Zohran Mamdani, a self-described ‘democratic socialist’ and now mayor of New York City, faces a choice: responsible ‘governance’ or responsibility to the struggles of the working class, argues JEFF BOOTH of the Independent Socialist Group, the US co-thinkers of the CWI. The full article is available on the ISG website at independentsocialistgroup.org
Mamdani’s win in the race for mayor is a reflection of developing class war in the US, including the inevitable fight over money, land, jobs, and real political power to win even minimal reforms for working people.
New York City is the financial epicentre of the billionaire and multi-millionaire capitalist owners who are using and abusing workers’ labour, the environment, and basic human needs like housing, food, childcare, education, etc to grab record levels of profit while the rest of us contend with declining living standards, massive inequality, and increasingly precarious futures.
New York has the largest number of billionaires in the world: 123, who hold a combined net worth of $759 billion. Meanwhile “under the status quo minimum wage policy in New York City”, the Economic Policy Institute projects, “there will be 1.68 million workers earning less than $30 an hour in 2030, a little more than a third (36.7%) of the total wage-earning workforce in the city”. (8 August 2025)
The ‘affordability’ crisis highlighted by the Mamdani campaign grinds on despite the election win. The word ‘affordability’ seems too mild for the capitalists’ massive theft of value created by the working class in New York and throughout the US. For many working-class people, even in a wealth-encrusted city like New York, it’s really a ‘survivability’ crisis. And whether it’s billions or trillions, it’s never enough for the capitalists because it’s their ownership of production, land, and distribution through big corporations that keeps the money flowing and their control over the political process, their two corporate parties, and the capitalist state.
Mamdani’s quote about billionaires during his campaign got a lot of attention. On the NBC News Meet the Press show he said: “I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality, and ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country”. This is all true, good, and any socialist worth the name would agree.
However, he followed up with: “And I look forward to working with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fair for all of them”. Just about every working-class person reading this would be like, ‘wait a minute, money, especially big money, comes with strings attached’. And hopefully most socialists would add that we don’t want to work with billionaires, we want to fight against their ownership of what is really social production and public lands and the political power they corrupt and control.
The tension inherent in Mamdani’s quotes about billionaires is at the heart of the problem in his approach to politics, and that of the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which he is a member. They’re not understanding class contradictions, not running outside the corporate duopoly of the Democratic and Republican Parties, and not preparing a militant strategy to win the reforms working people need immediately, all of which they should be doing while simultaneously building independent working-class politics as part of the fight for socialism.
The new mayor and the administration he is constructing can try to win the ‘affordability’ programme he campaigned for by managing capitalism more efficiently, trying to not piss off Trump, trying to charm the billionaires, the multi-millionaires, and the corporate media, trying to help keep the Democratic Party power structure sputtering along with their millionaire and billionaire donors unoffended. This is a method that will win praise for ‘realism’ and ‘responsible governance’ from the ruling class and their corporate media, but it won’t win significant reforms for the working class, and it certainly won’t build a socialist movement.
Mamdani and the DSA leaders can choose instead to break with Democratic Party corporate politics and help build a mass working-class movement and organisation to win demands raised in Mamdani’s election campaign by extending the activist base from the campaign. Organising new, wider, and deeper layers of working-class support in a grassroots campaign for a $30/hr minimum wage, extending free universal childcare, free buses, and a huge, desperately-needed mass building of city-owned public housing with union labour, is more important than inauguration ceremonies and the like. To really win these demands and others in the programme he ran on, it will take moving from rhetoric to mass action.
A mass campaign and organisation based on key demands from the campaign could engage tens of thousands in protests, strikes, occupations, school walkouts, and other actions.
A pattern of accommodation
A fighting strategy for winning the campaign’s main demands has not, however, been taken up by Mamdani or the DSA leadership in the wake of the election victory. Between Election Day (November 5) and Inauguration Day (January 1), valuable time and resources were not used on organising the base of activists and supporters from the campaign. Instead, there were moves that fell in line with what’s acceptable to the billionaires and the Democratic Party leadership.
The day after the election, Mamdani named five Democratic Party politicians to his ‘Transition Team’ all of whom had been part of previous pro-corporate Democratic Party administrations. Mamdani then appointed as First Deputy Mayor, Dean Fuleihan, a Democratic Party functionary and operative for over half a century in the New York State Assembly and in New York City government, who when he was Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget and First Deputy Mayor, helped implement attacks on unionised teachers’ pay and healthcare coverage.
