Talked to somebody who was there and she said it was an spontaneous response that was angry.
Rather a typical political rally supporters at which supporters just boo the capacity crowd there of 13,000 people knew very distinctly that the Governor held the power to sign off on Mamdani’s platform to do so.
In that sense things in NYC are proceeding in a way not seen in a very long time. In other words the argument Occupy Wall St was making in 2011, that the 1% own the country and its elections, seems now to be becoming even more mainstream in the philosophy of the proles.
It’s easy to be cynical now, and there’s things to be concerned in this campaign. It’s not gonna be perfect. But man, you really do feel like something is afoot around these parts.
I think there’s huge upside in this election. Beyond the powerful symbolism of a Socialist being elected in the Financial Capitol of the World the potential of the success of real material transformation in people’s lives can and will reverberate around the world.
People ain’t playing anymore.
Everybody arguing about if mamdani is based or cringe is missing the whole point. His success is a manifestation of a working class becoming aware of itself. Regardless of if he’s gonna press the communism button or be the most racist cop in NYPD’a history, the people are ready for socialism.
I just hope the enthusiasm isn’t cooped by entryist bullshit, which it likely will be.
Like, I really hope Zohran is hiding his power levels, but the likelihood is that he turns his back on the left as a succdem is wont to do.
I just hope the enthusiasm isn’t cooped by entryist bullshit, which it likely will be.
That’s up to us
This is how I’ve been feeling about it, younger people are looking for a better alternative that gives them hope for the future and older folks are looking for someone to actually fight the fascist administration.
The masses are ready for an idealogical shift and any tool that can shift that is something we should use.
It’s going to be cringy as hell from an anti-imperialist standpoint, but America going full Democratic socialist and redirecting resources from the military to social program would offer a lot of reprieve to the global south.
redirecting resources from the military to social program
Imperialism is what creates the superprofits. Most likely thing to happen is that people realize not being the world superpower means not having as high a quality of life, so the superimperialism stays.
All the spending on good social programs and public infrastructure in the US is coming directly from the labor of people in the global south. Who most of the socialist politicians in the US won’t even mention or give the time of day.
not being the world superpower means not having as high a quality of life, so the superimperialism stays.
China is not a global imperialist power. Does the average American have a higher quality of life than the average Chinese?
I think Americans “on average” absolutely have a higher quality of life right now. And China’s rise has involved siding with the US and getting US investment, so they’ve definitely benefitted from imperialism. That was basically the deal they made with the US, to abandon the global anti-imperialist struggle.
China’s rise has involved siding with the US and getting US investment, so they’ve definitely benefitted from imperialism.
That’s an incredibly broad brush to paint with. Is every country imperialist except North Korea, Eritrea, Cuba, Myanmar, and maybe a few others, for participating in the WTO and receiving American FDI?
Ultimately my point is that you don’t need extracted profits from alienated labor overseas in order to be prosperous.
No yeah, none of the socdems are going to reverse the process, though. If they pull back military resources, they’re never getting that foothold back if they change their mind about it.
They’re being played right back into thenDem establishment where things fizzle out and never materialize because the leadershit actively stomps out leftist policies. Even with supermajority veto proof numbers as in the case of California, the Governor and speaker squash policy after policy that gets past and then no one fights back and there is no political price to be paid.
As long as people see the DNC as the vehicle for change, then nothing will change. This is just AOCIA
all over again.reminder that the other half of socialist electoralism is using the inevitable legislative lockout as evidence to agitate towards revolution
Literally this, the goal is to win by all means necessary.
It’s heartening hearing stuff like this after being surrounded by chuds all day.
Old white racists are the worst
For some friendly skepticism, which parts of this suggest class consciousness?
If you talk to comrades on the ground who have been organizing for Mamdani, they will tell you all about how struggling with people for a cause that, at least in theory, is the manifestation of the working class taking action together to try and accomplish something that exerts their power and attempts to get something materially has been tremendous for developing class conscious locally.
It’s the act of striving for something better collectively that develops class consciousness.
Do you think they’re using mamdani as a way to take the temp of the country in order to help determine how much they need to keep their foot on the trump pedal to quash stuff. Or maybe to find out how many concessions they need to make to get people to not care?
It’s absolutely the realisation that they can’t beat him so they have to instead coopt his energy into the democrats making people believe that the dems can be changed to represent what he represents. They know that’s impossible. They would be more concerned if he were a person who could build a huge following and then take that following away from the party to something else but as he wasn’t born in the US his charisma doesn’t carry that threat, he can’t grow into a figure any bigger than state level, he can’t even be as big a problem as Bernie was.
So yeah I don’t think they care. They’ll just use his energy to make people believe in the dems. What matters is people that radicalise around the fringes.
