Beyond the Ballot Box
What the New York Election Means for the Left
Beyond the Ballot Box: What the New York Election Means for the Left
The recent New York City election represents an important political development, and many on the left are rightly celebrating the victory of Zohran Mamdani and the broader success of candidates associated with his political current. The election demonstrated that corporate money is not invincible, that AIPAC’s intervention can be defeated, and that a growing section of the public is increasingly willing to challenge establishment orthodoxies on inequality, Palestine, housing, and economic democracy.
Those developments matter.
Just as significant was the exposure of the continuing limitations of the Working Families Party (WFP). Once again, the WFP demonstrated that it is not an independent political party in any meaningful sense.
Despite its rhetoric, WFP remains structurally committed to operating within the Democratic Party ecosystem, repeatedly prioritizing establishment alliances over the difficult work of building durable independent political power. The New York election highlighted a contradiction that has long existed within progressive electoral politics: organizations that claim to challenge the status quo often become invested in preserving the institutions and relationships that sustain it.
Bottom line: The election has shifted the political terrain, and that is a good thing.
But socialists and movement organizers should approach this moment with both enthusiasm and caution.
The greatest danger is that many people will draw the wrong lesson. Elections are a front of struggle. They matter. They can create opportunities, open political space, win reforms, and help popularize transformative ideas. Yet history teaches that elections alone cannot and will not produce the structural changes required to transcend capitalism.
From the reformist parties of Western Europe to the experience of Salvador Allende’s Chile, governments elected on transformative platforms encountered fierce resistance from economic elites, state institutions, and international capital whenever they threatened fundamental property relations. Lasting structural change has only emerged when electoral gains were combined with organized social power rooted in labor movements, mass organizations, and institutions capable of challenging capitalist dominance both inside and outside the state.
The US Left has repeatedly fallen into the trap of electoralism—the belief that if we simply elect the right people, socialism will emerge through legislative victories and administrative reforms. That illusion has been tested repeatedly over the last century, from European social democracy to the experiences of left governments in Latin America. Electoral victories can be important, but without organized social power outside the state they remain vulnerable to capital strikes, media campaigns, judicial intervention, bureaucratic resistance, and outright repression.
This debate is not new.
Going back to the nineteenth century, socialist movements have been divided over whether capitalism can gradually be reformed into socialism. Eduard Bernstein famously argued that socialism could emerge through an accumulation of democratic reforms. Karl Kautsky occupied a more complicated position but ultimately shared the belief that socialist transformation would be largely achieved through political and electoral advance. Revolutionary socialists, by contrast, argued that capitalism’s fundamental structures cannot simply be legislated away.
Contemporary democratic socialism often inherits elements of this reformist tradition. To be clear, many rank-and-file members of organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America are dedicated organizers engaged in labor struggles, tenant organizing, mutual aid, Palestine solidarity work, and community campaigns. DSA itself contains multiple tendencies and caucuses with differing strategic perspectives. Yet its dominant electoral orientation remains tied to the Democratic Party, creating a persistent tension between transformative aspirations and institutional realities.
The question is not whether reforms matter. They obviously do.
The question is whether reforms strengthen the capacity of working people to challenge capitalist power or merely stabilize the system. This is the distinction between ordinary reforms and what André Gorz described as non-reformist reforms. Non-reformist reforms improve people’s lives while simultaneously building the organizational, political, and economic capacity needed for deeper transformation.
From this perspective, the central task before us is not simply electing better politicians. It is constructing a counter-hegemonic historical bloc capable of replacing the existing order. Here is my best take: How to Build a Solidarity Economy: The Logic of Non-Reformist Reforms
Antonio Gramsci’s insights are especially relevant in this moment. We are living through what he described as an organic crisis. The legitimacy of neoliberal capitalism is eroding. Millions understand that the existing system is failing to provide economic security, ecological sustainability, democratic accountability, or social cohesion. Yet the forces capable of replacing it remain fragmented and underdeveloped.
We are living in Gramsci’s interregnum:
The old world is dying, but the new world is still struggling to be born.
In such conditions, the primary challenge is not simply proclaiming that socialism is the answer. Nor is it defending particular organizations, traditions, or ideological identities. The challenge is building the institutions, relationships, and forms of collective power capable of making systemic transformation possible.
This requires what Gramsci called a war of position.
A successful war of position demands the construction of alternative institutions rooted in working-class communities. It requires worker cooperatives, community land trusts, mutual aid networks, public banks, tenant unions, labor unions, popular assemblies, political education programs, and other forms of democratic self-organization. These are not substitutes for political struggle. They are essential components of it.
This is why Build and Fight strategies and Dual Power institutions are so important.
Build and Fight recognizes that movements must simultaneously resist the harms of capitalism while constructing democratic alternatives. Dual Power means creating institutions that begin meeting people’s needs while cultivating the social capacity to challenge existing power structures. Together, they form the practical foundation of a solidarity economy strategy.
Class Struggle must remain central to this project.
Too often, discussions of solidarity economy and alternative institutions become detached from the realities of capitalist power. Worker cooperatives alone will not defeat capitalism. Community land trusts alone will not defeat capitalism. Electoral campaigns alone will not defeat capitalism. But when integrated into broader struggles involving organized labor, tenant movements, electoral campaigns, political education, and community self-organization, they become powerful tools for building working-class power.
This also requires intellectual humility. The left desperately needs a culture of principled experimentation.
We need organizations willing to test hypotheses, evaluate results, acknowledge failures, share lessons, and adapt to changing conditions. We need unity built around shared goals, solidarity in struggle, and accountability to real-world outcomes—not doctrinal certainty.
The New York election should therefore be understood neither as a revolution nor as a trivial event. It is a meaningful development within a larger struggle. It signals growing dissatisfaction with the existing order. It demonstrates that establishment forces can be challenged. It creates opportunities that did not previously exist.
But it does not eliminate the central task before us.
The path forward lies not in hero worship, electoral triumphalism, or organizational sectarianism. It lies in building a counter-hegemonic historical bloc rooted in Class Struggle, Dual Power, Solidarity Economy institutions, and non-reformist reforms. The challenge is to Build and Fight—to resist what is while constructing what could be.
That is how elections become more than moments of protest. That is how reforms become stepping stones rather than dead ends. And that is how the long process of transforming society can begin.
If this approach speaks to you, I hope you join hundreds of us when we convene in Denver Oct 15-18 at Resist & Build
Peace