On November 19, Mamdani announced that Jessica Tisch, who was appointed by the previous mayor, Eric Adams, would remain as the Commissioner of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Tisch is from the 43rd richest family in the US and her re-appointment led the New York City legal services workers in the ALAA-UAW Local 2325 to release a statement on December 19, adopted by a union membership vote, to denounce the Tisch empire, through the NYC Police Foundation, for “underwriting a police force that shields the wealthy while punishing the poor. She wields the NYPD to serve her class at the direct expense of ours”.
“Reappointing her”, the statement continues, “guarantees the continuation of an NYPD defined by violent protest crackdowns, aggressive crowd-control tactics, and protection for ICE as it terrorises immigrant New Yorkers… ALAA-UAW Local 2325, the union of over 3,500 New York City legal services workers, urges Mayor-elect Mamdani to drop Tisch immediately. A city committed to justice cannot be built on the foundations of repression, occupation, and billionaire police power”.
These appointments, and many others, indicate a Democratic Party, business-as-usual approach to city government. Appointing corporate politicians with years of complicity in making New York City unaffordable runs counter to the Mamdani campaign goals, sets up internal barriers to any real attempts to win significant demands for working people, and also favours an inside, backroom strategy of deal-making while sidelining any attempt to build the militant, mass movement necessary to improve lives and help organise independent working-class, socialist politics.
Continuing his busy November, Mamdani took time to attend a DSA meeting in Manhattan on November 19 to argue against Chi Ossé’s attempt to win the endorsement of DSA to run a Democratic Party primary campaign against Hakeem Jeffries. Hakeem Jeffries is the most powerful Democrat in the House of Representatives. He’s an apologist for Israeli state genocidal policies in Gaza and criticised by pro-Palestinian, peace, and left groups. While Mamdani is a member of DSA and supported by DSA, Jeffries is known for campaigning against DSA candidates in New York. Jeffries also signed and voted for a House of Representatives bill condemning socialism. Why would Mamdani support this politician? Even within the corporate confines of the Democratic Party, Jeffries is not a ‘progressive’ or a DSA Democrat. But on November 23, Mamdani endorsed Jeffries on Meet the Press.
Out of the boardrooms and government offices…
An opportunity was missed in the Mamdani campaign, even as the decision was taken to run for mayor. A socialist approach to an electoral campaign would not rely on getting elected first, and then trying to deliver on important reforms once in office. Especially since at this point in history, when taking office, there will most likely be a pro-capitalist city hall, state legislature, Congress, courts, president, etc and of course the men behind the curtain: the billionaires and their money buying the politicians of the duopoly parties and funding the corporate media.
Instead, an election campaign should initiate or actively help to build a movement around one or more key demands and then use the run for office to help build the movement in support of them. For example: campaigning on a specific increase in the minimum wage in a city or state or even nation-wide, and then centring the campaign for political office on amplifying and organising for the demand before, during, and after running for office. If an electoral campaign is built on and enhances a movement for key demands and ends up winning, then there’s already organisation in place to pressure the corporate parties after the election to win the demand. If the campaign loses, there’s still the potential to use that momentum to continue organising both inside and outside electoral campaigns. A victory on one demand can quickly lead to other victories and organisation for new electoral campaigns.
There are examples of progressive and socialist independents who’ve run for political office based on this method. A recent example is the 15Now effort in Seattle, Washington state. There, in 2013-2014, an already existing campaign for a $15/hr minimum involving unions, left groups, and progressive community organisations played a major role in the decision by Socialist Alternative and Kshama Sawant to run as an open socialist for Seattle City Council, after being heavily involved in building the 15Now campaign. The campaign then made 15Now the main issue in the run for city council, which in turn helped make both the electoral campaign and the 15Now movement better known and stronger. After winning the election in 2013, the growing strength of the 15Now movement combined with a revolutionary socialist elected to the city council and the use of militant tactics all put enormous political pressure on the Democrats dominating the council. The $15 minimum wage passed in 2014, despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party to weaken or stop it. Seattle still has the highest minimum wage of any city in the country at $21.30, with annual adjustments for inflation.
