Frank Merritt, Committee for a Workers’ International
Social and political convulsion in the US only increases. The Trump administration is widening its use of administrative ‘bonapartist’ powers, engaging in militarised methods and attacks on the “violent left” in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination and shootings.
This includes the incitement of military leaders, large-scale anti-immigrant terror operations by an unleashed, tooled-up ICE and sending troopers to the streets of major US cities. Vice President JD Vance encourages corporations to fire workers for simply criticising Kirk and his politics. All this encourages the far right and the visibility and presence across the country of armed militias.
Meanwhile the cost-of-living crisis means working-class Americans struggle with price and insurance premium rises, cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. This and the threat of job losses and further insecurity are exacerbated by the federal government shutdown, at the time of writing, for which the two corporate parties blame each other.
This is the backdrop to the 4 November New York City mayoral election, with Zohran Mamdani, whom the President and Wall Street bankers accuse of being a “communist”, currently leading the polls.
Mamdani, identifying as a ‘Democratic Socialist’ and an activist in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), shook the establishment with his victory in the Democratic Party primary in June, winning half a million votes.
His campaign, with 44% of the vote, defeated the current mayor Eric Adams, and the former governor of New York state, a darling of Wall Street and the hedge funds, Andrew Cuomo. Currently, Mamdani is leading in the opinion polls but does not yet have majority support, meaning he could still be defeated. However, he has become a pole of attraction against Trump.
The primary vote and interest generated by Mamdani’s radical reform programme, which he says is to be funded through taxation of the rich, includes setting up five city-owned grocery stores, affordable housing, free bus travel, and a $30 minimum wage (currently $16.50 an hour). It reflects the desire for change from corporate two-party politics. New York is a city where homelessness has rocketed since the great recession and the pandemic, while the rich have never been richer.
This, and his sharp attacks on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, have made Mamdani’s campaign a reference point far beyond New York. According to multiple press reports, Mamdani is mobilising tens of thousands of activists, mainly radical youth from a college background, outside the corrupt New York Democratic Party and is also increasingly seen as a threat to it.
Struggle
No doubt many of New York’s millions of voters will be inspired by Mamdani’s programme to vote for him. Many radicalised youth and worker activists are also being inspired to go out and campaign for him, despite their hatred and opposition to the corporate Democratic Party for which he is running. However, voting and even campaigning for Mamdani, by itself, will not be enough to win radical, let alone socialist, change in New York and nationally.
A victory for Mamdani would lift the confidence of radical workers and youth and the left generally in the US and internationally. But what kind of programme and methods are needed to defend, deepen and win his programme and, at the same time, strengthen the socialist opposition to capitalism?
Socialists have opposed working in and standing for capitalist parties like the Democrats who, by their very nature, defend capitalism and aim to prevent the growth of socialist movements. This issue has for decades been a central debate within the US left. Mamdani’s success in becoming the Democratic mayoral candidate will, for some, be another test as to whether to stay within the Democrats or, as the CWI argues, work now to build the basis for a genuine workers’ party with a socialist programme. We call on Mamdani to break with the Democrats and assist in this process.
While the term ‘communist’ is being used by sections of the capitalist press, Trump and Mamdani’s opponents, in a CNN interview in early October he explicitly said he was not a “communist”, but a “democratic socialist”. He quoted Dr Martin Luther King saying: “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, there must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children”. Mamdani was clear he had more of a “critique” of capitalism today, that he wants to reduce income inequality and give New Yorkers dignity rather than actually advocating an end to the economic system. It must be explained socialism is not a “better distribution of wealth”. A section of his supporters, or at least those whom he has caught the attention of, can be won over to a real position of fighting for a socialist democracy, with the working class decisively removing capitalism and taking over the key and major parts of the economy and democratically running and planning for society’s needs.
It is not just authoritarian Trump, who threatens to use federal powers to shut down a Mamdani administration in the city, who will wage a war on his campaign. In effect, the completely pro-corporate Democratic Party leadership is blocking with opposition candidates to undermine Mamdani. The likes of Schumer and Jeffries – leaders of the Democrats in the federal Senate and House respectively – can’t even face appearing with him in public. At the time of writing, Mamdani leads Cuomo by a double-digit margin. Now that corrupt Mayor Adams has dropped out of the race, only Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa remain. According to the Guardian US, “Sliwa, the Republican nominee, said last week that he had turned down multiple offers of millions of dollars to end his own campaign”.
Cuomo stated after Adams withdrew: “We face destructive extremist forces that would devastate our city through incompetence or ignorance, but it is not too late to stop them.” Cuomo used the flexible ballot line during the primary in New York to register his own “Fight and Deliver” party and is now running as an independent claiming, “I’m a Democrat running independently, he is a socialist using the Democrat line”. Mamdani will need to deepen and widen his base, which is currently largest among young college graduates in areas like parts of Brooklyn, to win over unionised workers and black voters who voted by majority for Cuomo in June’s primary.
It must be remembered how the Democratic leadership and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) did everything they could, utilising major resources, to succeed in beating Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic New York primary against Hilary Clinton, which was key in her winning that year’s Convention and the presidential nomination. They are well practiced in defeating left populism. In the run-up to the 2016 primary, 200,000 Democratic voters just in Brooklyn were dropped from the list of those entitled to vote in the primary. Although this is now an election in a situation of polarisation, both in the city and wider US society, the machinations of the Democratic corporate machine are still in play.
