Want Socialism? Fight Mamdani!

Be honest, comrades. Zohran Mamdani has only been mayor of New York for two months, and it’s bad. He thanked the pigs that shot Jabez Chakraborty. He supported scabherder Hochul against the historic nurses strike. He’s resumed homeless sweeps and is about to close a major shelter. He keeps buddying up to Trump and real estate parasites, while ignoring victims of the city’s worst slumlord: New York City Housing Authority. The list goes on. Meanwhile, the right-wing NYC-DSA leadership is celebrating his supposed accomplishments. Lots of DSAers know something is wrong. But angry tweets and groveling petitions won’t turn this around.

Mamdani is doing exactly what we in the Just Break Already caucus said he would. It doesn’t matter if he’s DSA cadre or if Marxism is in his heart. Trying to win influence in and through the Democratic Party necessarily means capitulating to the interests of the powerful capitalists it represents. Imperialist billionaires run the Democratic Party and define the manners Mamdani must mind to play there. It’s the same game every time socialists back Democrats: they buy in and sell out, and all we get are traitors like AOC. This strategy is undermining the socialist movement.

Mamdani is in office bearing a DSA brand, but his reign is predictably on par with the anti-working-class crap under other Democrats. The DSA left still says he is one of ours but has no plan to “hold him accountable,” let alone stop the damage he’s doing. The DSA right proudly professes that this treachery is “pragmatic.” But worse, the left is convinced we can build the forces for socialism while suffocating in the imperialist party’s womb.

Mamdani’s supporters in NYC-DSA leadership are now trying to bureaucratically crush the Anti-War Working Group (AWWG). They want to keep the left in line, because even tepid anti-imperialism might embarrass Mamdani and make his schmoozing with the bosses’ parties awkward. AWWG defenders rightly object to this undemocratic attack and are well aware that it is politically motivated. But they are unable to effectively fight back because they share in a key part of the politics behind the attack: the notion that association with the Democrats is good for the DSA.

The DSA left’s response to the attack is very telling. The “Statement from the Anti-War Working Group OC Against Wrecking on the Eve of Global War” says that the right-wing wreckers “wrongly view [pro-Palestine and other anti-imperialist organizing] as detrimental to their reformist project of aligning with liberal progressives to run electoral candidates and pass legislation.” The individual left caucuses, from Liberation to Marxist Unity Group, have the same take. In its statement, Liberation says to the coup plotters: “Just stay out of the way. You will be surprised not only at how safe your precious elected officials’ seats remain, but doubly so by how popular real anti-imperialism can be here in NYC.”

This is all way off. Real anti-imperialism is not setting up some sandbox for leftists to mouth off and feel good, but fighting to bring the working class forward to deliver blows to the U.S. rulers, “progressive” Democrats included. To make anti-imperialism popular, we must link it to workers’ struggles on the basis that it is necessary to defend and advance their position against all supporters of the system. If we are serious, we cannot declare peace with the Democrats or the DSA right. They’re attacking the AWWG right now to prevent the mere possibility of conflict, so they can keep trying to make deals with devils.

Electing Mamdani required impressive effort, and the DSA got a lot of new recruits out of it. But we must face reality. The mayor is dragging our name in the mud and disgracing “socialism” before the workers and oppressed. His supporters in leadership are trying to silence anti-imperialist dissent. If we allow this to continue, the resulting demoralization and defeat will drive these recruits and other members away and prevent us from winning the working class.

It’s Politics, Not the Position

The Liberation caucus article, “Zohran’s Failures Are The System: The Limits of Electoralism,” is critical of Mamdani and rightly objects to channeling DSA’s energy into electing Democrats. But it doesn’t get to the political core.

We agree with Liberation that there is no electoral road to socialism. But the problem of the DSA is not just overemphasizing elections. It is specifically the political accommodation of and subservience to the Democratic Party, which if not fought will undermine any socialist work. It is perfectly possible to advance the socialist cause using elections. In this period, campaigns will largely be propaganda platforms to expose illusions in Democrats.

The actual election of a principled socialist to executive office will necessarily reflect a higher level of class struggle and consciousness than what we see today, because it won’t just be a trick. The concessions made for Mamdani’s Democratic “success” were counterproductive to building a socialist movement—e.g., working with billionaires and burying the central issue of black oppression.

