“Socialism one city”
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There is a short article on one of his policies in this month’s Socialist Standard:
” the means of production are the common heritage of all and are under democratic control, then the profit motive and the price system can be abolished. Wealth can be produced solely for people to use. People can have free access not only to travel facilities but to all the other things they need to live and enjoy life. Goods will not be priced, but will be available for all to take freely according to their needs”
Thank you ALB!
Here is an adapted version in Spanish:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/898984151243744/permalink/1523583258783827/
Should we be arguing that, if Mamdani’s bunch can increase rent controls, there might be a temporary improvement to workers’ living standards but the law of value will operate on wages and the end result will merely be a redistribution of surplus value away from the rentiers and towards the employers?
The main problem with those social democratic reformists ( calling themselves socialists ) is that when they fail, or their reformist programs can not be implemented, the capitalists blame it on socialism.
His program is new for the American ( USA ) workers, but it is not new for the Europeans and some Latin American countries, who have also elected social democrats, and socialism is not a dirty word.
It was implemented after the economic boom of the post-war period and high taxation on the capitalist class, but most of those programs have been reversed.
Some right-wing presidents and dictators have implemented programs of land reform for the peasants, price control, and rent control, and they have not worked; on the contrary, they have created more economic problems.
A president or a state minister can not control the market system.
In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez implemented some free programs for the workers, including housing, but they failed because capitalism must produce profits to avoid economic crisis.
ste finch
Participant
Should we be arguing that, if Mamdani’s bunch can increase rent controls, there might be a temporary improvement to workers’ living standards, but the law of value will operate on wages and the result will merely be a redistribution of surplus value away from the rentiers and towards the employers?
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The main socialist argument, which is not the argument of the leftwinger, is that taxation produces a heavy burden on the capitalist profits, and to implement it, taxation on the capitalists must be increased, and the capitalists are going to push back, and the state would be forced to eliminate the program.Most rich people, landowners, and landlords are against those reforms because they know that they will affect their profits.
Real estate in New York is very expensive, and it produces high rental income
It might temporarily increase the standard of living of the workers for a short period of time, but nothing is free in a capitalist society
.Those programs must be implemented using higher taxation on the capitalists; it is a tax law, like Obamacare is a tax law, and that is the reason why the capitalists want to eliminate it.
The DSA is saying that the workers have defeated corporations, the capitalists and capitalism, but how?
The corporations are still and will continue producing surplus values, capitalism is still alive, the capitalists are still controlling the economy and the capitalist state, it is their economy and their superstructure.
‘Socialism” in one country, one region and one city is only an illusion created by the Bolsheviks and their variants
Real estate businesses are still producing fictitious capital; they produce capital from land royalties, which is not real capital. Workers are the only ones who can produce real social value, and in political economy, it indicates that planet Earth has no value.
In New York, most factory jobs were exported to China, Vietnam and other asian countries by the capitalists, and the republican and democratic governments supported those decisions, to produce more profits, and that increased the army of the unemployed to compete with each other for lower wages.
They continue displacing poor people from ethnic neighbourhoods to renovate and build expensive residences that the workers can not afford.
The DSA is only infiltrating their own members inside of a capitalist political party that is assimilating them, and they have approved several anti-worker measures passed by the Democratic Party. If you go to bed with dogs, you will get fleas.
They are just making propaganda and reactivating the Democratic Party, which was defeated by another capitalist party during the last election.
They compete with each other, taking turns to oppress and control the working class, which shows that left and right are just two wings of the same bird, known as capitalism.
https://www.dsausa.org/statements/zohran-mamdani-wins-national-political-committee-statement/. Their candidates are part of the Democratic Party; even more, Bernie Sanders, who calls himself independent, is also an affiliate of the Democratic Party
Citizen of the world!
Your analysis is absolutely correct — I do not share the illusion I saw among the young people in the report from the program Democracy Now! That is the great difference between appearance and reality!
