On Zohran Mamdani
Recently, the City of New York held their primary elections for the Democratic Party candidate for Mayor in the general election to be held in November. The main two candidates (though several ran, as NYC uses a ranked-choice voting system) were conservative Democrat and former Governor of the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace due to several complaints of sexual harassment behavior in his office, and self-described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman. Backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Mamdani won the primary election by massively increasing youth voter turnout and a platform that promises to freeze the rents in rent-stabilized units, build city-owned grocery stores to alleviate food deserts and offer lower-priced groceries, and make the buses free. This contrasts greatly with Cuomo’s nearly non-existent platform, as he ran a campaign that could be best summarized as “you know who I am, now vote for me!”.
Mamdani has seemingly re-awakened interest in socialism in the United States, reminiscent of the latter half of the 2010s, with Bernie’s 2016 campaign and the election of the Squad in the 2018 midterms. That, coinciding with the rise of the DSA, brought many into the socialist movement.
Or, did it? What Zohran actually represents could hardly be described as anything more than run-of-the-mill social democracy. Of course, here in the United States, his policies could be seen as “communist” in nature, thanks to the Overton Window phenomenon and decades of McCarthyism. As Marxist-Leninists, though, we must be able to analyze this in realistic terms, and, realistically speaking, Zohran will only serve to funnel the revolutionary potential of the New York working class right back into the Democratic Party, eschewing any chance of building a movement outside of the two capitalist parties.
This is not to say that his platform is terrible, though. As a New Yorker myself, it would be wonderful to have free buses and rent freezes, sure. And it is not a small matter that nearly half a million voters didn’t run away at the mere mention of “democratic socialist”. To me, it proves that the red scare brought on by McCarthy continues to fade away.
Regardless, our tasks at hand remain unchanged. No matter who gets to move to the Gracie Mansion in November, the task of building the Party and building working class unity will not change. Zohran can only offer reforms, which are temporarily beneficial, sure; but the root problem is capitalism, and unless he decides to abandon the Democratic Party and take up the cause of defeating capitalism and building the Communist Party, he is nothing more than a reformist social-democrat. It is crucial that any conversation regarding Mamdani be summarized as such, because the allure of progressive reformism remains potent. The conditions the working-class face here are atrocious, and anything to alleviate that is beneficial; but it cannot end with mere reform. It’s just a brief respite along the road to true working-class revolution.