With Trump and the Republicans’ racist onslaught against democracy and civil rights escalating daily, New York City’s mayoral contest might prove to be the most consequential local election in the country’s history.
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign has won a groundswell of support by focusing on proposals to address the rising cost of living like a rent freeze for millions and raising taxes on the ultra-rich and corporations to pay for improved public services like free buses and free childcare for all. Also important has been his speaking out strongly in solidarity with oppressed people facing injustice both at home and abroad, from immigrants facing persecution by ICE to the Palestinian people facing the horrors of Israel’s genocide.
Central to the success of Mamdani’s campaign, in other words, has been its repudiation of the capitalist-friendly and pro-imperialist policies that have defined the Democratic Party for decades and that paved the way for Trump’s return to power. Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary was a significant defeat for the Democrats’ imperialist establishment, especially since it was one of their own – former governor and Clinton cabinet member Andrew Cuomo – who got trounced.
The longer the race has gone, the more discredited the Democratic establishment has become. Cuomo seamlessly transitioned to running as Trump’s preferred candidate on an independent line, complete with explicitly racist and anti-Muslim campaigning that would make Washington’s white-supremacist-in-chief proud. And the Democratic establishment’s response? The party’s leaders in Congress, Brooklynites Hakeem Jeffries in the House and Charles Schumer in the Senate, have given backhanded support to Cuomo by refusing to even criticize his campaign let alone support Mamdani (with Jeffries trying to cover his treachery by endorsing Mamdani at the last moment, and Schumer not even bothering to do that). Even after the disastrous Biden and Harris campaigns in 2024, they are still willing to risk losing to Trump in order to protect capitalists from small tax increases and support a genocidal ally defending imperialist interests in the Middle East.
Meanwhile Trump, despite winning the presidency with only a narrow edge in the popular vote, is acting like he has a mandate to impose his white-supremacist authoritarian agenda on the country. He has tried to shock the nation into submission with aggressive displays of power, from masked ICE agents abducting people from the streets at gunpoint, to sending the National Guard into cities with Democratic administrations. And in the aftermath of the assassination of far-right bigot Charlie Kirk, Trump directed all government agencies to crack down on his left opponents as fomenters of domestic terrorism, and he has told the U.S. military’s leaders to prepare for war in cities “run by the radical left Democrats.”
In this context, the New York mayoral election always had the potential to become a de facto referendum on Trump’s rule, especially considering that Mamdani – a Muslim immigrant anti-fascist democratic-socialist – is virtually the poster child for what the president now refers to as “the enemy within.” But Trump guaranteed that he would effectively be on the ballot himself when he threatened to stop the transfer of federal funds to the city and send in the military if New Yorkers elect Mamdani. So now, when they vote for the city’s next mayor, New Yorkers have a chance to both deliver a blow to the Democratic establishment and to strike back against Trump.
With the mass movement of protest against Trump growing, a big Mamdani victory will prove that the would-be dictator’s attempts at intimidating the public have failed. It will go a long way toward showing that the forces of multiracial democracy are this country’s real “silent majority,” and that they are beginning to make their opposition to Trump’s agenda felt both in the streets and in elections. This will in turn encourage the protest movement’s further growth.
Indeed, the boost that a Mamdani victory will give to the protest movement is the most important reason to rally support for his election. With control of City Hall, Mamdani will have the power to frustrate many of Trump’s plans on a local level, such as by building on New York’s sanctuary policies by providing free legal representation to immigrants and refugees, and by supporting other initiatives to keep them from being arrested by ICE. But no city can become a haven for the oppressed when the Trumpists are imposing their agenda on the rest of the country. Trump’s threats make clear that Mamdani will not be able to implement his promised policies or even govern with any stability unless his offensive is set back.
Trump and the Republicans’ war on democracy and civil rights is just getting started – their worst attacks are still to come, and the country’s electoral timetable will force them to accelerate their plans. Amid a stagnant economy and a relentlessly rising cost of living, opinion polls show voter support for them falling rapidly, with their core base fracturing over issues like the suppression of the Epstein files. If those trends continue until the mid-term elections next November, the Democrats could regain one or both houses of Congress and with that the power to investigate and otherwise challenge the Trumpists. So Trump and his advisors know they must take decisive action during the next twelve months to entrench themselves in power regardless of the will of the people.
They would prefer to hold onto power by means of less provocative measures like their current efforts to gerrymander congressional districts in a number of states. They also hope that their far-right justices on the Supreme Court will help them by further eviscerating voting rights protections. But the falling support for Republicans suggests they will need to make far more dramatic moves, such as using ICE and other federal agents to harass voters of color on election day, or even invoking the Insurrection Act and sending the military into states and cities in order to overturn their election results.
