Fight for the NYC Working Class and Build Revolutionary Organization: socialists must do both

Zohran Mamdani’s sweeping win in New York City is a welcome event for everyone on the U.S. Left and for the U.S. working-class. Mamdani ran a class-based campaign slamming wealth inequality, calling for major reforms, and taking on and handily defeating the billionaires and both capitalist parties simultaneously. Mamdani’s victory is a reflection of the desire of millions of people in New York City and beyond who are seeking an alternative to capitalism and represents a complete rejection of the politics of neoliberal austerity that has become so normalized in the bipartisan agenda.

Mamdani’s broad interracial and working-class coalition responded not just to his pledge for reforms like free bus service, expanded health care, and broadened social services, but also to his bold opposition to Zionism, to U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, and to Islamophobia.  Mamdani’s popularity is also an index of the broadening hatred Americans feel for oligarchs, bosses, and Donald Trump—whose popularity has fallen while Mamdani’s has ascended.

Mamdani’s victory was also a rejection by voters of the billionaire class in New York city including realtors, bankers, and business professionals who had tried to smash his candidacy. Mamdani also started on the right foot in his victory speech, quoting Eugene Debs and Jawaharlal Nehru.  He doubled down on his campaign message of rejecting billionaires and oligarchs. He has since that night called for continued local organizing in working-class communities and encouraged the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) to self-organize. These are promising developments from someone who claims to want to run against traditional Democratic norms.

On the other hand, Mamdani had already brought in a veteran from Democrat Bill DeBlasio’s administration in the role of first Deputy Mayor; he is keeping the current New York City Police Commissioner—and staunch Zionist—Jessica Tisch in her position. He also appointed Democratic National Committee Political Director Jeffrey Lerner to an advisor position in his campaign. These are troubling signs, among others, that the Mamdani is seeking accommodation to the powers that be.   

Mamdani’s decision to meet with Trump as one of his first high profile acts as mayor-elect was also a dangerous miscalculation. By trying to find “common ground” with Trump, who Mamdani himself has decried as a fascist, presents an irreconcilable contradiction. Mamdani had positioned his campaign as a fight against all that Trump and the billionaires represent. To then seek conciliation with Trump sends the signal that either Mamdani believes he can accomplish his goals through negotiation with the Trumpian billionaires currently waging an all-out class war against the US working class, or to show a commitment to operate within the norms of an increasingly authoritarian and corrupted two-party political structure. Either way, this approach weakens and confuses the effort to mobilize the bottom-up class struggle necessary that Mamdani alluded to as a necessary next step in his victory speech.

It is also worrying that Mamdani is already accommodating himself inside the beltway of the rightwing Democratic Party establishment in New York. After receiving an eleventh hour endorsement from holdout New York Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries, ostensibly to get Mamdani’s support in quashing a primary challenge from Democratic Socialist challenger Chi Ossé, Mamdani helped block Ossé’s effort from within the DSA.

Jeffries is a mouthpiece for Zionism, a vocal anti-socialist, and neoliberal capitalist Democrat who opposes Mamdani’s politics. Chuck Schumer, the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party’s hard right, Zionist, and neoliberal capitalist majority, refused to endorse Mamdani altogether. Jeffries, Schumer, and much of the Democratic Party establishment will likely work alongside the Republican Party and capitalist class in New York to block and undermine Zohran Mamdani’s efforts to fulfill any of his campaign promises.

Socialist Horizon agrees with our Left comrades across the spectrum calling for pressure campaigns and widescale mass organizing to make the Mamdani administration accountable to the multiracial working-class that elected him. For example, popular committees can be established in New York City to keep up public demand for free public transportation. Workers councils can be formed to pressure the Mamdani administration to increase taxes on the wealthy and encourage unionization campaigns. Mamdani’s administration should advance anti-capitalist policies that are environment friendly and make public the utilities that keep the city operating like gas and electric.

Muslim organizations should pressure Mamdani to continue to criticize and oppose U.S. support for Israel and broaden his critique to include U.S. saber-rattling against Venezuela. Immigrant rights groups should ramp up demands that the city government oppose all cooperation with Homeland Security and ICE and to force the removal of Trump’s gestapo.  Reproductive rights advocates should organize to be sure abortion access is increased across the city and is free to all. Abolitionist groups should demand that Mamdani replace the New York City police department with public safety committees organized by the people of New York.

Revolutionary socialists should participate in all these activities. The Mamdani campaign offers an important opportunity to work in a united front with large numbers of people who have a growing anti-capitalist orientation.  Many of them are also committed anti imperialists, anti-racists, and anti-Zionists. 

The Mamdani campaign offers an important opportunity to work in a united front with large numbers of people who have a growing anti-capitalist orientation.

At the same time, socialists must actively build a new revolutionary party. These things are not counterposed, but complementary. Revolutionary socialists do not aspire to govern a capitalist society; they endeavor to replace it. The advancing of reforms that improve the lives of workers and the elimination of capitalism altogether are always on a continuum for revolutionary socialists.  The fight for reform, along the pathway to the abolition of capitalism, is best accomplished through a revolutionary trajectory of class struggle.

Here we agree with our Tempest comrades, who have written about the Mamdani campaign: “socialists need to help build the political independence of the working class and oppressed communities. Socialism can only be won as a movement of self-emancipation, and for this, the development of political independence is essential.” We also agree with Jonathan Rosenbaum, who has argued: “You cannot build an anti-capitalist movement within a capitalist party.”

Mamdani’s participation in the rabidly pro-capitalist Democratic Party is not only a block on the ability of socialists to challenge the system, but to the possibility for working-class people to take control over their own lives and create their own future. People cannot imagine eating fresh fruit when all they are offered is fast food. Only a revolutionary party openly dedicated to the elimination of capitalism and the development of socialism can truly show people the world they wish to build. Indeed, polls show that capitalism is a failing idea in America, and that young people especially are increasingly attracted to socialism.

The formation of a revolutionary socialist party opens that possibility. It invites people into the planning, building and realization of a future that is made with human hands. As Socialist Horizon wrote earlier this year:

We need to begin building a revolutionary organization today. In other words, we need an organization whose central strategy, the guiding star of its entire activity, is advancing the construction of a mass working-class revolutionary party, and one that acts in international solidarity with socialists across the globe striving for the same goals…

…This organization must be grounded in firm principles of revolutionary strategy, class independence and internationalism. It must be structured with dedicated and independent-thinking political cadres, an internal method of democratic discussion and united intervention, and a collective, principled and accountable leadership. It must have the tactical flexibility to build political and social movements of the working class and the oppressed without sectarianism, and with the strategic and political firmness to push the class struggle forward at all points. 

The relative weakness of the U.S. left in this period demands that building a revolutionary organization also requires cooperation and strategic orientation and revolutionaries.  That is why Socialist Horizon is committed to a regroupment of revolutionary forces in the U.S. towards a new revolutionary party. The revolutionary regroupment we propose is something different but not contradictory to efforts to support united front organizing around figures like Mamdani. Our revolutionary regroupment aims to unify those who agree on the more strategic task of building a revolutionary party organization of dedicated members and cadre while we intervene in the class struggle, whenever possible in unity with broader forces. To that end, we seek to work with all revolutionary socialist organizations and individuals who share our commitment to regroupment and building a new revolutionary socialist party-building organization.

The Mamdani victory is a massive opening for this opportunity.   His victory indicates that now more than ever people are moving in the direction of massive social change and want a world that puts people before profit.

We invite people who want to build that world with us to contact us at https://socialisthorizon.org/member-organizations-and-locations/