Although there’s been activism in New York City around a higher minimum wage, universal childcare, housing, etc it didn’t coalesce into a mass movement, and Mamdani’s campaign was not based on building a coherent, strong movement around one or more of these issues prior to or during the campaign. Instead, campaign promises focused on getting elected and then taking a legislative, ‘good governance’ approach as mayor, relying on somehow convincing the New York State Governor and Assembly (Legislature) to deliver on the demands in the future. Mamdani ran for mayor as a Democrat and before that represented the Democratic Party in the New York State Assembly for five years, 2021-2025. His entire political career has been enmeshed with the Democratic Party, and he is used to its internal machinations and external propaganda via the corporate media. However, to win even the relatively modest but important demands of his mayoral campaign, Mamdani and the DSA leaders should see the Democratic Party as an obstacle not a vehicle for winning any significant demands for the working class.
A new year, a new fight
There is still the opportunity to use the activity and heightened expectations from the mayoral victory and the inaugural celebration to take a new approach to fighting for real improvements to living standards for the majority of New Yorkers and to help build an independent mass movement of working-class people. Failure to do so will bury that activist energy and hope in the dead end of the Democratic Party.
Standing in the way of winning demands raised in Mamdani’s election campaign is not just the capitalist class, the Trump regime’s police state methods, the billionaires and their corporate media. There’s also the Democratic Party itself. Both conservatives and liberals are already propagandising that many of the important reforms from the campaign are ‘impossible’ without the approval of the Democratic Party-controlled New York City Council, Governor’s office, State Legislature, and city and state bureaucracies.
The economic and political crisis facing the working class demands a new approach, not just the rhetoric and perception of something new. If enough political pressure is organised, none of the capitalist parties or institutions will be able to stop reforms from being won.
Strategy, programme, and organisation are interconnected. The overall strategy for achieving the demands raised in Mamdani’s campaign in any real way will involve building a mass movement and organisation independent of the Democratic Party.
If Mamdani and the DSA leaders support the strategy, organisation and specific tactics it will take to win the demands of the campaign, and more, then they could play an important role in building the necessary militant class struggle based on working people and youth in the streets, workplaces, neighbourhoods, and schools to win the ‘affordability’ programme. But that would also mean supporting mass protests, strike action, occupations, school walkouts, and other tactics that will meet the class struggle moment in New York and around the US.
Building this kind of movement means mass organising that moves way beyond the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) lobbyist model of ‘Our Time for an Affordable New York City’, an organisation set up by some DSA members in New York. Already ‘Our Time’ is saying “send a letter to your representatives demanding universal childcare”. This begs two questions: who are ‘our representatives’, as neither corporate political party represents the working class; and when has writing a letter ever done anything in terms of winning mass social benefits?
There’s an alternative to non-profit single-issue pressure groups using a standard NGO model tailing the Democratic Party. Members of DSA, Mamdani supporters from the campaign, union activists and members, tenants unions, socialists, progressives, pro-Palestinian protestors, etc can look beyond lobbying the Democrats and symbolic protests. These organisations could be part of organising open assemblies, essentially open mass meetings in neighbourhoods, schools, community centres, common areas in apartment buildings, parks – wherever people can gather. Assemblies should not just be talk shops, but should include structured, chaired discussions and voting that will result in actions that will build a mass movement for key demands.
These may start small, but they can grow rapidly if based on demands that can energise working people and young people and, through electing delegates from the assemblies, create borough- and city-wide organisation. It’s very likely that if they can stay out of the grip of the Democratic Party and the NGO officialdom, and also win some gains around affordability demands, these assemblies could go beyond the limited programme and strategy of Mamdani’s Democratic Party approach and instead lead to the beginnings of a workers’ party independent of the Republican and Democratic Parties, the billionaires, and the corporations.
Mamdani could have run his campaign as an independent in the general election. Not doing so was a missed opportunity. There is already a layer of union activists, progressives, socialists, anti-genocide protestors and others who have broken with the Democratic Party or stopped supporting either of the two corporate parties, but they haven’t been unified in an independent political party, free from any corporate money. Independent lefts, Greens, and progressives are already running election campaigns outside of the corporate political duopoly, but we need a mass workers’ party that is accountable to working people, that can coordinate and act in our interests.
Working people are facing assaults on many fronts. Not only do we face an affordability crisis, but also ICE’s targeted assaults, widespread layoffs, vicious rent hikes and evictions, chronic loss of childcare services and healthcare coverage. We need to seize this moment to organise and fight for reforms, defend immigrant rights, end genocide, win political independence through a workers’ party, and build a mass socialist movement to defeat capitalism in the US and internationally.