Beyond ‘No Kings’

By Paul Le Blanc & John Meehan
Published
Mamdani on megaphone

Republished from Communis.

The following conversation between John Meehan and Paul Le Blanc took place in Dublin on Friday 20th of June 2025. It first appeared (undated) on Tomás Ó Flatharta.Com. It is now reproduced on Communis with the authorization of both Meehan and Le Blanc, in a revised and expanded form, followed by an addendum by Paul Le Blanc, commenting on the partial and yet transcendent victory of the Zohran Mamdani Mayoral campaign in New York City.

From anti-Trumpism to socialist policies

John Meehan: On Saturday June 14, 2025, a large number of “No Kings” protests occurred in many parts of the United States. One participant was Paul LeBlanc. Would you like to give us an overview of the No Kings protests, describe the one you attended?

Paul Le Blanc: Sure, I can speak especially about my own experience in Pittsburgh and in other cities and towns across the country.

The “No Kings” protests were part of a wave of demonstrations that have developed over the past few months. The first big one was the April 5 demonstration, under the slogan of “Hands Off.” Hands Off the health care system, education system, various other things that are being dismantled or attacked by the Trump regime. In Pittsburgh, there was a massive demonstration. It was the largest that I had seen in the city up to that time, with at least 8,000 people.

This was followed by May Day demonstrations. And Pittsburgh is not and hasn’t for decades been a center of May Day demonstrations. But this was massive, the biggest May Day demonstration that I’ve seen. It wasn’t quite as big as April 5, but there were several thousand people participating. Again, it was focused especially on social issues and economic issues in the United States. There was also some reference to foreign policy stuff — Palestine, Ukraine, so forth.

The biggest demonstration of all was the most recent one, the “No Kings” demonstration. There were over 10,000 people protesting in Pittsburgh, and millions of people throughout the country: a massive outpouring of anger and rage and ridicule of Trump’s pretensions of being popular and powerful and so forth. People said, “No Kings,” with many accusing him of being a fascist, a totalitarian, a dictator. Certainly, he’s authoritarian. There was general agreement on a defense of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and even of the US Constitution, which he’s walking all over.

So, this was massive, and pro Trump elements have not come close to mobilizing anything on this scale. There’s a lot of anti-Trump sentiment. Trump claims that he has an overwhelming mandate from the American people, and that’s a lie. He tells all kinds of lies, makes all kinds of distorted claims. He may have won an electoral majority, and certainly not a landslide majority. but he did not get an absolute majority among the American people. He was able to rack up more votes than his competitors, but his mandate is razor thin, and I think the number of people who support him is dropping. I believe that he is eroding his own base of support with policies that are hurting all of us. It’s an interesting development, for sure.

Comparisons to historical movements

Now it’s clear these developments are a great encouragement to people outside the USA, because it’s an indication that Trump and Vance won’t have it all their own way internally. The issue is – seen from the outside – it’s great to see. But what steps are necessary, in your opinion, to strengthen this movement, to see it develop further, and what are the institutional and political barriers in the way? Can a serious stop be put in the attacks Trump and Vance are making on working people’s rights, wars abroad and so forth?

Maybe, if I pitch it as a parallel, it might help. In the late 60s and early 70s, people outside the United States were very inspired by the depth and strength of the anti-war movement, and then a lot of related developments, like the rise of the women’s movement, popular culture and so on. And while it didn’t prevent, for example, the re-election of Richard Nixon in 1972, what did happen was that Nixon and his regime went so far beyond the bounds of what you might call standard capitalist structures. He met significant opposition from within the system, which culminated in The Watergate scandal. Nixon was driven from office. Now, one of the things that strikes me, certainly, and maybe I’m in a minority here – I can’t see any evidence of serious opposition to Trump fans coming from, broadly speaking, the type of forces which brought Nixon down.

That parallel is an intriguing one, and it’s worth considering. But the situation is much more complex now than it was then.

First of all, it seems to me, we have to ask a question, what is the meaning of Trumpism? Why and how could this have developed? Because it goes against politics as usual. In the old Republican Party, during the period of Nixon, there were conservatives in the Republican Party who helped to bring Nixon down, along with liberals and centrists in the Democratic Party. The situation is different now. It’s polarized to an extreme. As a number of people have said, the Republican Party, the old Republican Party, doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been taken over by Trump, Trump loyalists, Trumpism. The old-line conservatives within it have either been driven out or have capitulated and betrayed their presumed ideals. They are just going along with Trump, whatever he says.

