The election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has brought the question of socialist governance to the fore. With executive power over America’s biggest city and the global capitol of finance in the hands of a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, how to actually wield power has immediately become a topic of debate on the left.
This is in part driven by the decisions Mamdani has made early in his term, which have been marked by a shift to the right and a string of broken promises. The Mayor and his supporters have attempted to justify this by invoking pragmatism; Mamdani wrote in his controversial endorsement of the state’s centrist governor:
“The success of our movement will be defined by the success of our government.”
But what does “success” mean in the context of a socialist governing from within the capitalist state? This question is key to understanding how winning an election can work either for or against the socialist project.
For answers, I’ll turn to an essay written by one of the intellectual architects of the democratic socialist movement that elected Mamdani: Erik Olin Wright. In 1978, Wright wrote a book called “Class, Crisis and the State” which reassessed Marx’s class analysis and the relationship between the left and the state. In the book’s conclusion, Wright dealt with the question of how the Left ought to govern if it’s able to find its way into power under capitalism.
I selected this work in part because I want to judge contemporary democratic socialism on its own terms, rather than from a perspective that dismisses it–along with the electoral strategy–entirely. My goal is to provide a framework for assessing electoral “success” from the perspective of democratic socialism itself.
I will walk through Wright’s arguments here, and then in a second installment I will make my own policy proposals based on Wright’s criteria.
Let’s start with Wright’s theory of change:
“The premise of the strategy of using the state to destroy the state is that in advanced capitalism the instrumental control of the summits of the state apparatus by the Left can serve to widen [the] gap between the structural limits on the state and the functional effects of the state. The implicit reasoning goes something like this: because of the gap between the class selectivity of the state and the class functionality of the state, a Left government can potentially enact certain reforms…which have the effect of changing the structure of the state itself in ways which erode the class selectivity of the state apparatuses. As the class selectivity of the state structure is eroded, the possibility of non-reproductive state interventions increases. Such interventions can potentially change the class structure itself in ways which broaden the structural limits on the state, thus increasing the gap between structural limits and functional capability still further. At some point, such a process leads to qualitative transformation (destruction) of the class character of the state itself. Once this occurs, a new type of state structure is established which can function to build socialist relations of production rather than simply undermine capitalist relations. Such a transformation represents a revolutionary break with capitalism.”
To put it succinctly: Non-reformist reforms of the state can be transformative, meaning certain kinds of incremental changes enacted by the state can eventually lead to revolutionary change.
Wright goes on to say, “My general conclusion will be that the conditions of advanced capitalist societies simultaneously generate new possibilities for such a strategy and recreate obstacles to any attempt by socialist forces to use the capitalist state. The decisive task of any socialist strategy is to grapple with this intensely contradictory situation, rather than to ignore the contradictions in the polemical defence of a specific choice.” (Unfortunately, I see a great deal of “polemical defence” and very little “grappling” in the current discourse.)
Wright then discusses four primary areas where these opportunities and obstacles arise.
- Fundamental and Immediate Interests
The first obstacle is the moderating influence of electoral campaigns: in the interest of winning over an electorate lacking class consciousness, left parties are often incentivized to make promises that are in the short-term interests of the working class, while sacrificing their long-term interests. This generally takes the form of reducing immediate economic pressure while reinforcing capitalism itself. For example: leaders are incentivized to stimulate capitalist growth in order to create jobs and tax revenue. This obstacle can be particularly acute during times of capitalist economic crisis.
These same conditions, however, create opportunities, namely to expand welfare and social programs. Welfare–like food stamps, free health care, and direct payments–encompasses any state transfer of resources without demanding that the recipients commodify their labor. Social programs–like public education and retirement benefits–reduce the time spent in the commodified labor force. As such, these two areas of state activity partially decommodify labor, challenge the logic of capitalism, and strengthen the bargaining position of the working class.
Capitalist crises inevitably lead to demands for cuts, the re-empowerment of capitalists, and the regressive transfer of working class wealth upwards (bail-outs, subsidies, tax cuts, etc.) Successfully resisting these demands is essential to advancing both the “fundamental” and “immediate” interests of the working class.
We can say, then, that one measure of socialist success is whether welfare and social benefits expand or contract during their time in office. Another is whether capitalism’s fundamental interests are prioritized in policy making.