Trump has already directly threatened one Democratic mayor with a coup: when he sent National Guard troops into Washington, DC he warned democratically-elected mayor Muriel Bowser that he would seize governmental power from her if she did not cooperate. His threats of coups d’etats will only escalate. And the White House has already sought to prepare public opinion for such extreme moves by ordering the arrest and in some cases the frame-up on criminal charges of numerous elected Democratic officials who were trying to conduct oversight of ICE operations – including a congresswoman, a senator, a mayor, state and city government office holders – and they’ve even had a judge arrested. And they are preparing the groundwork for even more extreme measures.
To defeat such a determined onslaught, the nationwide protest movement will ultimately have to grow so powerful as to be able to bring the country to a crawl and shut down capitalist profit-making. Union leaders will need to be challenged to prepare and lead mass action against Trump’s attacks – or be ousted from office in favor of new leaders committed to the fight. Democratic elected officials will need to be challenged to take all actions within their power to support the struggle against Trump; those who refuse will need to be targeted for protests and ouster from office. And if Trump tries to use the military to seize power from elected Democrats, the movement will have to appeal to the troops to disobey orders.
The struggle against Trumpism that we envision will severely test the reformist political strategy of democratic socialists like Mamdani, for whom illusory hopes in a peaceful road to progress are central to their approach to politics.
Historically, reformist socialism first arose as a response to the revolutionary working-class socialist movement and in explicit opposition to it. Where revolutionary socialists saw the state as enforcing the rule of the capitalist class and concluded that it would have to be overthrown to build socialism, the reformists saw the capitalist-state order as the only thing preventing society’s collapse into barbaric anarchy. For them, the capitalist state was the starting point for improving society through reform. Reformist socialism was, therefore, consciously counterrevolutionary – it believed that conceding reforms to sections of the working class could calm its propensity for rebellion and reinforce the state’s stability. And where reforms failed to prevent revolution, the reformist socialists typically sided with the counter revolution in the interests of maintaining order.
Despite leading the masses to defeat time and again, reformism regenerates itself. When it does, it cannot be assumed that any or every reformist has thought through and embraced their strategy’s counterrevolutionary nature. Some reformists naively think that socialism can genuinely be achieved without the risks of revolutionary upheavals and would be horrified by the thought of supporting a counterrevolution. So revolutionary socialists cannot assume that reformists will necessarily betray the struggle. What we can assume is that reformism will prove no match for a ruling class prepared to resist the masses’ demands with all the powers at its disposal and that a break from reformism will prove necessary for the masses to avoid defeat. So wherever reformists are at the head of the masses’ struggles, we must side with them – while warning the masses not to trust them and to prepare for the possibility that they will betray.
This understanding, and the long history of reformists betraying the masses, explains why we must be extremely vigilant and be ready to call out and oppose any moves by Mamdani to retreat from the struggles that his campaign has opened. And in this context we must note that since winning the Democratic primary, Mamdani has adopted more conciliatory rhetoric when it comes to everyone from the Democratic establishment to big business and the police. For example, he has indicated that if the Democrat-controlled state government headed by Hochul refuses to implement his proposed tax increases on the rich and corporations, he will just find other sources of funding. And as for the police, while Mamdani abandoned his past call to “defund the police” before launching his mayoral campaign, he has apologized for calling the police force racist and now refers to them as “critical partners in delivering public safety.”
To win his program and fend off the ongoing attacks, Mamdani will have to dispense with his friendly approach to all and prepare to fight the Trumpists and anyone who helps them. There should be no talk of accepting Hochul’s obstruction of raising taxes on the rich and corporations, for example, before mobilizing the biggest possible struggle to force her to relent, a struggle that should target members of the state legislature and congress with mass protests and preparations to oust them from office. And when it comes to the police, Mamdani will have the responsibility as mayor to direct them to protect citizens from the criminal actions of ICE that we are seeing on a daily basis in other cities. When Trumpist police officers inevitably rebel against him, Mamdani will have the obligation to do what Bill de Blasio failed to do when he was mayor and cops protested against him – purge them from the department. The further such struggles for reforms advance, the more divided will become the ruling classes’ forces, the more united and powerful will be the masses, and the more the limits of reformism will be tested and thereby provide growing numbers with the opportunity to see the need for socialist revolution.
For revolutionary socialists, the fight to defend what’s left of our democratic rights is essential: the working class and oppressed people need democratic freedoms in order to organize to defend their interests. Only through the experience of those struggles and the study of their lessons can they come to see the necessity of overthrowing capitalism and building socialism.
Trumpism has risen so quickly to threaten the country with authoritarian rule because the only major party opposition is the Democrats. This party has been no less a loyal servant of the capitalist class than the Republicans and has demoralized generations of its supporters by betraying its supposed commitments to working-class and oppressed people. And this legacy continues to threaten the struggle to defeat Trumpism.