This is what they would do if they were smart, but a significant portion of the Dems still regard their constituents as serfs, wholly undeserving of any sort of concessions or relief even if it were in the best interests of preserving the Empire. They are mercenaries who do whatever their short-sighted donors pay them to do, and if their constituents don’t like it, well, I hope they like Trump!
The ultimate shortcoming of social democratic reformism is that it is a project driven by the desire to add creature comforts to the Death Star. Get some lower rents, better wages, better education and transit infrastructure and it doesn’t matter which governments we overthrow or which people we genocide. The billionaires still get to organize society and decide any significant matters of state policy. In truth, Bernie Sanders was their golden fucking ticket to reform the Empire, cut out a lot of the obscene waste and inefficiency, and position the US to remain competitive through the 21st century. They didn’t even consider it for a second. Not in 2016, not in 2020, and nothing is different today. They would rather accumulate the titles to empty luxury condos built with foam-clad particle board in a country full of illiterate peasants.
In the best case, Mamdani won’t be a revolutionary figure, but even in the apparent case, leading the biggest city in the US as a figure in the mold of Sanders, the amount of ire he draws from institutional power for basic policies like rent control and free transit is utterly discrediting to all of these institutions. They would be much better served by embracing and cooping him wholeheartedly, making the financial speculators take a haircut, and building a workforce of educated, LOYAL, and healthy subjects who aren’t living under conditions of debt peonage. Nothing would do more to take the wind out of the sails of revolutionary communism than putting the Millennials in houses and guaranteeing some plausible form of retirement that they won’t get sick and die before reaching, or see their 401Ks gambled away by the world’s most obvious charlatans and perverts if they suffer long enough. Across the board, they could buy themselves another generation or two by doing this, yet they are utterly incapable. Every day they fire up a brand new think tank to try to market doing absolutely fucking nothing as “Abundance,” or to frame the absolute failure of Liberalism as the aftermath of implementing socially progressive policies they never even entertained.
As much as these social democrats won’t save us, they do a tremendous job of showing us how few allies we have. How essential it is to plant the seeds of the social organizations which will replace these decrepit liberal civic institutions. How quickly “our sacred values” like truth, democracy, and the rule of law disappear the second the rent-seeking parasites are forced to consider running a tighter ship.
The ultimate shortcoming of social democratic reformism is that it is a project driven by the desire to add creature comforts to the Death Star.
This is correct, and it’s quite a silly little situation, but if the Death Star staff are discontented, it offers more opportunities for the rebellion to defend themselves from the death star, or maybe they forget how to keep the thing running altogether. It’s quite heartening from that point of view.
By this analogy, wouldn’t you want the worst Death Star administrator rather than one who makes the Death Star employees have better working conditions?
One thing sort of leads to the other, as we are discussing in this thread.
What also breaks the analogy is that the death star was destroyed into non-existence. The colonial entity should be destroyed, but the land itself will still exist after decolonization.
Nothing would do more to take the wind out of the sails of revolutionary communism than putting the Millennials in houses and guaranteeing some plausible form of retirement that they won’t get sick and die before reaching, or see their 401Ks gambled away by the world’s most obvious charlatans and perverts if they suffer long enough.
Certainly; why, if things just got that bad, the American people would have no debateable choice but to become communists, as 180 years of historical materialism has consistently predicted. They would have a deep and accurate knowledge of just who stole their surplus value and they definitely wouldn’t be swayed by any number of political illusions, even if they had a smaller and smaller window of what was politically feasible. Their Homo economicus sense would spring into action and conclude that it is in their best interest to become revolutionaries and destroy everything they were familiar with. There would be no learned helplessness, no clinging to the old world, no despondency, no disparate rage, just a cool, rational switch in behavior.
Maybe the most revolutionary communist thing you can do is to directly drive as many people in America into poverty. If it doesn’t lead to revolution then they’re just not poor enough.
As a very dedicated and astute communist yourself, I’m certain you happen to be quite destitute personally.
Who is “they” in this case?
I wish Kshama Sawant (sp) got some more attention.
The ownership class
Newsom should have her on his podcast
the DNC ghouls got crushed and are trying to save face with very late endorsements, there isn’t a big plan behind it.
find out how many concessions
the Dems are not going to turn around and make any concessions they’re not forced to by intense political pressure. neoliberals do not care about public satisfaction, they do not strategically plan concessions to win the support of the public, they fundamentally loathe the public interest and the miniscule controls it has on capitalist rule. look at labour if you want to see into the DNC’s plans and ambitions if they weren’t hounded by these pesky proles
comrades in NYC, does it feel anything like when Bernie was at the peak of his 2020 run?
I don’t really have an opinion on mamdani. I don’t live in nyc so even if I had an opinion about him it doesn’t matter what it is so I’m just not bothering.