Marxism is a science — it is the instrument that allows us to make this important distinction.https://www.anh-academy.org/community/blogs/price-controls-and-food-access-lessons-from-venezuela
Food price control in Venezuela
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9675889/
Rent control in Argentina
Removal of rent control in Argentina
https://www.britannica.com/money/land-reform
Land Reforms, also implemented by a dictator and supported by a communist party.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0739885923000173
Free transportaiton
Free college tuition, as well as Peron in Argentina, implemented a free tuition program too.
Most of his reforms have already been implemented in other countries, especially third-world countries; nothing new. Some universities had free transportation for the students, and others had their own transportation, free meals, textbooks sold without any profits by the universities, and open admissions
This is the list of the so-called socialist parties of the whole world that are part of the world social democracy and the international socialist. Several of them have implemented the same reforms.
https://www.internacionalsocialista.org/politicas-progresistas/miembros/
It looks as if, in promising free buses, Mamdani was promising something that the Mayor of New York doesn’t have the political power to deliver. And is admitting it here:
“However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state-controlled agency, sets bus policy and fare structures. Mamdani lacks direct authority to implement the change unilaterally, requiring state legislative action and potential state funding to replace fare revenue. The MTA typically collects approximately $1 billion annually from bus fares. State Senator Jabari Brisport, a Democratic Socialist ally of the mayor, has discussed the possibility of securing state funding for free bus rides, but such action remains unlikely without significant shifts in state politics or budget priorities.”
I don’t know if he mentioned that proviso in his election campaign.
Free Buses and Housing Reform: Mamdani Outlines Ambitious Agenda Despite Budget Constraints
He is not the new kid in the block.
One after one of his bourgeois reforms is going to be blocked, and then the leftists are wondering why workers are electing right-wing populist candidates, and they always invent a conspiracy theory instead of blaming it on themselves.
Brazil has the largest free transportation system. Bolsonaro was not able to eliminate the free transportation system.
In 1968, subway fare was 0.20. Lyndon B Johnson ( who was a teacher ) implemented several reforms that turned public universities practically free, and instead of taking back loans, students used to receive funding from the states and the federal government. Instead of JFK, the “progressive” one was LBJ, and he also implemented Medicaid
In some third-world countries, universities had free transportation, and they had their own buses, cheap meals, and cheap boarding houses supervised by the university
He is certainly not a “new kid on the block,” and the recurring pattern you describe points to a deeper structural problem rather than individual political failure. When reformist governments promise improvements within capitalism, they inevitably collide with economic limits they cannot control — investment decisions, profitability, state budgets, and global competition. When reforms stall or are reversed, disappointment follows, and many workers understandably turn elsewhere, sometimes toward right-wing populists who appear to challenge the status quo more decisively.
Historical examples like the reforms under Lyndon B. Johnson, subsidized education, or public transportation systems in countries such as Brazil show that significant social concessions can exist within capitalism. Free or subsidized services, however, were never simply the result of goodwill; they emerged under specific economic and political conditions — periods of growth, social pressure, or geopolitical competition. When those conditions change, reforms become vulnerable to cuts or restructuring, regardless of which party governs.
This helps explain why debates framed as a struggle between “progressive” and “conservative” administrations often miss the underlying issue. Policies may differ, but governments operate within the same economic framework, which ultimately prioritizes accumulation and fiscal constraints over permanent social guarantees.
The recurring cycle — reform, limitation, frustration, and political backlash — suggests that the problem may not lie primarily in voter misunderstanding or conspiracies, but in the expectation that lasting social security can be achieved through reforms that leave the basic economic structure unchanged.
Understanding this dynamic may be more useful than attributing political shifts solely to ideology or manipulation, since it highlights why similar outcomes reappear across different countries and historical periods.All those reforms were approved during the pos war boom and during the industrialization in several countries, and high taxation on the capitalist classes in some countries; most of those reforms have been eliminated, and austerity plans have been implemented.
The idea that the LBJ government was more progressive than the illusory image created about JFK is also shown in the SPGB articles published on SOYMB
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-real-jfk-conspiracy.html
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