As the current socialist movement, we need to ask questions about what our goals for electoralism should be. The “default” goal, putting one person in office, is not as important as being shamelessly socialist. The power the electoral system has is extremely limited. It’s time for us to stop compromising our messaging in order to put people in office.
In 2016, Bernie Sanders ran for president as a Democrat. Almost every candidate for at large DSA members running for this year’s slate listed more electoral involvement, either on the local or national level, as a goal the DSA should strive for in the future. The potential for socialists in government is real as the rotting Democratic party finally begins its decomposition. Take Bernie Sanders. He didn’t even win the primaries. But there are people reading this article right now who owe their interest in socialism to Bernie Sanders’s run.
Many in the Democratic Party insisted that Sanders was “too extreme” to run for president, and they used numerous dirty tricks to derail his movement. Those efforts to smear him have largely failed.Sanders was not elected president, but electoral success is not the only important consideration. Sanders’s run pushed the issues that voters cared about leftwards and even forced the Democratic Party itself in a more socialist direction. If he had chosen a more moderate line, the Democratic establishment would have been friendlier, but he would not have the ideological effect that he did. Ever since 2016, we have seen how one person can move the Overton Window of acceptable discourse. As Donald Trump’s rise shows, people are attracted to ideas that don’t fit into the mainstream. We at the DSA have an ability to offer people what other parties and candidates are simply not able to.
Like Trump and Sanders, Zohran Mamdani—the candidate who recently won the Democratic primary in New York as a self-proclaimed democratic socialist—is unignorable in current discourse. Candidates for state and federal office have a unique chance to spread their message and advance anti-capitalist ideas seen as dangerous.American democracy is in critical danger, but independent, left-wing candidates are still able to run and win despite the numerous impediments placed in their way. Electoral campaigns, with all their associated canvassing, publicity, and news coverage, must be acknowledged as perhaps our most effective mass media method of spreading ideology.
This also means that any electoral campaign isn’t just a local campaign. Once it gains enough publicity, it is national. Not everyone who engages with the candidate or the campaign can vote in the election, but they are certainly hearing and forming their own opinion on anyone who calls themselves a socialist candidate—and by extension opinions on the DSA, socialists, and socialism.
The mayor of New York City is a powerful office, but its power is not unlimited. As socialists, we know that we cannot rely on establishment Democratic candidates to back socialist reforms, and Mamdani is likely to be hemmed in by hostile Democratic forces all around. The New York City Council, which has ultimate authority on budgetary concerns and land use permissions, could seriously cut back on his power. How much he is able to accomplish depends on who wins the New York State Governor race, which could be won by Cuomo’s former running mate, Kathy Hochul. The New York State Legislature has a large Democratic majority, but there are no guarantees that Cuomo’s remaining supporters and the mainstream Democratic Party will work with him on any significant reforms.
Socialists will by default be the minority in any government in the U.S. This means that any meaningful reforms will have to be enacted in cooperation with capitalist political parties. In this case, Mamdani’s most ambitious policies will depend on a slate of Democrats who may not be willing to back even the most basic of reforms and have huge conflicts of interest across the board.
Mamdani’s campaign also raises the question of how likely his rent freeze plan is to be implemented. The landlord lobby can throw millions at an independent Cuomo run for mayor, and it plans to spend heavily in the New York City council primaries. If disgraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams is smart, he might be able to throw a wrench in Mamdani’s plans by stacking the Rent Guidelines Board with term-length candidates before Mamdani is able to take over. Despite all the choices by Mamdani’s campaign to water down his ideological communication from the beliefs of the wider DSA, his victory or defeat will still end up being most effective as an advertisement for socialist ideology.This is the way the political system right now operates.
IT’S TIME FOR RADICAL MESSAGING
As we contend with the possibility that Mamdani could be the next mayor of New York City, we must ask ourselves a critical question: Is it truly possible, in a system dominated by capital and elite interests, to accomplish socialist goals just by passing bills? No. Capital won’t allow it. The entire system is created and run by capital and those who benefit from it.
The fact that the current administration is tearing down the very rules of our democracy itself proves it. Democracy is less and less able to hold power as the contradictions of capital deepen. These systems of power exist at the will of the ruling class, and they cannot be relied on to carry our cause to victory. In the wake of a new, dangerous Supreme Court ruling sharply limiting the ability of the judiciary to enforce federal laws, can we be sure that the federal government won’t end Mamdani’s candidacy by illegally deporting him?
Socialist parties seeking to abolish capitalism are not the same as other political organizations. Our movement represents the working class, and that means that our power does not come from the act of holding office or exercising executive or legislative authority within a capitalist state. Instead, our power comes from the people themselves, in the sense that socialism must (if it is to succeed) command a power that goes beyond peoples’ willingness to vote for us. Our base does not exist to win elections.Electoralism is only one arm of the socialist movement, which works in social justice, labor movements, and in anti-establishment movements.
Running an election-first campaign might mean watering down the message to make it more mainstream, working to appeal to donors who don’t share our beliefs, or changing the tactics of an entire chapter to appeal to different demographics of people. These might sometimes help win elections, but as a practice hurts the wider DSA. We should not forget where our real power comes from and what our ultimate goals are. In Mamdani’s case, his campaign sacrifices radical socialist rhetoric in order to merely be elected.
Mamdani isn’t officially endorsed by the national DSA, but he’s still the face of socialist politics at the moment. Mamdani enthusiastically chooses to associate himself with the Democratic Party—a party which openly serves the interests of capital above all else and currently supports the genocide in Gaza and control at the border. Practically speaking, the Democratic Party is a hostile force and any wise socialist would treat them as such.
Mamdani was also criticized for not taking a stand against the police. He explicitly assures people he’s not going to defund them in a way that plays to his critics. When asked if he would use the NYPD to clear the streets for ICE, he equivocated about “ensuring we keep order across the city.” To him, the NYPD is no longer an enemy.
Mamdani’s line is a clear concession to the needs of the campaign rather than the message of the movement. Nobody, not even those who defend these statements, disagrees. It’s only a question of strategy. This strategy is harmful. Fighting against the Democrat-backed Gaza genocide and defunding the police are popular keystones of the modern radical movement. Elected candidates should fully represent the DSA. If they don’t, why are we running them in the first place?
Our cause needs propaganda, in the sense of ferociously spreading ideas and beliefs. What we give up rhetorically for one election for fleeting power might lose us more people in the long run.Candidates have great potential if we take the opportunity to use them as members of the DSA socialist project instead of as individual campaigns which exist to serve only their own ends. The DSA runs candidates—candidates shouldn’t run the DSA.
A ‘left-wing Trump’, capable of having a similar meteoric effect on national political discourse, won’t expect to win the presidential election. They won’t shrink from saying things that are wildly unacceptable in the Overton window. In doing so, they will be able to have ten times more of an effect than a candidate hedging their bets and focusing on being elected within the lines that are set out for us by the Democratic establishment.
Getting people elected is just a means to an end, not our ultimate goal. The battle we are fighting on the international stage is, and has been for a long time, one of ideology as much as law.Our goals as socialists cannot be focused on merely the next four years and the legislation in our county. Instead they must be for the century and for the entire working class.