So that’s a new development, but there’s another new development, and that gets to the question, “How did Trump come to occupy the position of power and authority? What was his appeal?”

Trumpism and its appeal

The old political establishment — from Democratic Party liberals and centrists to conservative Republicans — has been discredited over the past several decades: facing problems, dealing with problems, failing to deal with problems, unable to deal with problems that are hurting large numbers of people, scaring large numbers of people, and disrupting the American Dream that a majority of Americans believed in and felt they could finally start enjoying. That’s gone, and Democrats and the old-line Republicans have been unable to face this. They’ve lied about it, saying, “Oh no, everything’s fine.” But people knew everything wasn’t fine, and that has created a radicalization within the US population, within the US working class, within the electorate. Another aspect of working-class experience is that the labor movement, the trade unions that had been tied in with the Democratic Party, were unable to help workers. The unions were more and more and more eliminated as a force on the American economic and political scene.

People who are hurting and increasingly finding their lives disrupted are looking around for solutions. The solutions offered by the Democratic Party and by the old Republican Party don’t work anymore. They’ve lost credibility to a very large extent. And Trump presents a new way of seeing things, or a certain way of seeing things that has not been part of the American political mainstream. He makes all kinds of inflated promises while attacking and scapegoating people of color and immigrants, saying that they’re the problem. Trump is projected as someone who is going to “solve” this problem.

A large segment of the American people — though not a majority — have been drawn to that outlook. Also, a segment of the US ruling class (not all of it, but a segment) is drawn to that because they feel that Trump’s authoritarian policies can help to maintain a certain stability. The instability is threatening their profits and their system, so they’re prepared to go with him. That’s a source of Trumpism then, and that kind of situation didn’t exist in the same way during the Vietnam War period. So, people back then could have illusions about the system’s viability, illusions that are harder to sustain today. This affects the kinds of politicians people are inclined to support and the kinds of solutions they look for. This poses a more complex situation than one that presumably could be resolved simply by ending the war, or even by ending the war plus providing civil rights legislation to advance equal opportunity for all.

Challenges and opportunities for the left

Equal opportunity for all and a better life for all, the things that have been central to the American Dream, are not in the cards right now. So, there are tougher issues that people have to face and think through as they reach for solutions to their problems. Increasing numbers of people are facing these issues and thinking through their situation in a new way. There is a radicalization, and some of it has been drawn in a right-wing direction, but there are also more left-wing ideas that are in circulation now.

Bernie Sanders has been putting forward the idea of socialism as a solution. This has had a big impact. The way he has defined socialism is vague and fuzzy and — in my opinion — wrong. But the idea of socialism, of economic democracy, of the economy being controlled by the majority of people (that is, by the working class) is part of the solution.

That’s a difficult thing for some people to grasp or to feel comfortable with, but realities are fluid right now, and there is tremendous discontent. As the recent demonstrations indicate, there is a growing rejection of Trump’s so-called solutions, which are phony. So, there’s a complicated process underway. The process may stop or push back some of the worst of Trump’s policies. But that, by itself, won’t solve the underlying problems. Those problems remain. So what else is there to do? Some people who are involved in the protests still have illusions about the Democratic Party. But in the minds of significant numbers of people, that’s not a credible solution to the problems we face. Then what is the solution?

Those of us who are socialists need to put forward socialist perspectives in a way that makes sense to people. This needs to be tied to actual struggles to improve the situation and protect the interests of working-class people here and now. But this needs to be done with the understanding that these are just initial steps, and we have to go much further. We need to have an economic democracy, and that’s socialism. The kinds of broad protests that have welled up in recent times need to continue. But by themselves they are not adequate. Struggles to improve people’s lives in the here and now are necessary, but people will come to understand that these – by themselves and in themselves – will not be adequate. A process is beginning to work itself through to a resolution.

Yet there is also a question in my mind, and in the minds of some others: Do we have time to push our way towards solutions given the climate catastrophe and other catastrophes that are unfolding?

