Why I Am Not Excited About Zohran Mamdani Even As A Leftist
My Short Response
I grew up in New York City.
I am from one of the poorest areas in the entire city, the South Bronx.
I know what it is like to be homeless, to be hungry, and not to have. Even in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, my family and I struggled.
This struggle informs my worldview and my later political development.
That said, there is nothing I would like more than for the city I call home to help those in need. I would love the suffering I witness and experience to end for good; this is why I am a socialist, this is why I am a Marxist.
However, being a Marxist requires a sober analysis, one that resists the allure of intoxicating hope. A sober analysis that requires an understanding of historical events and their material implications to arrive at a more accurate understanding of current events.
While many leftists and progressives are celebrating the mayoral win of self-described socialist Zohran Mamdani, I am not celebrating.
Many of these folks have fallen for intoxicating hope in the absence of a sober analysis. We cannot discard this analysis if we genuinely want to see events for what they are and not what we want them to be.
Mamdani and Reformism
I have argued previously that Zohran Mamdani is a reformist, not a revolutionary.
What is reformism?
Reformism is a political trend within the socialist movement that aims to achieve socialism through gradual means within a capitalist system. Reformists want to push policies like free healthcare, free education, free housing, etc., hoping to achieve socialism over time.
Mamdani is not advocating for revolution. In fact, he is on record saying he would work with billionaires. What Mamdani advocates is a series of reforms that do not fundamentally change or challenge the mode of production.
Getting free healthcare does not mean capitalism ends. Capitalism ends when the mode of production turns to socialism, when workers themselves own the means of production.
In this regard, Mamdani is a reformist, and I would argue he is a social democrat.
Social democracy accepts capitalism, but seeks to tame its problems through policy and institutions; think of post-WW2 America before the neoliberal phase. While Mamdani will be on record using radical phrases, the substance of his politics is not socialism, but capitalism tamed.
You can have free buses under capitalism, the way capitalism functions is not ultimately altered with reforms. The fault with social democracy is that it does not challenge the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, nor does it stop capitalism in its imperialist phase, as Lenin described it.
The forms of domination of the state may vary: capital manifests its power in one way where one form exists, and in another way where another form exists—but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or some other rights or not, or whether the republic is a democratic one or not—in fact, the more democratic it is the cruder and more cynical is the rule of capitalism. One of the most democratic republics in the world is the United States of America, yet nowhere (and those who have been there since 1905 probably know it) is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so openly corrupt as in America. Once capital exists, it dominates the whole of society, and no democratic republic, no franchise can change its nature.
The State: A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University by Vladmir Lenin
As long as capital exists, we are under the rule of capitalism. Mere reforms have never succeeded in changing this arrangement, we have no reason to believe they will now.
A Sober Analysis
As I previously established, Mamdani is a reformist. We know from historical context that reformism does not work, and in fact, it helps capitalism.
When we speak of the Socialists as social fascists, we are not merely abusing them, we are giving the scientific description, the name of the political role which they are performing. That role was to prepare the road for fascism, to prevent the struggle of the masses against fascism, and to tolerate and support the establishment of the fascist governments. Socialists in words, fascists in deed! That is what social fascism means.
These are the people who advocate for the “lesser evil” and the struggle against fascism while actively supporting the capitalist (therefore the fascist). These are the people who claim to be socialist but do not want to change the system to be a fundamentally socialist one. The people who claim to be socialist while in practice defending capitalism are “social-fascist” because fascism only arises as a result of capitalism itself.
…Fascism is not merely the expression of a particular movement, of a particular party within modern society, but that it is the most complete expression of the whole tendency of modern capitalism in decay, as the final attempt to defeat the working- class revolution and organise society on the basis of decay. This tendency runs through all modern capitalist countries without exception, and the advent of open Fascism to power is only its final and completed expression. The drive against the workingclass, the strengthening of executive and police powers (Sedition Bill in England, constitutional reforms in France, new emergency dictatorship forms in the United States), the attempt to paralyse the working-class organisations from within upon a basis of enforced class-co-operation and war against all revolutionary elements (social fascism), the drive to war and increasing Organisation of the entire economic social and political structure for war, go rapidly forward in all countries, including the formally “democratic” countries, Britain, France and the United States. The fight against Fascism is the fight against this entire process of modern capitalism. In particular, the drive to war, in close unity with the drive to Fascist forms of organisation and preparation of war within each country, becomes the more and more dominant character of the present stage
Reformist socialists are social fascists because they work to buy time for the bourgeoisie and, in effect, defend the system of capitalism, whether directly or indirectly.
One of the principal weapons of social democracy in carryingthrough this policy and securing the acceptance of this policy on the part of the workers has been the formula of the “lesser evil”…
…In the political field, the theory of the lesser evil means the support of the “best” bourgeois politicians and the “best” bourgeois parties as against the “worse”bourgeois politicians and parties.
How can people call Mamdani a legitimate socialist when he is under the bourgeois Democratic Party? How can we legitimately think that this person will be a liberatory force and not just capitulate to the capitalist?
Zohran Mamdani is not a revolutionary who will change our capitalist system into socialism, nor will he lead the working-class struggle to do so. At the same time, he works under the Democratic Party. How is he not a social fascist? Socialist in name, but fascist in deed.
Final Thoughts
I am not buying into the intoxicating allure of hope in this situation. What are people being hopeful for? If we are being hopeful that this will lead to capitalism changing in America or even in New York City, we have no reason to think that way.
The point is not to gain more progressive faces for a decaying system; the point is to get rid of this system altogether for something better.
Zohran Mamdani will not lead this change or struggle. For someone like me who wants the system to change, Mamdani’s electoral win means little to nothing.
If we want the system to change, we need more than charming politicians; we need a working-class movement aimed at revolution.
As the Arabs say, rain starts with a drop
I get your frustration, but I find this argument a bit reductive and unproductive. It’s true, a social democrat won’t end capitalism, but it makes a massive difference to those in New York and could potentially make a big difference in US politics going forward.