Mamdani’s fight is our fight

Democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City working-class movement’s success in winning concrete reforms will shape the American Left to a significant degree for the coming period. Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary in June and win in the general election—in the face of a racist, Islamophobic, and witch-hunting campaign against him by the media and much of the country’s political establishment—inspired millions and activated many tens of thousands.

The question facing socialists today is: what are we going to do to help win those reforms? Obviously, this task falls more immediately on the shoulders of New York comrades, but the rest of us have a role to play. That role includes expanding the number of localities where MAGA and the billionaires have to confront struggles centered around affordability, civil and democratic rights, and working-class politics. It means challenging the status quo centrist Democrats, both the do-nothings like Chuck Schumer and the mad-as-hell poseurs like Gavin Newsom, and supporting genuinely leftist primary campaigns like Mamdani’s own and Graham Platner’s in Maine. Lastly, it means discussing lessons—positive and negative—from the Mamdani campaign in a way that makes them accessible to workers across the country and invites them into the movement.

Here is where I take exception with the political method in Ashley Smith’s recent piece in Tempest “After the surreal summit: Mamdani, Trump, and socialist strategy.” In place of contending with the real-life political process unfolding in NYC and Mamdani’s political views, he paints a caricature of a politician who merely hopes to “collaborate” with Trump. Rather than seeing Mamdani’s victory as a challenge to the Democratic Party centrists and an example of working-class politics, Smith argues that supporting Mamdani “risks defanging the Left.” He can only defend this view by doing damage to the facts. This is a polemical method that may be appropriate for enemies, but it does little to clarify legitimate discussions and debates among allies in struggle. While I disagree sharply with Smith’s political assessments, I hope this reply keeps the door open to common work and exchange.

I agree with many of Smith’s general points: recognizing the limitations that will be imposed on Mamdani by Albany and Washington, his warnings about François Mitterrand-type failures, Schumer’s and Hakeem Jeffries’ roles, the dangers of an even more vile strain of Nick Fuentes fascism waiting at the door, etc. These are important insights. I would simply add that they are insights shared not only by myself and Smith but also, by all indications, by Mamdani himself, the bulk of NYC-DSA, the 100,000 volunteers who helped him win, and many more beyond.

I will focus on three points of disagreement and make one appeal.

First, Smith characterizes Mamdani’s “glad-handing” meeting with Trump as a strategy of “accommodation” aimed at “seducing” and “charming” the president while he “abandoned any pretense of confrontation.” In his recounting, “It was a surreal, chummy meeting where the two embraced over their supposedly shared agenda of addressing the U.S. capitalism’s spiraling affordability crisis.” I will grant Smith that the meeting was surreal. But the rest of his characterization has little to do with reality. He accuses Mamdani of remaining silent on a list of issues, but this is simply not true. Mamdani openly declared himself a democratic socialist, condemned the “Israeli government committing genocide and our government funding it,” spoke about ICE abducting families, defended creating a “fair and equitable” tax code, and called Trump a fascist. Yes, it was awkward. But I can’t see how he doesn’t get some credit for having the guts to say all this to Trump’s face.

Smith may be right that Trump realizes he’s exposed on his populist flank; all the better for Mamdani to push him—even rhetorically—down that road, a road that would only further splinter Trump’s coalition. If Trump believes Bernie voters are coming to save him in the midterms, I hope he persists in that miscalculation.

More to the point, if sidestepping verbal fireworks in the Oval Office wins a couple months respite for his new administration to get down to work, it’s a reasonable gambit. As it is, Trump’s bizarre performance disappointed the Republican strategists who planned to use Mamdani against Democrats in every race in 2028. Remember, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott used immigrant families as political pawns by busing thousands to Chicago in the dead of winter, imposing a humanitarian crisis on Mayor Brandon Johnson soon after his inauguration. To paraphrase Trotsky on armistice negotiations with the Germans after the Russian Revolution, “If there were only twenty-five chances in a hundred that Trump would not decide to fight us, or was in no position to do so, we must make the attempt, even with a certain risk, to go to the Oval Office.” Of course, things did not work out as Trotsky had hoped, but playing for time is not a betrayal of principles.

I think reasonable people can disagree about Mamdani’s tactical choices in the Oval Office. It is perfectly sensible to evaluate his performance, one that working-class leaders should study, be they office holders, trade union leaders, or social movement spokespeople. There is an art to jousting with opponents in public. If we are fortunate, there will be many more opportunities. Personally, I doubt the episode will move the needle much one way or the other.

Which brings me to my second objection in Smith’s piece. He refers to Mamdani as both a “self-described democratic socialist” and a “reformist.” Are they the same thing? Smith doesn’t say, but he claims that Mamdani believes “holding office is the route to delivering social change.” Certainly, Mamdani believes that winning office is a component of winning social change. But aren’t the two related? At least potentially? And does Mamdani believe that social change is only possible through winning office? There is no indication of this in his past.