It’s a complicated time, and we’ll see how it turns out. The struggle that has been erupting, the mass struggle that has been erupting, is very heartening. At the same time, a number of responsibilities are being posed sharply to those of us who are aware of some of the problems.

So, that’s a long-winded answer to a good question.

Is the USA in danger of sliding from anti-democratic capitalism to a fascist régime?

People on the revolutionary left that we’re both familiar with, they’ve always been very careful to make a distinction between a capitalist, bourgeois democracy, on the one hand, even a very, very authoritarian one, and an actual fascist or Nazi regime. There is a qualitative difference between the two. People with knowledge say, of the history, the real history of fascism — the Nazi regime in Germany — are very, very aware of that. The Nazi regime, in summary, meant the complete abolition of all rights of assembly, freedom, crushing of trade unions, so forth. It meant the abolition of any kind of free elections. So obviously, Trump has got in to power as a result of a capitalist election. He gained a majority of votes. The question I’ve seen posed by a number of analysts is, to what extent is that restriction — and it is a restriction — he faces electoral contests at one level over the next couple of years — to what extent can the assault he has made on the rights and freedoms of people living in America be compatible with continuing a capitalist electoral regime? In the sense that we know it, it seems difficult from the outside to see that it is compatible. It’s pretty hard to see a regime like that simply steamrolling all opposition. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, again, it’s a complicated, very complicated and internally contradictory reality that we’re looking at. If you compare Trump and Trumpism to the fascist movements of the past, to Hitler’s German Nazis and Mussolini’s Italian fascists, we see that he’s incoherent compared to them. He’s not disciplined. He’s erratic.

Trump clearly has authoritarian and fascist-like tendencies and is prepared to work with and help unleash fascist and neo-Nazi forces. They have in the past been marginalized on the far right, but he has been helping to bring them into the mainstream as part of his base of support. And he is increasingly challenging, and is inclined to challenge, any obstacles to his authority.

But at this point, we are dealing with something that is not yet a fascist regime. There’s potential for that, and it may evolve more decisively along those lines despite Trump’s own erratic qualities, incoherence and stupidity. On the other hand, these qualities may unravel his efforts to establish his authority and push forward the kind of things he’d like to see. His actions may unfold in a way that undermines his ability to establish the authoritarian order he wants. It will be interesting to see what happens.

But there is room right now to protest against and organize against what Trump represents. And there are broad forces, not just on the left, that are in opposition to him. There are Democratic Party liberals and centrists, of course, who have helped organize the recent protests, and these are of one mind with even more conservative forces that see Trumpism as a threat to stability and to any kind of coherent, durable system. So, things are in play right now, and it’s not clear how things are going to turn out. Those of us on the left, I think, need to work with some of these forces as far as we can where there’s agreement, but at a certain point, we need to go beyond what some of these people represent, because they’re part of the problem. They helped to bring Trump into being through their own limitations and inadequacies. Especially problematical is their embrace of the capitalist system, which is generating all kinds of horrific problems. We will be afflicted by such problems regardless of who is the leader of the country politically.

I think that we’re in a dangerous period right now. Trump would surely like to be a dictator. He is an authoritarian. He is a fascist kind of person, but not a disciplined one. And yet there’s danger for sure.

One of the interesting things that I’ve grappled with involves looking at what brought Mussolini to power and Hitler to power. There were strong left-wing movements in Italy and in Germany, massive social democratic parties and strong trade union movements and growing communist parties. We don’t have that in the United States. The organized left is pathetic in terms of socialist, communist, even trade union strength. The trade union movement is certainly stronger than the organized left as a whole, but it is much weakened compared to what it was in the 1930s, the 1940s, even the 1950s.

So, what does it mean if the organized left does not pose a threat to capitalism in the way that it seemed to in Italy and in Germany back in the day of Hitler and Mussolini? That left-wing threat to capitalism was a major factor that many of us pointed to in explaining the triumph of Mussolini and Hitler. A strong left-wing movement seemed to pose a threat to capitalism, and then it failed to overturn capitalism. But it had posed a threat, and so capitalists were ready to back some kind of alternative to the communist and socialist parties. That alternative was developing in large part because masses of people were looking for solutions to the crisis of capitalism that the left failed to provide. So many went to the right, to Hitler and Mussolini and others like them. To what extent does such a dynamic exist, given the weakness of the organized left in the United States?

