The following is a speech delivered at a public meeting of the PSL in New York City on Nov. 8. It has been slightly edited for publication.
Long-time Democratic Party politician Bill de Blasio easily won New York City’s mayoral election, taking 73 percent of the vote—one of the most lopsided victories in decades. De Blasio was an activist in social-democratic circles in the 1980s; he later served as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager and then climbed up the ladder of local offices to become the city’s Public Advocate and finally launch his bid for mayor.
De Blasio unexpectedly surged in the primary season against better-known and better-financed rivals. While de Blasio benefited from the coincidental mistakes of the other candidates, his rise is no accident of history. Rather, it must be explained in the context of the current phase of class struggle.
From above, the city’s ruling class is suffering from a growing crisis of legitimacy among poor and working people. From below, there is a popular mood yearning for progressive and even radical change. That mood has sporadically broken out into open struggle, but remains largely formless—it does not have an organized expression, political program, ideology or clear plan of action. De Blasio’s ability to ride that popular mood to victory is a reflection of both its social significance and its political underdevelopment.
The rejection of the right-wing’s program
Although the city’s voters are overwhelmingly registered Democrats, the city has had a Republican mayor for the last 20 years. The notorious racist Rudolph Giuliani and the billionaire Michael Bloomberg emphasized their “toughness” on crime along with “quality of life” initiatives geared towards winning the support of the privileged and upper classes.
Meanwhile, they attacked labor unions, corporatized the education system under mayoral control, eliminated affordable and public housing, and built up an enormous police state apparatus in oppressed communities. The Republican candidate Joe Lhota ran on a platform to continue this Republican program.
By contrast, de Blasio ran as the anti-Bloomberg, organizing his campaign around the slogan of the “tale of two cities” where luxury and ease of life is enjoyed by a narrow few, while the vast majority experience skyrocketing rents, stagnant wages, underfunded education, declining social services and racial profiling.
This message, which co-opted aspects of a socialist campaign, struck a chord with many voters in New York. Many around the country who are fed up with growing inequality and frustrated by the semi-fascist Tea Party’s domination of “opposition” politics heralded de Blasio’s campaign as the rebirth of progressivism. Indeed, in his acceptance speech, de Blasio declared that New Yorkers had chosen a “progressive path.”
The low voter turnout of 24 percent reflected the overall skepticism that local elections can deliver significant change. Nonetheless, de Blasio’s thrashing of Lhota is broadly reflective of the politically-engaged sectors of the working class who desire political leadership that stands up to Wall Street and the decades-long corporate assault.
That is what people want. It does not mean de Blasio will deliver. But it is critical for revolutionaries and working-class militants to start with a recognition of the popular mood, and take notice of what people want. Similar to what people expressed in the election of Obama, there is a hunger for thorough change.
As with Obama’s election, young progressives, labor unions, the Black and Latino communities and LGBT community carried the day for the Democratic candidate. The aesthetic of de Blasio’s campaign, built around his interracial family, itself became a significant factor as a representation of the city’s diverse character.
The country’s demographic shift away from the white majority, the diminishing impact of Cold War anti-communism, and the shifting attitudes of young people on issues of gender and LGBT rights (among other issues) have created a powerful undercurrent to national politics, trending in a progressive direction.
De Blasio’s role for the ruling class
While de Blasio has rhetorically and aesthetically tapped into the popular mood, his tenure in office will of course be very different. As Liberation pointed out previously, de Blasio has gone out of his way to prove himself amenable to the needs of Wall St. and the city’s real estate kings.
In well-publicized meetings, de Blasio met with these billionaire rulers to calm their fears and assure them he would not radically rock the boat. He has a long record as part of the Democratic Party establishment with strong links to the Clinton family, liberal billionaire George Soros, and even Republican primary candidate and billionaire John A. Catsimatidis.
De Blasio’s campaign received huge donations from the city’s elite, many of whom undoubtedly would have preferred a Bloomberg-type candidate, such as Lhota.
The ruling class is extremely class-conscious and understands that the primary function of elections is to maintain social peace without upsetting the fundamental system. Large sectors of the capitalist class will let their party and ideological loyalties slide in the interests of this broader goal.
It is not only revolutionaries, after all, who observe the growing frustration of the city’s working class and poor people. The ruling class is also paying attention, and large sections of it clearly gave de Blasio a wink and a nod, and barrels full of cash, instead of going all out to defeat him.
