’s win is part of a broader phenomenon of distrust and anger at the political system and both major parties, which has created a huge political vacuum.

Trump was able to tap into this discontent in his 2016 and 2024 presidential victories. Many commentators characterized his wins as a “shift to the right” in US politics. Some even highlighted a swing toward Trump in NYC last fall as evidence of a broader reactionary shift. But Zohran’s victory shows that there has not been a fundamental shift to the right in New York or across the country, but rather a shift toward anti-establishment candidates on both the “right” and the “left,” due to the growing class anger in US society.

42,000 people volunteered for Zohran’s campaign in one way or another—door knocking, phone banking, tabling, leafleting, etc. This amount of active support for a socialist candidate would have been unthinkable just 15 years ago, and shows a deep desire among a certain layer of society to find a way to fight against the political establishment.

Should communists support Mamdani?

Many on the left see Zohran’s primary win as a clear victory for the socialist movement and consider it a foregone conclusion that they must support him in November. By all accounts, he seems sincere in his desire to lower the cost of living in New York.

But while it’s satisfying to see someone like Andrew Cuomo defeated—and some will argue that anyone is better than Eric Adams—communists need to take a sober and scientific approach to questions of electoral strategy.

The starting point should be our long-term strategic goal: the working class winning power through a socialist revolution that proceeds to dismantle the capitalist state, replaces it with a workers’ state, and nationalizes the key levers of industry into a democratically planned economy under workers’ control.

With over four months until the general election, the ruling class is already attacking Zohran, threatening capital flight, and accusing him of antisemitism due to his mild opposition to Israel / Image: RCA

A successful revolution will be the culmination of the centuries-long struggle between the two main classes in modern society—the workers and the capitalists. The working class can only succeed in this fight if we are conscious that a fundamental divide exists between the classes, and that we constitute a class of our own, with our own interests irreconcilably opposed to those of the capitalists. We must wage a united struggle as a class against our class enemy, the capitalists.

The role of communists is to sharpen and facilitate the development of this class consciousness at every stage of the struggle. This means fighting for class independence in all spheres. The working class needs our own program, methods, and organizations—including our own political party.

This is how communists view elections—as part of the broader class struggle, not as isolated tactical wins or losses. Any campaign run or supported by communists should be a step in the direction of increasing working-class consciousness, confidence, and unity.

Blurring the class line

Ever since Bernie Sanders first ran for president in 2015, a debate has re-emerged in the US socialist movement over whether to run socialist candidates within the capitalist Democratic Party. This is not a secondary question, but gets to the very heart of the matter: can the working class use the capitalists’ parties to achieve our goal? Or do we need a party of our own?

The Democrats and Republicans are not neutral institutions. They are controlled by the capitalists to serve and defend their class interests and their system.

From this viewpoint, it is clear that communists cannot support Zohran as long as he is running as a Democrat. This would be crossing a fundamental class line. In effect, it would be saying to the working class that the Democratic Party can be trusted or utilized to some degree or another—a dangerous illusion that leads only to disaster.

Rather than helping to clarify the class divide in society, running within the Democrats blurs this line by implying that one wing of the ruling class is preferable to the other and somehow “on our side.”

Communists are not opposed to participating in bourgeois elections in principle. Electoral campaigns could be utilized for the purpose of exposing the problems of capitalism and campaigning for a communist program and a class-independent workers’ party.

In fact, the immediate problem facing the American working class is its lack of an independent political party—one that is not controlled by the exploiting class—which could be used to fight for the interests of the working class as a whole, including running working-class candidates for office.

Zohran’s massive corps of 42,000 volunteers could have provided the nucleus of just such a working-class party. He could have run as an independent socialist and called on these volunteers to sign party cards and get to work recruiting coworkers, friends, family, etc.

If he had run as an independent socialist, Zohran’s 42,000 volunteers could have provided the nucleus of a working-class party / Image: SWinxy, Wikimedia Commons

Even if this reduced his chances of winning this particular election, the formation of this party would have been a tremendous leap forward for the working class movement as a whole. It would have prepared the basis for a genuine class-based struggle, at the ballot box, in the workplaces, and in the streets. The RCA would actively and energetically support such a campaign, while offering comradely criticism where appropriate.

While communists pursue a strategy aimed toward achieving a successful socialist revolution, unfortunately, Zohran and others in the DSA do not operate within this framework.

Hundreds of thousands of honest socialists want to see a better world. They want to fight for the working class, and many want to see the end of capitalism altogether. But there is a fundamental flaw at the heart of reformism. Reformists believe they can achieve these ends without a fundamental break from the capitalist system. As a result, regardless of their intentions, they limit their tactics and program to what is “achievable” within the capitalist system, and within the parties of the enemy class. But the problems facing the working class can only be resolved through the complete overthrow of the capitalist system.

The limits of Zohran’s program

Advocates for running within the Democratic Party claim that it is justified to cross the class line to win elections. They argue that once in office, these candidates can enact a program that will improve the lives of workers and increase the popularity of socialism.

But the reality is that Zohran’s program will be extremely difficult to achieve and will face overwhelming barriers that can only be surmounted by class-war methods, including strikes, workplace occupations, and mass mobilizations.