If we look at the US left seriously over the course of the 20th century, we can see something very interesting. Although it was not as big as the organized left was in Germany and Italy and other European countries of the 19th and 20th century, it actually was a significant factor in helping to generate and lead forward the labor movement and various protests of the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. Left-wing people and organizations were central to the effectiveness of all of these social movements and social struggles.

However, most of them got sucked into the Democratic Party — this pro capitalist party, this powerful, influential, pro-capitalist party. The organized left was thereby compromised and weakened. However, many sensibilities of the left became the property of the Democratic Party. Culturally, socially, in some ways, politically, much of the old left-wing sensibilities, absorbed into the Democratic Party, have been generalized in American life. That’s part of what explains attacks by the right-wingers like Trump who trash the Democratic Party. Liberals are denounced as left wing. They are denounced as Marxists, as socialists.

Well, of course they’re not really Marxist or socialist. And yet, some of the sensibilities of the left, some of the perspectives of the left, have been absorbed into the liberalism within the Democratic Party. Despite elements within it of the left-wing perspective (seeming to promise so much to the working-class majority), the pro-capitalist Democratic Party is not capable of even trying to overturn the system that is generating the problems afflicting that majority: capitalism. While the United States today is quite different from Germany and Italy of the 1920s, we can find weird commonalities in aspects of their diverse political realities.

Alternative to Trumpism, alternative to capitalism

It seems to me that for the left to be able to develop an alternative to Trumpism, it must at the very same time be developing an alternative to capitalism. And that necessarily involves a break from this capitalist party, the Democratic Party. The contradiction of Bernie Sanders is, on the one hand, that he seems to go in that direction, but then he pulls people back into the Democratic Party. He’s trying to be practical. He’s trying to be realistic. But ultimately, that is not going to be practical. It will not prove to be realistic.

We’ve got to find ways to go beyond that. That’s a challenge, I think, to the organized socialist left such as it exists in the United States. It is something that some activists are wrestling with and grappling with and thinking about.

Irish links to the USA

Frankly, I’ve long learned, based in Ireland, not to speculate about a job that has to be resolved one way or the other by socialists in the States. That involves tactical decisions over organizing completely independently from the Democratic Party or working with people in the Democratic Party on specific issues, halfway houses and so on. But it does appear fairly obvious that on the concrete issues, it’s clearly necessary for people from various locations on what you might call the progressive spectrum to co-operate — and that’s clearly happening in the No Kings movement, and that has different possible dynamics. The more it develops, the better the hope for humanity is, not just in America, but outside. Let’s look at how those things get linked to a small country like Ireland. I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is that, as you’re aware, there’s a huge number of Irish people, Irish connected people, who have emigrated to the US over a very, very long period. Since the 1990s a lot of Irish people went over who weren’t, let’s put it this way, weren’t fully legal. A lot of that was overlooked in the more recent past, but now what’s happening is the exact opposite. A number of cases, individual cases, have emerged in Ireland, which have really shocked people.

And it is starting to have an effect on pretty broad layers of the population, including a lot of people who wouldn’t have been politically engaged at all.

There is a young man who is from the north of Ireland and who went over a long, long time ago, and there was some minor issue about when he first arrived, about visa or whatever, but he’s paid his taxes, he’s worked, he’s got family commitments, all the rest of it, according to his account, and there’s no reason to disbelieve it.

He was on his way to work on a scooter. He was immediately picked up by immigration authorities. ICE simply picked him up, threw him into a detention center, no beds, no medical treatment, no nothing. He was sleeping on the floor. He has various medical conditions, and he is a vegan. So, his health has deteriorated as his levels of food starvation have increased. The man was shifted from near where he lived to a detention center hundreds of miles away.

His partner went to try and visit him. He was told by the people running the center that in order to get a visit, there had to be a phone call, and an appointment made. But whenever the partner or anybody else rang up this place, it was the classic user hostile system. Phone just rang, rang, rang, rang, rang, no answering machine, nothing. Yet, when his partner turned up outside the gates, she was told she couldn’t make the arrangement with him because they didn’t know whether he wanted to see her, and a phone call was necessary. And there’d been lawyers involved in all of this.

