After shocking the world with his electoral victory, Zohran Mamdani entered office as Mayor of New York City on January 1. On paper, he has an impossible task ahead of him. He’s promised to expand social services, make buses and childcare free, and lower grocery prices—but the city has a $5.4 billion budget deficit.

It is entirely possible to achieve Zohran’s program, and more, on the billionaire’s dime. But to do so, he needs to step outside the boundaries of bourgeois politics and rely on the power of his working-class base.

Break from bourgeois politics

Legally, Mamdani is required to balance the budget. But he cannot raise income taxes without approval from the state government in Albany. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul has repeatedly said that she will not accept his proposed tax increases on people making over $1 million.

Last month, Zohran laid out two options for balancing the budget:

The first path is the most sustainable and fairest: raising taxes on the wealthiest and corporations, and ending the drain by fixing the imbalance between what the City provides the State and what we receive in return.

If we do not go down the first path, the City will be forced to go down a second, more harmful path of property taxes and raiding our reserves—weakening our long-term fiscal footing and placing the onus for resolving this crisis on the backs of working and middle-class New Yorkers. We do not want to have to turn to such drastic measures to balance our budget. But, faced with no other choice, we will be forced to.

If you limit yourself to the narrow limits of bourgeois politics, these really do appear to be the only two options. In reality, there is a third, class-independent option: force the ruling class to pay through determined class struggle.

Zohran should not give an inch on “resolving this crisis on the backs of working and middle-class New Yorkers.” The working class is not responsible for the crisis—it is the crisis of the class enemy’s system. They should be the ones to pay for it.

Mobilizing the working class through strikes, rallies, and mass demonstrations could bring the capitalist economy to its knees and force the bosses into submission to pay for Zohran’s modest program—and much more.

The basis for organizing this sort of mass action already exists in the 100,000 volunteers who fueled Zohran’s victory last year. He should call on them and organized labor to launch just such a struggle.

Horse-trading in Albany

If, instead, Zohran chooses to accept the non-options given to him by the ruling class, and he forces the working class to fill the budget gap, he will be betraying the same people who propelled him into office.

Mamdani’s recent endorsement of Kathy Hochul’s reelection campaign indicates that he’s planning to rely on horse-trading in Albany rather than class struggle on the streets.

Some of Zohran’s social-democratic supporters see the endorsement as a “smart and sensible” move, a way to convince Hochul that they are “on the same side,” and that she should listen to his pleas to tax the rich.

A recent article in Jacobin lauded the maneuver: “This is what effectively wielding state power looks like; there’s no such thing as enacting transformational policies from a politician like Hochul without giving something in return.”

But the truth is that the Democratic Party cannot be relied on to defend the interests of ordinary workers. They represent the interests of the ruling class. Hochul will happily accept Mamdani’s support in hopes of boosting her popularity, while maintaining her refusal to raise taxes on the rich.

If Zohran continues to chase the approval of Hochul and the Democrats, rather than relying on the power of his working-class supporters, he will only be pulled further to the right.

Don’t give up without a fight

Zohran said there are two potential paths to follow. But the real options are class collaboration and outright betrayal, or class independence and class struggle.

Unfortunately, it seems Zohran is pursuing the first path. If he continues down this road, he will end up doing the ruling class’s dirty work for them—making the working class pay for the crisis of the capitalist system.

This will achieve the exact opposite of what Zohran and his supporters were hoping for. Rather than making socialism more popular, socialism will be associated with austerity and broken promises.

It will divide the working class by giving benefits to one section of the class at the expense of another. Working-class homeowners whose property taxes are raised to pay for free childcare will blame poor parents for their financial hardships, rather than the billionaires who exploit us all.

Zohran’s campaign spoke to the cost-of-living crisis and hatred of the political establishment that runs deeply in the working class. But he rarely spoke about the potential obstacles to carrying out his promises.

He said he’d pay for his program by taxing the rich. But he didn’t explain that the state has to approve tax increases and that the city council has to approve the budget. As a result, he couldn’t offer his supporters a strategy to get around these roadblocks.

Rather than expecting a difficult fight and preparing his supporters to wage it, many among Zohran’s working-class base are expecting easy, immediate results. This is a recipe for eventual demoralization, as they begin to realize that easy results aren’t forthcoming.

But there is no reason for demoralization. The working class has colossal potential power if it gets organized for a real fight.

If Zohran had properly prepared his base for this fight, if he had told them that achieving his program by infringing on the wealth of the richest 1% would require a concerted, class-independent effort, there would not be demoralization. There would be determination and a readiness to fight for the program that they elected Zohran to carry out.

Zohran does not have to—and should not—give up without a fight.

The opportunity still exists to break with the Democratic Party and organize a real struggle against New York’s billionaires. This struggle would be a beacon for the world working class, and one the RCA would enthusiastically take part in.