Zohran Mamdani has awakened immense hopes in workers and young people whose conditions of life have worsened in recent years. Their anger is real, it’s deep-seated, and it’s growing every day.

The socialist mayoral candidate came face to face with this class anger last November after the presidential election, when he walked around the Bronx and Queens interviewing Trump voters and hearing their concerns.

He understood that New York’s alleged “shift to the right” was in reality a shift toward anti-establishment politics in the face of a severe cost-of-living crisis. These voters, many of them immigrants themselves, struggled to afford groceries, utilities, and rent, and wanted to see an end to Biden’s wars in Gaza and Ukraine—things Trump has utterly failed to deliver. These weren’t “fascists,” but working-class people with working-class demands, looking to the only candidate who appeared to speak to their discontent.

By successfully tapping into the same discontent, Zohran rallied an army of over 50,000 volunteers to knock on over one million doors. He ended up winning 30% of the districts that Trump won in 2024. His campaign particularly energized young people who turned out in record numbers. Voters aged 25–34 had the highest turnout of any age group.

All of this has revealed an underlying frustration with the political establishment and a desire to fight back. He talked specifically about the problems of the working class and young people, and was the only candidate who appeared to be outside of the Democratic establishment.

Who fears Zohran?

While pollsters marveled at the unexpected margins of his win, and while his massive team of canvassers rejoiced in the result, C suites in Midtown Manhattan and Wall Street board rooms were gripped with panic and fear at the forces he could unleash.

The smear campaign in the media has only just begun, and will only intensify if he wins the general election this fall. The most pernicious attacks will come, not from the Republicans, but from the Democratic establishment, desperate to snuff out what they see as the “radical left” of the party. Another wing of the Democrats is cozying up to him today, in order to keep him within the limits of “acceptable” capitalist politics.

During an NPR interview with Zohran, the host pointed out that the Democratic Party establishment had not backed him, and asked how he intended to win their support. He responded:

I approach coalition building the way that we’ve approached every day of this campaign. We have to earn support, we have to earn endorsements. We’re seeing our coalition expand and a lot of it is a reflection of the fact that our victory on Tuesday was a decisive victory. We won with a vision that spoke to every single New Yorker, and ultimately what I think binds us together both with the endorsers who began this campaign with us and the ones who are joining us now is that shared belief that this is a city that should be affordable and by building a tent around affordability.

When the host asked again about Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries—“What needs to happen for them to come on side? Have you met with them?”—Zohran could have rejected those establishment politicians, explaining that of course they oppose him and his policies, because they’re faithful representatives of the billionaires. Instead, he took a decidedly softer approach:

I’ve appreciated the conversations I’ve had with them and the recognition of our campaign’s focus on affordability as being something that’s meeting this moment in time, and I’m looking forward to sitting down with both of them, because, ultimately, what we see in this primary election is an example of how we can also start to unite our party and build our party.

The first question to ask is what does Zohran mean by “our party”? Workers need a party that represents our class. In this interview, Zohran is referring to the Democrats and uniting the Democrats means united workers with Wall Street.  In fact, the experience of the Bernie Sanders primary campaigns in 2016 and 2020 shows that the capitalist Democratic Party will never tolerate even a mild “democratic socialist” program. The Democratic establishment would rather lose elections than “unite” around the programs of Bernie or Zohran. Rather than focusing on winning over the Democratic Party establishment through patient discussion, Mamdani needs to recognize that it represents the class enemy and must be defeated at any cost.

The need for a fighting stance

These initial capitalist attacks are mere child’s play compared to what’s in store the moment he takes a serious step that runs counter to the interests of the ruling class. Every socialist knows the powerful resistance that will meet any attempt to raise workers’ living standards. We live in a class society in which workers’ livelihoods can only improve at the expense of the capitalists’ profits, and vice versa. That’s what the class struggle is all about.

When asked in the same NPR interview how he would respond to corporations and wealthy New Yorkers who feared and opposed his candidacy, Zohran replied:

My job is to lead this entire city. My job is to address those very concerns that New Yorkers may have, be it for whatever basis. My commitment is now to have meetings with New Yorkers who may be concerned. Maybe it’s, you know, a business leader who is worried about the impact of my tax proposals, and I get to share the fact that these are proposals that will make it easier for them to attract and retain talent.

This is not the kind of message that can prepare the workers for an all-out fight against the capitalists—which is the only way to achieve even minor reforms within this system.

The best thing Zohran could do for the working class of New York is to tell the truth: the fight for affordability and other material gains will require open class struggle against the capitalists, their parties, courts, laws, and media. It will be an intense conflict against a determined enemy—one that cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. The interests of the working class have nothing in common with the city’s wealthy.

In 2021, Zohran told a DSA audience that the goal of our movement is not merely to raise class consciousness, but to achieve socialism. But his decision to work within one of the capitalists’ parties runs counter to this goal. / Image: Bingjiefu He, Wikimedia Commons

Class independence is the only way forward

In 2021, Zohran told a DSA audience that the goal of our movement is not merely to raise class consciousness, but to achieve socialism. The RCA agrees wholeheartedly with this outlook. However, Mamdani’s decision to try to work within one of the capitalists’ parties runs totally counter to this goal. The overarching principle guiding the politics of anyone who wants to achieve socialism can only be class independence.

In Zohran’s case, this would mean breaking from the capitalist Democratic Party and organizing his 50,000 volunteers into a new party that answers exclusively to the working class. Further, he could call on the 1.2 million member NYC Central Labor Council to affiliate to this new party, establishing a real workers’ party in the biggest city in the US. He has a golden opportunity before him. At a time where millions are discontented by both the Democrats and Republicans, a serious effort to launch a working-class party would transform and electrify US politics—not just in New York, but across the country.

Class independence is not about the pursuit of “purity politics” or an abstract fixation with an independent ballot line. It’s not about sticking rigidly to an orthodox dogma. It’s about breaking free from the deadly grip of the enemy class. It’s about following the only path that represents a step toward the end of capitalism and the beginning of socialism. The Democratic Party is not “our” party, as Zohran told NPR, but their party.

The only solution for the working class is a workers’ government—and the only road to a workers’ government starts with the establishment of a mass workers’ party nationally.

A realistic program for the class struggle

Communists stand 100% behind working-class demands for affordability. Not only do we favor publicly owned grocery stores—we’d argue that every grocery monopoly should be brought under public ownership and workers’ control. We not only favor “fast and free buses”—we say the entire transit system should be made fast and free.

As for the city’s housing crisis, a rent freeze is a start, but rents are already too high, and 240,000 families in NYC are on waiting lists for public housing. Rather than limit a rent freeze to the 28% of the city’s housing stock that’s “rent stabilized,” all rents should be capped at no more than 10% of household income for all tenants.

In a city with an estimated 90,000 vacant apartment units, 1-in-24 New Yorkers are homeless, living on the streets, in shelters, or doubled up in other people’s homes. By seizing the assets of institutional and absentee landlords and bringing these units into public ownership, the housing crisis could be solved immediately.

New York’s capitalists say they can’t afford the reforms Mamdani proposes. This is a lie. NYC has the most wealth of any city in the world—123 billionaires, and around 350,000 millionaires—roughly the same as the number of homeless New Yorkers. A combative plan to go after the obscene riches of the city’s 0.001% in order to grant dignified living conditions to the city’s working class would inspire millions and win their active support.

The ruling class would respond with threats of capital flight and economic sabotage, a wave of lawsuits and court injunctions, police repression of strikers and demonstrators, a vicious media war, and the intervention of the state governor and the federal government.

But these forces would be no match for a mass movement of the workers mobilized to defend their interests.