Now that’s only one case. Saddest of all, in a lot of ways, the guy had no politics at all. He’s from a Unionist community in the north, and he and his family and all are looking for support from the Irish government or British government or whatever, and this is putting pressure on the normal behavior of the Irish government.

Speaking more broadly here, in relation to the Irish government and the US authorities:

They do three things: Surrender, Capitulate, Collaborate. And the room for doing that in these situations, with so many cases spreading like wildfire, is gradually disappearing at a rate of knots.

I’m guessing this is a phenomenon which is probably common to people from other countries, where their friends, relatives, etc., have tried to make a living in the States. In other words, the

decay of what you might call normal bourgeois standards is creating a backlash against the reputation of the USA. A number of people I talk to who are much younger than me, who, under normal conditions, would have been finishing up their studies, going for holidays in the States, they’re saying: I’m not going anywhere near that place. I’m going to Canada instead! Anywhere but the USA!

Trump-like political developments in other parts of the world

There are several things that occur to me in pondering what you’ve described. Trump and his followers may make various pronouncements and come up with policies based on those pronouncements that are simplistic pronouncements and simplistic policies. But when you try to carry them out, the human factor, in all kinds of crazy ways, suddenly comes into play. I mean, some of this is just stupid bureaucratic ridiculousness and incompetence.

Trump and Elon Musk and others have cut deeply into the governmental apparatus. They’ve been antigovernment in the sense of wanting to cut government spending, which means fewer people to carry out policies, and therefore all kinds of bureaucratic tangles and irrational tangles result. And that’s some of what I think of when you’re describing the situation of this one poor guy.

This means that much of the Trump agenda is not viable in a number of ways. It can’t be carried out. It undermines the US government’s ability to carry out a variety of policies, including Trump’s policies, in a way that makes some kind of sense, that’s coherent. Also, this has the kinds of international ramifications that you’re talking about.

It occurs to me that we can’t see what’s happening within the United States and with the Trump regime in the United States just as a US phenomenon. It has global ramifications in more ways than one. One is that this right-wing drift is happening in other countries. It is generated by the capitalist crisis. The crisis that brought Trump to power is helping to bring others like him to power.

What’s more, this development involves, in part, the failure of the socialist left of various countries to bring about socialist solutions. All-too-many within this left have been inclined either to be sectarian and ineffective, or — in trying to be effective — they adapt to capitalism. They are drawn into the dynamics of capitalism, and they become part of the problem. In sustaining and maintaining the problematical system of capitalism, they discredit their socialist solutions. In the eyes of many people, this “socialist” version of capitalism is not working, and so they look for alternatives on the right end of the political spectrum.

This is an international phenomenon. The specific form it takes in the United States does bring discredit to my country. Also, it has ramifications not only for the United States, but for various other countries as well. We can’t afford to see our problems in isolation. But the same goes for solutions.

I’m thinking about solutions for the working class, for the American people, for the left. How do we overcome these problems? It can’t be done in a single country. There need to be global movements, with components in various countries that are cooperating with each other and learning from each other and helping each other. They need to share commitments in favor of immigrant rights, in favor of human rights, in favor of workers’ rights, in favor of the environment. For example, and most obviously, effective defense of the environment cannot be accomplished in a single slice of the world. It must involve a global movement.

There are lessons to be learned from other countries. Let’s take Ireland as one example. And it’s not the only one. There are activists in Ireland working to develop an alternative to “capitalist politics as usual,” the kind of alternative that makes sense — insisting that people have to come before profit. Some Irish activists have put together a party that’s involved in trade union struggles and in social movement struggles and in electoral work, and they call their party People Before Profit. It’s not yet adequate, but it’s a beginning. There are things to be learned from that beginning, and good things are being done by People Before Profit. I’d like activists in the United States to be looking at what activists in Ireland are attempting to do. There are things to learn, and cooperative relationships to be developed.

In Germany, there is a party, Die Linke — the Left Party — that is also inadequate. Its inadequacies were beginning to erode its size and effectiveness. But an infusion of new young activists, accompanied by serious organizing and strategizing, caused it to surge forward in the recent elections, and Die Linke is growing again. Just as I’ve met, learned from, and been inspired by young activists in People Before Profit, I have also met, learned from, and been inspired by young activists in Die Linke. Here too, I’ve met comrades who are keenly aware of the problems in their country and around the world, and they’re attempting to do something about it as they fight here-and-now, in the interests of working-class people. Here too, there are things to learn, and cooperative relationships to be developed.

