What We Do in the Election Booth is Not the Same as Activism

Systemic Disorder || What are we voting for when we participate in elections? This question seems particularly pertinent these days for Left political activists in light of the recent victories of self-proclaimed democratic socialists, most notably the successful mayoral campaigns of Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson.

Socialism is not something that can be voted in. The attempt of Salvador Allende and his coalition of six parties in Chile in the early 1970s came to an end with the deadly military coup. Chileans received considerable improvements to their lives in the first year of the Allende administration before Chile’s corporate elite, firmly backed by the U.S. government and U.S.-based multinational corporations that held commanding positions in the Chilean economy, were able to shake off their disorientation and launch offensives to reverse the gains won and destroy any effort to end elite domination.

Regardless of the further advancements that were achievable had Chile been allowed to develop as its people wished, there can’t be socialism in one country. History has been clear on that point. Only a large enough bloc of countries with the ability to withstand the inevitable all-out assault on them by the capitalist powers will be able to defend their gains and eventually thrive. But let us return to the present. If there is no socialism in one country, there certainly will be no socialism in one city.

The elections of Mayor Mamdani in New York City and Mayor Wilson in Seattle are not going to bring the peoples of those cities socialism. Setting aside a handful of far right fanatics, embodied in the humorous in their own demented way but nonetheless pathetic New York Post front-page graphics screaming that the apocalypse is coming, it is hard to imagine many folks genuinely believe socialism is coming to either New York City or Seattle. For actual socialists, that is a bad thing. There are socialists who refused to see any good in Mayor Mamdani’s campaign and were ready with their critiques once he took office on January 1.

Perhaps there are some folks out there who seem to confuse elections with activism. I did vote for Mayor Mamdani (on the Working Families Party line, intentionally not on the Democratic Party line) and am glad I did. When I voted for him I didn’t vote for socialism. I voted for a candidate who campaigned to bring about a few reforms that can make many lives a little better and for the optimism that we don’t have to be governed by corporate centrists. I voted on that basis because that, realistically, is the best outcome we can reasonably expect from an election in a capitalist hyper-power, especially at the municipal level.

For those who do want socialism, that is what activism, in all its many forms, is for. But voting is something different because it is participation in existing political structures. There is nothing wrong with voting for a socialist candidate on a socialist ballot line as a protest vote — I do that myself — but such an act is a protest. Nothing more. And that is okay; we need more protest, not less. Should such a candidate actually be elected, he or she would be tightly constrained in what they could achieve. Mayor Mamdani and Mayor Wilson certainly will face constraints, and will need all the grassroots pressure that can be brought to bear to accomplish even a portion of their campaign programs. It was grassroots work that put both in office, both defeating centrists beholden to corporate interests.

Mayor Wilson’s victory was, in the words of John Burbank writing in The Nation, “won by the precariat: renters, transit riders, and democratic socialists who rallied, rang doorbells, created social media, and registered new voters.” As an appropriate signal, she was sworn into office on January 2 “by Pauline Van Senus, a low-income transit rider known as Seattle’s ‘transit fairy’ for cleaning bus stops throughout the city.” The mayor’s campaign website stressed housing justice, transportation justice, workers’ rights, environmental justice and education justice. Already having to deliver her first State of the City address, on February 17, she “outline[d] an agenda focused on affordability, public safety, and homelessness,” and promised several changes to increase the supply of affordable housing in an extraordinarily expensive city.

Similarly, Mayor Mamdani’s campaign was fueled by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) activists who organized a huge grassroots campaign built on talking to people one-on-one in the neighborhoods. (More than once I interacted with these grassroots folks.) His campaign centered on a badly needed rent freeze, building affordable housing, free buses, city-owned grocery stores that would sell food cheaper, labor protections, and initiatives for early childhood and education. Thus far, he has taken steps toward some of these goals, although bus fare is a state, not a city, responsibility. That he is off to a good start in his first seven weeks is indicated by the loudest criticism mounted against him is that he didn’t melt the snow from the January storm. That was the city’s first significant snowstorm in four years and was followed by a long period of extraordinarily cold weather. It would seem that the weather is beyond the powers of the mayor, so if such silliness is the best the right wing can come up with, he’s off to a good start.

Surely most of us would agree that were the campaign promises of the two mayors made into reality, that would be something good, and far better than what we would have received had their corporate centrist opponents prevailed. It is true that the democratic socialism on offer from DSA office-holders such as Mayor Mamdani, or from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, are reforms to capitalism, not actual socialism. Reforms under capitalism will eventually be taken away because we get them only because we organized sustained movements to achieve them and we can’t stay in the streets forever. Capitalism delivers inequality and misery, such as leaving hundreds of millions without access to sufficient food at the same time that as much as one-third of the world’s food is lost or wasted. Or a financial system bigger than a giant vampire squid that extracts so much money from the rest of us that the total amount of debt is more than three times the value of all economic activity produced in a year by the entire world. An economic system so unstable that five of the world’s most important central banks were compelled to throw US$19.3 trillion at the financial industry to prop it up after the 2008 economic collapse and the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

There are plenty more examples, but you get the point. We can’t vote this away. The power wielded by industrialists and financiers through the massive power and reach of their corporations and financial companies is overwhelming. Markets in capitalism, after all, are not neutral entities loftily sitting in clouds benignly picking winners and losers. They are simply the aggregate interests of the most powerful financiers and industrialists, and those interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the vast majority of humanity.

So is it inconsistent or short-sighted to hope for meaningful reforms from these two mayors, or from elections in general? If we maintain perspective, I don’t believe so. Reforms can be taken away, and often are, but what is the alternative? To give up? To sit on our backsides, point fingers and huff that we’ll do nothing until the revolution comes? Instead, shouldn’t our approach be to force whatever advances can be made until such time as a movement of movements powerful enough to challenge the capitalist status quo arises? Yes, we won’t have socialism in one city. We won’t achieve a better world through the ballot box. We do need to articulate at least the beginnings of a better world if we are to ever get there. 

Given the continual defeats and reverses of the past 45 years, even a few small steps in a better direction should be welcome. We have to start somewhere. Today is as good a day as any other.