Mamdani’s betrayals are not explained away by the contradiction of a “socialist” holding office in a capitalist government during a reactionary period. Just look at Trump to see what a man with a plan to tear up the status quo looks like in office. Trump came to power, guns blazing, firing liberals and smashing obstacles that stood in his way—appearances and consequences be damned. Mamdani, not so much. At every turn, he seeks peace with the enemy and abides by their limits. A “socialist” who respects the capitalists’ rules more than the capitalists’ Commander-in-Chief is useless in a fight against capital today, regardless of their office. Such a “socialist” is only useful to keep discontent within the confines of the masters’ rule.

It is not his office that prevents Mamdani from taking socialist action. It is his unwillingness to violate the limits of Democratic Party acceptability. No law prevented him from firing the hated billionaire Zionist police commissioner. There’s plenty of vacant luxury real estate in the city, so homelessness is not a problem of stock. He could have chained himself to hospital doors and stopped scabs during the nurses strike. It’s not that he can’t do anything in office. It’s that he won’t risk his career to fight for workers and the oppressed, because he’s demonstrably a Democratic Party politician.

Mamdani’s explicit pro-Democrat fan fiction appeared in The Nation when he endorsed Hochul. He courts her, Trump and the real estate parasites to fund his nice ideas, instead of leading workers to fight for what they need. He justifies betrayal with crumbs, even though it’ll obviously take more than the Hochul endorsement bribe to fix this city…and the rich won’t easily pay.

Progress on homelessness, the “cost of living” crisis, etc., won’t come through friendly negotiations begging for a “fair share.” Any real progress requires a major encroachment on the profits and power of the ruling class, and this requires force. The Democratic Party operatives running the show in NYC-DSA these days say they’ll build a movement to tax the rich. But we all know they just mean busing voting cattle to Albany for a parade, and Mamdani is already pitching plans to just tax everyone when it fails. Workers will not like that. The only way forward is for DSA to break from and fight against dead-end Democratic Party politics.

Consequences of Capitulation for Class Struggle

Mamdani’s supporters give lip service to “class struggle,” but the DSA will never build a class-struggle movement so long as it’s associated with a party many workers hate and its public figures openly stand with the cops against the victims of their racist terror. The working class is plagued by partisan, racial and other divisions. We must actively combat them in order to build a powerful movement. Every single day, black and brown New Yorkers are harassed and murdered by the cops. Excusing Mamdani’s pro-cop nonsense as “pragmatism” means accepting that we will build an impotent, white, petty-bourgeois appendage of an imperialist party, not a class-struggle organization of workers and the oppressed.

An article by the Bread & Roses caucus in The Call is rightfully critical of Mamdani endorsing Hochul, and they expose the lie that this betrayal secured “universal childcare.” But they write off Mamdani’s endorsement of Establishment candidates as just another “strategic blunder,” while providing no indication of what we should do now.

We must be absolutely clear. Endorsing a capitalist politician who is actively breaking a strike is precisely where commitment to the Democratic Party leads: crossing the class line in the heat of struggle. Mamdani made a sappy speech on the picket line and then sided with the enemy. He patted nurses on the head before stabbing them in the back…just like any other Democratic Party charlatan. This can only repel workers! If DSA is to maintain any pretense of working-class politics, we must expel Mamdani and make clear where we stand.

A decisive victory for the nurses required socialists to advocate class-struggle methods to push the struggle forward. This would have done more to improve healthcare and social services than any shady deal with Hochul. This basic socialist understanding is what DSA should be operating on. Instead, NYC-DSA put out mealymouthed confusion: Hochul compromises with Republicans and “fascists,” and Mamdani supports her, so we support him? What the hell is anyone supposed to make of that?!

Fight Mamdani, Fight For Socialism!

Mamdani and the other pro-Democrat elements of our organization are throwing everybody under the bus—Palestinians, victims of cop terror, the working class itself…and the bus still ain’t even free. If we allow this to continue, who will even be left for our class-struggle movement?

Whatever our differences, the left caucuses must come together and fight the insidious influence of pro-Democratic Party politics in DSA. This fight can show workers and the oppressed that not all “socialists” are the Democratic liars they hate. To fight the bosses’ political agents in DSA, we must start drawing clear political lines against them:

• Expel Mamdani! Socialists stand with the workers and oppressed, not scabherders and pigs!
• Break with the Democrats! Workers need their own party to fight!
• Defeat U.S. Imperialism! For industrial action to land blows against the U.S. war machine at home!

Hit us up if you’re down.