You know, regarding the working class, I’m not just talking about factory workers, but the great majority of us who sell our ability to work for a paycheck, whether we wear a white collar or blue collar. And then there are the poor — unemployed workers. There are left wing activists in various countries, who recognize the rich diversity of the multi-faceted working class and build on that understanding, through a whole range of interrelated struggles. There is much to learn from the experiences and insights from activists of Germany and Ireland, but also various other countries of Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

In almost every country, such people are wrestling with the kinds of things that we’re talking about, and they are trying to find solutions. And we need to — and we can — find ways to be working together. Because these are global problems. This is a process. Those of us who want to solve the problems in our particular countries have to be struggling for that, but part of this involves working with others and learning from others in various other countries, because we’re facing a lot of the same kinds of things. So, the international dimension that you were pointing to has multifaceted ramifications.

Hopeful signs and youth involvement

I could tie this up with more hopeful signs. Let’s be honest, the way the world has gone is a horror story. Genocide in Palestine — tens of thousands of people have been murdered by the Israeli regime. There is genocide in Ukraine. I believe the only reason Ukraine is not as bad as Palestine is because the Ukrainian state has the ability to fight back. Unfortunately, the Palestinians didn’t. And then you have this horrendous threat of the Israel assault on Iran, which is tolerated by the Western powers.

On the other hand, there are two examples from Europe, which may be what you’re pointing towards. There are limits. There’s nothing inevitable about the advance of the far right. There are two interesting examples, one is France, the other is Germany. Elections were called in France by the Macron regime, which was an attempt to take advantage of the weakness of the left. All of the left realized they’d hit a red line here, and they had to offer some kind of alternative to the advance of the far right. And they did it. To the surprise of a lot of analysts, bucking the trends, the new Popular Front, succeeded in bringing together most forces of the left and making a significant electoral advance — enough to put a stop to the seemingly inevitable march forward of Le Pen.

Now it’s not all over, but it did show to broad masses of people that if the left can find a way to unite and find platforms that are effective, it can make a difference. The second example is Die Linke in Germany. I think this was a really interesting phenomenon. A problem common across Europe is parts of the left that tail end racism. This happened to a big degree with one wing of Die Linke, the Wagenknecht party, which left Die Linke. It was very clear from the outside that Die Linke, cleansed itself, got rid of red-brown politics — was able to make a much better impact on the German elections.

They weren’t a contender for government or anything like that, but it was certainly enough to put a brake on the rise of the German far-right, the AfD. Before this election outside powers did not directly intervene in a powerful country like Germany. The German balance of forces had been established by the various forces in Germany itself. This time, the US Vice President JD Vance went to Germany and directly endorsed a clearly fascist party, the AfD. That may have put the backs up a lot of people in Germany who weren’t part of the normal forces of the left. Die Linke put up a very credible and strong performance in the recent general election.

PLB: Yes. We must look for ways in which the revolutionary left and other forces of the left can combine in a concrete way against the Trumpist far-right advance. Because, as you say, if we don’t do something about it, if we can’t push it back within a reasonable length of time, everybody’s in very, very serious trouble.

Building on that, I would give special attention and emphasis to one of the things that you mentioned. You mentioned several things, but it seems to me this one element is very important. It impressed me greatly when I was in Germany recently, and that is a surge among younger people, people in the who are not experienced political people, but people in their 20s and 30s. Some already have political experience, and they all have a range of ideas. The surge of youth is around anti-racism and various other aspects of capitalist depression, the climate threat, and issues of democracy and human rights and social justice.

It was a surge of young people who not only were expressing what they thought but also going door to door to talk with more and more and more people and engage more and more and more people of various ages within this working-class majority and helping to mobilize on the basis of a doubling of the Left Party’s vote. That kind of energy, that kind of surge, that kind of sensibility, and that kind of organizing work that some of the Die Linke comrades are involved in – that’s something to be learned from and to be built on, not just in Germany, but in Ireland and in the United States and throughout the world. It seems to me that it is a hopeful thing and necessary component of turning the situation around in a way that’s positive.

