This is great! Can’t wait for him to no be able to do anything due to gridlock from the NYC democratic party machine and have to capitulate constantly, and then the massive Centrist Lib media apparatus will blame every problem plaguing NYC (even if the problems predated his mayoralship) which will give the Dem establishment more ammunition to blame all their woes on the progressive wing of the party and sell disenfranchised urban poor voters on establishment Dems.
Really a big fucking win for us. Letting the city sink under and establishment Dem was totally not the smarter fucking move.
Also if anyone calls me a doomer for this take I’ll be recording your usernames and asking you how you feel about this post in a year from now.
But is he doing socialist organizing?
Election campaigns can be a tactic, like I said, but if that’s the extent of his organizing then it can’t accomplish anything else other than temporary electoral wins.
This is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, delivering concrete wins purely through electoralism alone is absolutely impossible. If he doesn’t have a larger strategy, other tactics to fall back on besides getting elected, then he’s just going to run headfirst into the obstacles outlined in the OP.
Is there any strategy outside getting elected?
The rent freeze on subsidized housing is something that Mamdani can deliver day one. No possibility of interference from the reactionaries. As others in this thread have pointed out, Mamdani and DSA strategy also builds class consciousness.
I get where you are coming from, but I think that delivering these wins is itself the strategy. Just keep fighting, and we’ll get there.
Electoral strategy builds electoral consciousness. It seems to me that voters can’t imagine doing anything other than voting - that’s a serious problem!
A rent freeze would rule tho
NYC-DSA has seen a massive increase in members during his campaign. His campaign has created more socialists that have joined a political party. For socialists in the current environment, I think that’s one of the best outcomes of electoralism.
DSA isn’t exactly a political party though as much as I wish it were. That said, I think it’s still good people are joining. There are a lot of political lessons people will never learn unless they actually get involved in organizing work.
if you want DSA to be a political party one way for that to happen is to have the chapters in places like NYC get really big.
maybe there’s a path where dems continue to be geriatric losers, PSL forms a vanguard, and major DSA chapters get a few normie wins like this one and they can legitimize the vanguard instead of repeating the mistakes of the SPD.
If DSA becomes something akin to say the Sunrise Movement where members are just volunteers and staff run the whole thing then it’s not going to legitimize any sort of future vanguard. This is a real risk because frankly most people joining DSA have more familiarity volunteering and running liberal non profits than they have experience with the real participatory democracy of a vanguard party. So yes it’s great if DSA can attract more members. However that’s not sufficient for it to be a meaningfully stepping stone towards socialism.
You are correct. I’m definitely speaking to my personal ambitions lol. DSA is in a stage where they’re trying to figure out what a successful socialist party in America looks like.
Is there a strategy to turn the DSA into a real Party outside the Democrats? Because unless there’s a plan to form a real Party they’re just sheepdogging.
I won’t bore you with all the details, but yes. The details are currently what’s being worked on, but there is a consensus among DSA leaders outside of the “right” caucuses that DSA needs to begin experimenting with operating as a fully independent political party where possible. I could write a longer post if you’re interested, but it would be mostly internal politics stuff.
Sorry, let me clarify.
Is Mamdani pursuing such a strategy?
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