The Mamdani Phenomenon and the Working Class

Editors Note: Article originally published by The Multiracial Unity Blog.

Last month Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), defeated the disgraced and widely disliked Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. The morning after the polls closed, Jacobin, the unofficial house organ of DSA, published a cry of wild enthusiasm.

The key takeaway was, “His victory is the biggest one yet for a socialist movement that has been building support steadily in New York City ever since Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016.” (emphasis added) DSA can throw around talk about a socialist movement, but does Mamdani appeal to and have the support of the broad ranks of the working class? No.

Here is a count of voters classified by the average income of each of the 2,168 Census tracts.

Mamdani defeated Cuomo in the $100,000 and above areas by more than four to three. Below $100,000, his margin over Cuomo was less than 10%.

Similarly, a New York Times tabulation by precincts showed that Mamdani won in the middle- and upper-income precincts but lost to Cuomo in the bottom quarter of precincts. And Mamdani pulled his widest margin of votes over Cuomo in precincts that have the most college-educated voters.

No doubt, nearly all Mamdani’s voters are in the working class: people who must get the bulk of their income from employment, not from investments, business profits, and other forms of surplus value. Nonetheless, his voters were concentrated in the upper strata. His main program points were “Freeze the rent” and “Build affordable housing.” When a neighborhood gentrifies, the first people moving in buy at the prevailing price in a market of lower-income residents. But as gentrification proceeds, prices climb rapidly, freezing out subsequent waves of aspiring entrants. Mamdani’s platform appeals to them.

A Candidate Who Talks Class Partnership

Mamdani’s remarks after his primary win denied the irreconcilable class contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class.

Interviewed on Meet the Press, Mamdani did not equivocate when asked, are you a communist? “No, I’m not” was his reply, period. Indeed!. The communist movement aims to overthrow capitalism, wipe out exploitation, replace profit with a planned economy, and eradicate all the inequalities and scars that capitalism has burned into every aspect of social life. Democratic socialists aim at expanded social benefits and a humanized capitalism; they are silent about revolution and vague about the basics of a socialist economy. No wonder they limit political activity to voting, legislative campaigns, demonstrations, and maybe some civil disobedience.

Asked about his statement that “I don’t think we should have billionaires,” he confirmed he said that and added, “I look forward to work with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer.” Does Mamdani really believe that more than one billionaire of the 123 of them in New York City wants to partner with him for a fairer city? True, someone among the other 122 billionaires might offer Mamdani a token gesture that does nothing to make the city fairer. But
Mamdani’s soft-soap line covers up the brutal reality of New York City’s resident billionaires, among them:

[-] Rupert Murdoch of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal,

[-] Stephen Schwartzman, founder and CEO of the finance and real estate monster Blackstone, who endorsed Donald Trump for president a year ago as a “vote for change,”

[-] Julia Koch, widow of David Koch, who bankrolled the Heritage Foundation that drew up Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s unmasked version of capitalist dictatorship.

Mamdani went on to claim that “income inequality has declined nationwide” while it has gotten worse in New York City. The Gini measure of national income inequality did drop somewhat and rebound from 2019 to 2022. Overall, though, it has polarized since 1980 to a historic extreme today and shows no trend movement toward equality.

Mamdani is ill-informed – or willing to inflate a tiny detail into a clever talking point at the expense of the basic truth.

Mamdani is also reported to have called for taxing “richer and whiter neighborhoods.” Does that mean, avoid taxing richer and more Asian neighborhoods, for example? Or does he mean to tax whiter neighborhoods whether rich or poor? Either way, he did not unite workers against racial oppression; instead, he followed the politics of dividing people by identity.

Only One Way Out of Capitalism

There are varieties of democratic socialists. Perhaps Zohran Mamdani is an individualist like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She, too, started in 2018 as a DSA candidate. She has since pursued power in the Democratic Party based on her ability to get votes and raise money. AOC has taken no steps to build a socialist movement, let alone a communist party. Like her partner in a series of rallies around the country this year, Bernie Sanders, she helps people voice their anger while doing nothing to organize them. It boils down to: vote for (good) Democrats.

At best but least likely, Mamdani could be a closet admirer of Salvador Allende, the Chilean democratic socialist who got elected president and began gradually to convert the economy to socialism. The problem was that neither he nor the Communist Party of Chile built revolutionary state power in step with the economic legislation. The Chilean capitalist class, urged on and supported by the U.S. government, overthrew the Allende regime, murdering more than 3000 people within a few weeks.

Either way, Mamdani is one more politician maneuvering within the capitalist game. The sad thing is that a lot of canvassers spent time and energy roping more people into the game. Democratic socialists cannot get to socialism, let alone communism.

Communism is not something we turn to in the distant future. Communist is a class-aware outlook. It is a movement that had to start over in the last half of the twentieth century, a movement that deserves our time and energy – because there is only one way out of capitalist hell: the communist path.

Charles Andrews is the author of The Hollow Colossus and various essays on capitalism and communism.