Mamdani Victory in NYC’s Democratic Primary

(As of 10th July 2025)

Shortly after my return from Dublin to the United States, Zohran Mamdani, a member of Democratic Socialists of America who seemed to take his socialism quite seriously, overwhelmingly won the Democratic Party primary in New York City. My Dublin interrogator would surely have asked for my thoughts on this had it occurred while I was still in Ireland. So, I feel compelled to respond to that unasked question with this addendum.

While it is not possible to offer here a full-scale analysis, there are three different dimensions to be emphasized in regard to the Mamdani victory. One dimension involves the basis for his victory. A second dimension involves the meaning of his victory for revolutionary socialists. A third dimension involves what the future may bring.

There are several key factors that help explain the victory. One is that both the incumbent Mayor (Eric Adams) as well as the favored candidate of Democratic Party machine (former Governor Andrew Cuomo) have amply shown, in different ways, to be corrupt and unable to meet the needs of a majority of New Yorkers. Mamdani represented a sharp and refreshing contrast: young, incredibly bright, personable, energetic, articulate, honest.

No less important, he exuded the image of someone both practical-minded yet brimming with new ideas flowing naturally from his socialist convictions. He proved able to clearly and persuasively give voice to those convictions, with the succinct slogan “Make New York City Affordable for All New Yorkers,” a slogan connected with the practical proposals of his campaign platform.1

Most significantly, “a new Yahoo/YouGov survey finds that about twice as many U.S. adults say they would vote for a candidate with Mamdani’s platform (50%) than say they would not (26%).”2 Combing through Mamdani’s platform proposals, this survey found:

  • 62% approved and 24% disapproved of implementing free childcare for every child aged 6 weeks to 5 years (a +38-point margin).
  • 60% approved and 22% disapproved of freezing rent for lower-income tenants (a +38-point margin).
  • 51% approved and 31% disapproved of creating a network of government-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low rather than making a profit (a +20-point margin).
  • 49% approved and 34% disapproved of raising the minimum wage to $30 by 2030 (a +15-point margin).
  • 46% approved and 36% disapproved of permanently eliminating the fares on public buses (a +10-point margin).
  • And 65% approved and 22% disapproved of raising taxes on corporations and millionaires to pay for these proposals (a +43-point margin).

Although the utilization of such bold rhetoric as revolutionary socialism is absent, these popular and seemingly practical demands in fact add up to an incredibly radical program which have the potential for igniting serious mass struggles, challenging capitalist power and going in a socialist direction. Only the future can tell whether Mamdani and those supporting this program will prove to be sufficiently committed to it in a manner that might make that so. This will be revisited in a few moments, when we consider the third dimension of the Mamdani’s current victory.

Yet another aspect (within this framework of the basis of Mamdani’s victory) flowed from the high degree of organization, and the very nature, of his campaign, which in important ways seems quite similar to those of Die Linke in Germany and People Before Profit in Ireland – utilizing the distinction emphasized by the late Jane McAlevey between Advocacy, Mobilization, and Organizing. While McAlevey has stressed the superiority of organizing over the other two approaches, the Mamdani campaign seems to have effectively braided the three in a manner resulting in the mobilization of 50,000 volunteers to reach out (personally and interactively, through intensive door-to-door contact, telephone contact, and work on the street) to millions of New York City voters.3

This brings us to the next dimension – the meaning of Mamdani’s victory for revolutionaries.4 

One facet is the clear demonstration that – even in the face of the seemingly overwhelming “shock and awe” policies and tactics employed by the tyrannical Trumpian juggernaut, and in sharp contrast to the “wisdom” of mainstream pundits and the centrists predominant among the Democratic Party’s chief policy-makers – it is possible to win majority support with radical left-wing, basically socialist, ideas and programs. This suggests the best way to effectively challenge Trumpism is by giving clear and effective voice to revolutionary perspectives. One is reminded of Rosa Luxemburg’s stricture: “not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority – that’s the way the road runs.”