But the same conditions create another opportunity: direct intervention by the state in the economy. This reduces the direct power of capitalists and gives the state–under socialist direction–the ability to make decisions favorable to the working class (Wright calls this “the progressive politicization of accumulation.”) Even when the state is under the control of a capitalist regime, redirecting any economic decision-making through the state creates the opportunity for greater influence by social movements than if the same decisions were being made in a boardroom.
Thus, another measure of socialist success is whether the state’s direct role in the economy increases or decreases during their time in office.
Wright is careful to point out that these measures–welfare, social benefits, state intervention–only erode capitalism if they are linked to class struggle. He says a Left government must make “the class content of its intervention explicit” and “constantly push against the constraints of capital,” without which capital can easily be reinforced and stabilized instead.
- Bureaucracy and Class Formation
This area deals with three elements of the state bureaucracy: 1) Its class composition at the top, 2) Its class composition at the bottom, and 3) The degree to which it is politically organized around social demands.
The leadership of the state bureaucracy is dominated by middle and upper class professionals, but in advanced capitalist societies, its lower rungs have been proletarianized. This creates an obstacle at the top and an opportunity at the bottom.
Wright says: “If a left government is to have any chance of instituting policies which serve the fundamental interests of the working class…it is essential that it not only be capable of legislating such policies, but of actually implementing them. This requires a capacity to control the actual workings of bureaucracy…[I]t is essential that state workers also be organized around political demands–demands for better social services, for smaller classes in the schools, for client and consumer participation in the management of state services, and so forth. The strategy of socialist penetration of the capitalist state, of using the state to destroy the state, will depend heavily upon the success of the Left in organizing state workers around such political demands.”
So, the measure of success here is whether socialists have successfully exercised control over the bureaucracy, remade it in the service of the working class, and brought it into the Left political coalition.
- Working Class Capacities and the Capitalist State
The third area is the most pivotal. Wright says, “The eventual possibility of a revolutionary break with capitalism in advanced capitalist societies depends upon the organization and strength of the working class. The most decisive issue in the strategy of using the capitalist state to destroy the state is thus: in what ways can the control of the government by the Left contribute to expanding and deepening the class capacities of the working class? If a Left parliamentary victory were to lead to a demobilization and disorganization of the working class, then even if such a government were to enact a series of progressive reforms, it is inconceivable that it could create the conditions for a socialist transformation.”
Wright makes clear that so long as the capitalist character of the state remains, it cannot contribute to that transformation, but a Left government can “act to minimize the disorganizing effects [on the working class] of the capitalist state.”
The first way he suggests doing so is to resist pressure from the bourgeoisie to curtail popular movements for the sake of “maintaining order”, and instead provide a “protective umbrella for the growth of popular social movements, [which] will determine the longer-term prospects for more fundamental structural change.” Wright particularly discourages giving in to “conservative socialist forces” that seek to “actively repress the extra-parliamentary revolutionary left” because the absence of an organized left opposition would inevitably lead the government to shift to the right under the relentless pressures and constraints of the capitalist state.
The measure of success here is whether a socialist government has repressed left political organizing or granted it greater space to operate.
The second approach is to combat the atomization and privatization of working class political life, which is limited to the individualist act of voting. Instead, Wright calls for a Left government to establish class-based “primitive organs of direct democracy on the fringes of the state administration,” such as “neighborhood councils, client-worker committees in state services, delegates from factory councils on state planning bodies, self-management structures in state industries, and so on.”
We might say that another measure of success is whether a Left government has expanded democracy and working class mobilization.
- The Problem of Repression
This final section deals with the violent apparatus of the state. Wright discusses only the military, but we might include the police here as well: “At some point, a Left parliamentary regime either has to abandon socialist objectives or directly confront and challenge the repressive apparatus of the state. In such a confrontation the decisive issues become the extent to which the ideological unity of the military itself has been eroded by socialist struggles, the extent to which that military apparatus can call on external imperialist forces for assistance, and the extent to which the class capacities of the working class have been fortified or weakened during the period of socialist parliamentary rule. While a confrontation with the military may be inevitable, it is not necessarily inevitable that the military win such a confrontation.”
Essentially: has a socialist government weakened reactionary elements within the military/police and empowered socialist forces? If the answer is no, then the ultimate confrontation between capitalism and socialism will result in a counterrevolution against a socialist government.
So that’s Wright’s analysis. In the next installment, we’ll explore realistic options for a a municipal policy agenda that meets these critera.