In the absence of militant class struggle on the streets, Mamdani’s efforts will have minimal impact on the lives of working-class New Yorkers. Remaining within the limits of the class enemy’s system will force him to preside over a further decline in working-class living standards. The result will be broad disappointment—and possibly even disillusionment with “socialism” altogether.

For example, one of the main planks of Zohran’s program is to make groceries cheaper. His proposed method for doing so involves a pilot program of opening a single city-owned grocery store in each borough, with controlled prices. He says that if the program goes well, it may be expanded.

Five grocery stores in a city of eight million—one for the 2.7 million residents of Brooklyn, one for the 2.3 million in Queens, etc.—will hardly make a difference for the vast majority of New Yorkers. And even if the pilot program is popular, he will have an extremely difficult time convincing the capitalist class to allow him to expand a program of publicly owned stores that compete directly with privately owned monopolies, thus cutting into their profits.

Confining himself to the limits of capitalism means accepting extremely limited parameters for pursuing reforms. A communist candidate would also advocate for cheaper groceries—but would explain that capitalist profits and private ownership nationally and internationally stand in the way of this.

The task would be to mobilize a mass movement demanding the nationalization of the entire food industry, to be placed under democratic workers’ control. This would need to be linked to a struggle to do the same thing, not just throughout the five boroughs, but across the entire country. This would be just one of many transitional demands that would connect the pressing needs of the day to a struggle against the capitalist system as a whole.

Another pillar of Zohran’s plan for affordability is a call for a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments. But the fundamental barrier to affordable housing is capitalist market relations. Communists are not opposed to reforms that might minorly mitigate housing costs, but we must make clear that only a rational plan for public housing can really address the crisis—which is not at all limited to New York, but exists in every single major American city.

In fact, recent events in New York show the absurd consequences of “free-market” housing. In 2019, NYC passed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act which capped how much landlords could raise the rent for stabilized apartments, among other “tenant-friendly” reforms. Landlords responded by “warehousing” their rent-stabilized units—keeping them off the market. This created a housing shortage, spiking rent prices for non-stabilized units. This shows very clearly why we need a militant, revolutionary struggle to fight the housing crisis.

A successful struggle against the capitalist class is entirely possible, but it begins with breaking from their parties and fighting to create a party of, by, and for the workers / Image: RCA

When it comes to financing his proposed reforms, Zohran will not enjoy a booming economy with abundant tax revenue. On the contrary, the capitalist system is in deep crisis, saddled with immense public debt, and the ruling class is looking for a way to enact austerity and make cuts to public funding.

A reformist program sets out from the assumption that the hardships facing the working class are the result of poor “policy choices,” and that these problems could be addressed simply by making better ones. But promising substantial improvements in people’s quality of life without a program for tackling the structural barriers of capitalism is a recipe for disappointment.

This is why Marxists point out that, despite even the best of intentions, betrayal is inherent in reformism. Not only will his methods fail to deliver reforms for the working class, but they will lead to the discrediting of “socialism” by associating it with broken promises. We can be sure that the capitalist press will eagerly seize on each and every opportunity to make this case.

The need for class independence

A genuine communist in office would also face the full might of the bourgeois media. In such a scenario, the role of revolutionary politics would be to hit back and use the sharpening of the class conflict to bring the workers to the understanding that their interests are incompatible with the capitalist system. A communist in office would use this platform to expose the limits of the market and private property, and to tell the truth to the working class—that achieving real reforms will take a hard-fought, well-organized struggle against the capitalist class.

Such a candidate would be honest about this from the very beginning of the campaign, rather than making promises they could not keep. A communist would clarify that they are running not to tinker with the system but to help organize a struggle against the ruling class—as part of a broader class war to tear the entire system down.

This is why class independence is the only possible guiding principle for revolutionary politics. It’s not about so-called “purity politics” or “dogmatism.” It’s about breaking politically with the capitalists in order to fight them effectively. This means breaking not only with their parties, but with their world view, and the narrow limits of their system.

Without a class-independent program or methods, Zohran will inevitably be pulled to the right under the pressure to make deals simply to “get things done.” This has already happened to a certain extent on a number of issues.

For example, in the last weeks of his campaign, he and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander concluded a cross-endorsement agreement, calling for their supporters to rank each other first and second. Zohran’s focus on winning the election meant that he tied himself to this Democratic politician—a typical liberal who has nothing to do with socialism. If your aim is simply to get into office, this might be considered “smart politics.” If your aim is to help the working class change society, this kind of backroom horse trading is a step in the wrong direction.

The success of Zohran’s campaign is a clear indication of the anger at the Democratic establishment, and a sign of the vast potential that exists for a class-independent party. But by limiting himself to what is possible under capitalism, he is setting himself up for failure.

Many of his supporters will learn through this process that enacting change doesn’t simply come from calling yourself a “socialist” or having a nice sounding program on paper. It requires a serious strategy for overthrowing capitalism, which is not as easy as winning an election. A successful struggle against the capitalist class is entirely possible, but it begins with breaking from their parties and fighting to create a party of, by, and for the workers.