Radical workers and youth must, independently from the Democrats, organise now, to not just defend the radical parts of Mamdani’s programme, but to build support for their extension while arguing that socialist change is necessary. Mamdani’s reforms on wages and housing are limited to being phased in over a period of years when there is no reason that they could not be implemented with New York’s considerable mayoral and municipal budgetary powers, immediately after he takes office.
Mobilise
Key to this will be organising workers, labor unions, tenants’ organisations, students and all who want to fight, preparing a programme for struggle and, crucially, to hold Mamdani to account. Politically this will mean in the future running independent socialist candidates against the Democratic Party machine at city council and state levels to stop radical reform being blocked and strengthen the opposition to capitalist rule.
Mass assemblies in neighbourhoods, colleges and workplaces should be organised during the campaign to discuss the way forward and draw up an emergency socialist budget for New York City, demanding the funding the city needs. A Mamdani administration, if it seriously took such a fighting approach, must also appeal to the wider working class across the US to join the struggle to prevent NYC being isolated. This would include encouraging the building of movements across the country to force city councils to fight and, if the councils don’t, work to replace those councillors with labor-backed councillors, independent of both Democrats and Republicans, who will.
Workers and labor unions and city councils cannot just wait for Mamdani, they should convene mass meetings now and begin to make demands over wages, the democratic right to strike and conditions on whoever is the new mayor, along with plans for labor action, campaigns and strikes to win such demands.
Renters must organise on a mass basis with occupations of empty properties, rent strikes and protests to force the issue of rent freezes and more public housing immediately. Independent campaigns should be launched for state ballot initiatives on these issues like the current rent control ballot in Massachusetts.
The young protesters who have faced police violence over Gaza encampments at universities like Columbia should organise now and demand Mamdani, with his potential powers over the New York Police Department, refuse to attack and dismantle their protests and defend democratic rights.
Significant gains, let alone socialism, cannot be won in New York alone. The US capitalist class and particularly an authoritarian Trump administration will not tolerate even Mamdani’s limited radical economic programme. That is why preparation for mass struggle is necessary. Of course, the economic power of New York and its political importance can also be utilised by a mass movement to win concessions from US capitalism.
Pressure
Mamdani, if he wins may try and take a middle road of implementing parts of his programme while trying to avoid a battle with the state, the council and Trump. But under this Trump administration, with its authoritarian stance, this could only last a matter of days or weeks as they would want to stop an example of resistance developing. When asked directly about the National Guard being used by Trump, Mamdani said New Yorkers should prepare for this to be an inevitability but he gave no sign in his answer he would mobilize a fightback, merely pointing to the judiciary stating that Trump’s intervention into cities was illegal, after their corporate Democrat administrations went to court. New York, like most US cities, faces financial problems and a defeat of Mamdani by Cuomo or the Republican Silwa, can also mean major attacks.
Since his primary win, Mamdani’s campaign has tended to moderate and retreat on statements like “Billionaires shouldn’t exist” that were popular with youth and workers but not the Democrat national leadership.
He also has made inroads into sections who previously voted for Trump, including young men. The president’s handling of the economy has disappointed this layer most with his approval rating falling 23 points. Mamdani is also seen as principled over Gaza, even by those who disagree with him economically, seeming to defy the common idea politicians in America can be brought. There is a clip of him debating during the primary where he says he will visit boroughs of the city rather than going to Israel, which all the other candidates pledged.
On the other hand, he has met with corporate representatives and Wall Street bankers, seemingly to attempt to reassure them, and has distanced himself from the DSA’s radical official programme, such as on defunding the police, for example.
If Mamdani wins, colossal pressures will be unleashed. It is clear sections of the corporate Democrats are seeking to influence and neutralise his campaign. This danger is shown by his endorsement by the New York state governor Kathy Hochul, a corporate Democrat with an anti-working class record.
On the contrary, a mass movement needs to be built and the Mamdani campaign must stress that the struggle will continue, even if he loses in November. It cannot simply be an electoral campaign but has to attempt to both win immediate improvements and to start to build a movement to change society.
Mass workers’ party
If Mamdani were to take up the kind of mass struggle we raise, he would quickly find himself and his base, and possibly others, isolated from the Democratic Party machine, and then the question of building a political vehicle to represent workers and youth would be sharply posed on a mass level and understood by significant numbers. Of course, Mamdani betraying the hopes invested in him and his programme would disillusion a layer. It can also lead to the best workers and youth looking for a combative independent socialist alternative.
Ultimately, the mayoral contest and the run-up to the 2026 mid-terms with Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ base fracturing and the Democrats having historically low popularity, shows the vacuum that exists. While the Democrats may pick up some electoral support as the ‘lesser evil’ to Trump, they have no answer. What is needed for the US working class and youth, a mass party, with labor union power central, that fights for their interests locally and nationally. A party that, unlike the Democrat machine, is fully democratic, membership-based and with leaders who are regularly elected, have no privileges and are paid, as a maximum, the average of a skilled worker.
Such a mass workers’ party would, if it adopted a socialist programme, raise the idea of an end not just to Wall Street’s power in New York but across the US. This means a fight for real socialist change bringing vast resources into public ownership and working-class control.