Perhaps because Smith has strained credulity by tagging Mamdani as a pure-and-simple reformist, he opens the door to what I believe is a more fluid understanding—one which he is at pains to admit—of Mamdani and what his administration represents. He writes, “The logic of reformism, especially without mass class struggle from below, is one of adaptation to the capitalist class and its politicians, at best delivering milquetoast liberal reform and at worst simply managing the existing system” (my italics). What does this mean? Does the “logic of reformism” lead somewhere else if there is “mass struggle”? And if so, isn’t that what the Mamdani victory points to? Moreover, isn’t that the working definition of democratic socialism most prevalent in DSA? Further, are free buses, child care, and freezing the rent “milquetoast” reforms? Or are they—potentially transitional—reforms that can lead to greater working-class security and confidence, not least because there is an army of 100,000 campaign volunteers, connected to many others, who are looking forward to a fight to win them?

Mamdani may be weak in historical terms, but he is in the strongest position to put up a fight of any elected leftist in the United States during our lifetimes. The eyes of the nation are on New York City. Yet Smith warns that “one danger that the resistance and the Left faces is falling in line behind a reformist electoral strategy like that of Mamdani’s.” If there were ten Mamdanis and ten NYC DSAs in similar relationships with unions and community groups in cities across the country, I would risk that danger every time.

Why does Smith see such dim prospects—if not downright treachery—lurking in New York? Why should the rest of the country steer clear?

This brings me to my third objection. Smith asserts that “Mamdani’s ability to deliver anything from his office in the capitalist state depends on the growth and profitability of corporations, especially finance capital whose international headquarters is in New York, for tax revenue to fund reform.” There is a lot to unpack here. At the highest level of generality, he is correct: Pro-working-class reforms that rely on the profitability of capitalism—and the movements that bring those reforms into being—are inherently unstable. Ultimately, unions can be smashed, public education and housing can be defunded, Medicare can be raided. We should expect that capitalists always tend—over the long term—toward putting profit over people. “Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and all the prophets.”

But politics does not operate at this level of economic abstraction or tempo. Wall Street and the corporations are hostile to Mamdani. They hope he fails. But they are also a warring band of brothers and have competing short-term interests. One task for working-class politicians and movements is finding the spaces where the ruling class can be pressured and cajoled and, yes, maneuvered into giving up some small portion of its ill-gotten gains in order to improve living conditions. Are free buses, free child care, and freezing the rent an existential threat to Wall Street? Absolutely not. Does this mean that a combination of action by community groups, unions, and the Left in the streets and effective political tactics deployed by the Mamdani administration could win those reforms? Absolutely yes. This is precisely where socialists, union members, and community organizers come in. What are we going to do to help win?

Which brings me to my appeal. Smith and Tempest are a small but important part of the socialist movement. The degree to which they contribute to what we all want will be shaped by the degree to which they participate in the key battles facing our movement from building unions to ICE to Gaza. I’m sure we agree on that. Many Tempest comrades are lifelong organizers with the kind of experience and historical knowledge that is, truth be told, urgently needed in the broader working-class movement. In my view, one key front is doing what we can to ensure Mamdani’s administration is as successful as possible. Does that mean erasing historical knowledge? Or ceasing all criticism? Or keeping quiet about tactical debates? Not at all. But it does mean finding a way to participate.

There is a long tradition of socialists establishing honest political compromises in order to engage with wider movements. Marx buried the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and adopted a democratic program for the German Revolution. In 1864, he became a leader in the International Workingmen’s Association—filled to the brim with competing socialist and anarchist currents. In his inaugural address to the International, Marx praised the 10 Hour Day bill in Britain and paid tribute to workers cooperatives as a “still greater victory of the political economy of labor over the political economy of property.” Lenin was even sharper on the need—we might say even the “method”—of compromise as a means to political influence. In 1907, he sided with the Menshiviks over the Bolsheviks in insisting it was time to end the electoral boycott of their time. (This lesson might be particularly relevant to Tempest members in NYC—who voted against participating in the Mamdani campaign—in preparation for upcoming state assembly and city council elections.) And on the eve of the October Revolution, Lenin saw compromise as one potential road to working-class power.

Closer to Smith’s and my own common roots—and perhaps more akin to holding Trump at bay—the British Socialist Worker editorialized in 1969 in favor of keeping British troops in Northern Ireland to hold off Protestant pogroms. “The breathing space provided by the presence of British troops is short but vital,” read the editorial. “Those who call for the immediate withdrawal of the troops before the men behind the barricades can defend themselves are inviting a pogrom which will hit first and hardest at socialists.”

Larger compromises by forces far more influential than any of us are part and parcel of the revolutionary socialist tradition. However, rather than opening up a path to finding a useful role inside the Mamdani experiment, Smith’s piece is a warning from the outside. Insofar as he represents Tempest’s views, they deserve a response. Truth be told, there are streams of thought inside DSA with a similar approach, and they should be answered as well.

Smith aims to “to build the resistance, our independent class and social organizations of struggle, and a new workers’ party to fight for reform on the road to political and social revolution.” But the restrictions he places on how to do all this are so tight that, I fear, most who try to follow his advice will wait on the sidelines. That is the real danger.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”