For de Blasio to have any credibility, he will have to deliver some of his smaller reform promises, and he has a City Council dominated by “progressive” allies who will help him get some things done quickly. But no matter what reforms are introduced, his larger social role, as far as the ruling class is concerned, is as a buffer against the mass anger of those “left behind” during the Guliani-Bloomberg years.
These reforms will of course be half-measures. He says he is against Stop and Frisk, but he will not affect the NYPD occupation of oppressed communities. He says he will replace Ray Kelly with either Philip Banks III, the current chief of departments, or former NYPD and LAPD commissioner William Bratton. Both support Stop and Frisk and other tactics based around the constant harassment of Black and Brown communities.
He says he will promote new affordable housing but he has no real program to take on the gentrification machine.
He says he is pro-labor, and will negotiate with the unions, but he will still fight for concessionary contracts. In short, de Blasio is all for changing those things that don’t change the system, treating some symptoms but never challenging or mentioning the deeper disease of capitalism.
De Blasio and the people’s movement
The corporate media is comparing de Blasio to many of New York’s liberal and social-democratic mayors from the New Deal era and the 1960s. But this comparison is superficial if it only looks at individual politicians and their campaign rhetoric.
What was the social function of those mayors? Those mayors were trying to channel the labor, civil rights, women’s and other social movements into the electoral process and the Democratic Party. De Blasio is similarly co-opting the language of the Occupy movement, which, despite its weaknesses and short lifespan, expressed the feelings of millions and reintroduced inequality as a popular political theme.
There is a difference from the 1930s and the 1960s. The Democratic Party these days is not so much trying to take control of large social movements. Rather, they would like to prevent one from developing by channeling the broader progressive mood behind their leadership. From the ruling-class perspective, it’s vitally important to have a second party to offer this flexibility.
Regardless of the reforms it introduces, the Democratic Party has tried to forestall the one thing that can truly uplift poor and working New Yorkers: a new militant social movement that mobilizes and empowers millions of people to take action and lay claim to their schools, their jobs and their communities. In other words, real power.
And that’s where those of us in this room, along with many other revolutionary-minded activists around the city and country, come into play.
We have to continue building that movement to wage an unceasing struggle to put the working class, poor, and oppressed in the driver’s seat. There are no shortcuts to get there. It requires building class-consciousness and organization, and a revolutionary socialist party, not just to reform the system but overturn it.
There is no reason for us to be upset that De Blasio stole a lot of socialist rhetoric and slogans. We embrace the fact that people want change. We embrace the fact that people are rejecting the right-wing Republican agenda that has dominated for so long.
The job of revolutionaries is, through initiating and participating in the various class struggles, to show people where Democratic officials like de Blasio really stand, and show them that their desire for change can only be satisfied with a new system, with a revolution. Those radical slogans that people like so much can only be made a reality by boldly laying siege to corporate power, to the landlords, to the racist police; they can only be made a reality with a revolutionary program, not just an electoral one.
The right-wing media tried to red-bait de Blasio, going so far as to run a photo of his face superimposed onto a Soviet flag on the cover of the New York Post. These anti-communist attacks had zero effect. The people aren’t scared by those Cold War tricks anymore.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation does not think socialism is too far ahead of the people. As Fred Hampton said, “Socialism is the people. If you’re afraid of socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.” We say that socialism is actually the only economic and social system that corresponds with the people’s needs, and yes, their desire for change.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation did not run a candidate in this year’s mayoral election. The PSL initiated a campaign to write in the name of Black revolutionary Assata Shakur, who has been targeted anew by the FBI this year. Shakur is a survivor of racist, police violence. Since she was liberated from prison in 1979, and was given political asylum in socialist Cuba, she has had to look over her shoulder for the CIA. But this year she was put in even greater danger when the FBI put her on the top of its most wanted list and labeled her a “terrorist”
—which according to current military-legal doctrine could target her for assassination. While Shakur was not an official mayoral candidate, writing in her name was a way to show the government that people stand in solidarity with her. It was a simple way of saying that Shakur does not stand alone.
Campaign supporters distributed thousands of stickers with Shakur’s name all over the city, held street meetings in spite of police harassment, and presented an alternative to the lose-lose capitalist electoral process. Other groups officially supported this write-in effort including the People’s Survival Program, People’s Power Movement, and Association Pro Inmates Rights Ñeta of NYS. Many City College students and activists wrote in her name, as another front in the defense of the Morales Shakur Center, a way of affirming her heroism against the defamation of her legacy in the corporate media. We don’t know how many people wrote in her name—and we might not for months—but there is no question that the “Hands Off Assata” campaign has received tremendous visibility and buzz.