For the masses to rise up in struggle in defense of democracy, they must believe that it is essential to them having the chance to defend and improve their lives. In this context the Mamdani campaign has played an important role: by coupling its promise to bring relief from the rising cost of living to the need to stand up for the oppressed against injustice, it has given the masses more reason to see how defeating Trumpism is essential.
Despite playing this role, however, the Mamdani campaign has revealed anew how much of the revolutionary socialist left does not know how to deal with the Democratic Party in the course of advancing working-class interests.
Some still underestimate the threat posed by Trumpism and see the role played by the Democrats in enabling his return to power as reason to oppose voting for their candidates, even when like Mamdani they stand against the party establishment. Behind this stance is the view that any support for a capitalist party runs counter to Marxist principle. But this is a myth: the classical Marxist approach was to advance independent working-class candidates in elections wherever possible; but when that was not possible, to back those bourgeois forces defending democratic freedoms for their own reasons.
The value of the classical Marxist approach has been confirmed by the rise of Trumpism and how it has cast in sharp relief key differences between the Democratic party and today’s Republicans.
The Democrats have served the imperialist ruling class by offering it an alternative strategy for maintaining the system’s stability: it does this through its influence over “civil society,” i.e., society’s institutions outside of the state. Especially important is its influence over the privileged bureaucracies of the trade unions, civil rights organizations and NGOs, which it uses to discourage strikes and protests in favor of voting, a passive activity a few times per year at most.
This disempowering and demoralizing influence over the working class is central to understanding how Trumpism could rise to power so easily and explains why the Democrats are so widely reviled. But now Trump and his followers, from Congress to the Supreme Court, aim to capitalize on the Democrats’ achievements by wiping out independent civil society. Their mounting attacks on voting rights, especially of people of color, are a prime example.
The Democratic establishment’s crimes, like Biden and Harris’s responsibility for the genocide in Gaza, show that they have no personal loyalty to justice. Nevertheless, to have a chance of holding political power they rely on people of color being able to vote and have their votes counted, and on unions and other popular organizations existing to get out the vote. So they can generally be expected to not pursue Trump-like attacks. Their method is to pacify the organizations of working-class and oppressed people, not eliminate them. For this they generally find themselves defending vital democratic rights in this country, not destroying them. That means that in the U.S., when like today there is no viable working-class alternative to vote for, the application of the Marxist method in the U.S. is to vote for Democrats – while organizing independently of them to prepare mass action and electoral challenges to them.
In the case of Mamdani, given Trump’s onslaught and the absence of an independent working-class or socialist party with a realistic chance to win, it was virtually inevitable that huge numbers of people would respond positively to his campaign. Like him, many hope that such campaigns can reform the Democratic Party into one that represents their interests. Under these circumstances it’s only through the experience of trying to reform the party that many working-class people will learn that they need a party of their own. The job of revolutionaries is to push the promotion of Mamdani-like candidates as far as possible in the party in order open up and expose its contradictions
Perhaps the most common far-left case for not voting for Mamdani is that as a loyal Democrat, he is bound sooner or later to bow to his party’s capitalist controllers and betray his working-class supporters. That is of course a possibility, but it is by no means inevitable. For one thing, the moneyed fund-raisers who finance Cuomo are unlikely to turn their support to Mamdani. And if Mamdani chooses to make concessions to Wall Street, he knows that much of his base would abandon him. The socialist leftists who warned about the possibility of betrayal would be in a far better position to gain the ear of Mamdani’s supporters if they tactically but critically support his election.
At this point it seems that Mamdani is less likely to sell out his supporters than his DSA colleague, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has voted against cutting military aid to Israel (and therefore for aiding its genocide) and to suppress a threatened railway workers strike. But Mamdani has committed to positions intolerable for the Democratic leadership, like the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, that make it harder for him to capitulate to the party establishment. It is conceivable that if elected mayor Mamdani, like AOC before him, might aim for a Democratic Party career in the city or nationally. But that is why he should be put to the test of office. If even a strongly progressive Democrat as Mamdani sells out, that makes all the clearer the need for an alternative strategy for the working class other than placing hopes in the Democratic Party as an arena of struggle.
The socialists who oppose Mamdani’s election often counterpose voting for him to building an independent working-class party. But the latter is a long-term project; voting and campaigning for a candidate is an immediate question. One can do both. Revolutionary leftists are right to recognize that only the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a socialist society free of exploitation and oppression can truly put an end to the far-right threat. But they are wrong not to see that joining a united electoral struggle with a left-talking candidate and their mass activist base can be a step toward achieving such a society.
Resisting Trump’s dictatorial agenda, and the attempts by the ruling class to reverse the past gains made by labor and democratic struggles, will be long and hard. It will require leaders who put the interests of the majority, the working class and oppressed, above the profit needs of capitalists. Mamdani, despite his often radical rhetoric, will probably not be such a leader. But his victory and the fight to win his program is the best opportunity for such a revolutionary leadership to develop.