There is another facet which, of course, has to do with lessons to be learned from the campaign’s effective organizing techniques – which can and should be adapted more generally to other struggles. Related to this is the ability to strike a balance between short-term efforts (around gains that can actually be won) with longer range efforts that lead to revolutionary transformation. This involves finding a clear and persuasive rhetoric that makes sense to broad numbers of people, combined with practical demands that also make sense to broad numbers of people, but whose logic goes in the socialist direction alluded to above.

There are additional lessons to be learned which (as already indicated) will depend on what happens next, then on how the Mamdani campaign responds to those future developments, and finally on how that plays out in life.

This third dimension of the Mamdani victory – what the future may bring – also has multiple facets. Do comrades in New York City actually have the power to bring events to a socialist conclusion, or are they now on the verge of reaching the limits of what can be accomplished, given the realities which confront them?

Negative realities facing Mamdani and his supporters include these:

1. Donald Trump has openly threated him and his campaign, should they win the general election and try to implement the campaign’s radical program. Trump very frankly vows to prevent this alleged “Communist takeover” by any means he deems necessary. This would include overturning democracy in New York with a massive invasion of Federal troops, putting the city under martial law, arresting (perhaps deporting) Mamdani, repressing his followers, etc. Decisive sectors of all branches of government would certainly follow him along this path, if Trump chooses it.

2. In contrast to Die Linke in Germany and People Before Profit in Ireland, the Democratic Party of the United States is controlled, and has always been controlled, by a bureaucratic, elitist, absolutely pro-capitalist machine in alliance with billionaires and multi-millionaires. These proud representatives of the capitalist class are absolutely committed to domination of the U.S. and global economy by the multinational corporations which ensure their own immense wealth and power. If Mamdani proves able to sustain his enthusiastic mass base but is unwilling to compromise his socialist convictions fundamentally, the Democratic Party leadership and apparatus – with all the resources at their command – can be expected to do what they can to prevent Mamdani from taking office and leading New York City down the path indicated in his campaign platform.

3. The overwhelming bulk of political news and opinion outlets – print media, radio, television, online, etc. – are business enterprises within which there is a definite slant that favors the capitalist system. This is the case even if the functioning of anti-capitalist radicals is tolerated or, in some cases, even encouraged on the fringes or in the cracks and crevice of the system. Whether in the news media, in the political parties, or in the economy, however, no faction of the billionaire oligarchy (whether liberal or conservative or centrist, and aside from a stray individual here or there) is likely to give way to the assault that Mamdani seems poised to mount on capitalism’s sacred “rights” or power.

4. If Mamdani continues to have sufficient support to win the general election and remain in office, and if he remains true to his convictions and program, the dilemma remains that New York is a single city within the world’s most powerful capitalist country. This is also setting aside the fact that New York itself is home to Wall Street and happens to be the financial heart of the U.S. capitalist system, intimately connected to that system by innumerable threads. Such facts as these by themselves impose immense limits on what a serious socialist Mayor will be able to accomplish “in the belly of the beast.” If this results in an inability to come through on his campaign promises, his base of support, with the morale and credibility of his movement and the socialist cause, will be in danger of eroding dramatically.

The question is whether such things as these will prove to be insuperable obstacles or exciting challenges to Mamdani and his movement. Will he end up – as so many on the Left have done – by diluting his program, compromising his principles, and settling for minor accomplishments within the capitalist order, simply to survive and maintain at least some shreds of relevancy? Or will he and his comrades find ways to do better than that? Whatever happens, there will be lessons to learn to strengthen future struggles.

It should be remembered that some defeats can have the quality of victories – if the good fight is fought and morale is high, if compromise is kept within limits and lies are kept at bay, if consciousness is raised and experience gained, if new forces are drawn into greater understanding and activism, if activists and cadres become more knowledgeable and adept at advancing the struggle.

On the other hand, defeats are not necessarily inevitable. It may be that the forces of repression and tyranny will weaken and prove unable to do what they would like to do – or even collapse from their own weaknesses and contradictions. And the ongoing capitalist crisis (which made it possible for Mamdani’s campaign to triumph) may help to generate more insurgencies and socialist victories elsewhere that could come to the aid of “socialist” New York.

There will be much to learn from what happens next. And perhaps some of us will contribute or add to what they, New York comrades are able to do.

United States Democrats (US) Democratic Socialists of America Donald Trump far right

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