You nailed it here, Eric. Part of our left is only oppositional. Not only can't it help Mmdani with governing power, but it also has no clue about how they might do it themselves. Onward to governing power for a Third Reconstruction, valuable in its own right, but it can also serve as a transition to a new order.
So good to see the mention of the power analysis. Its important to try to understand the levers of power/influence that a movement wields and use those to their best advantage to obtain tangible results. While it is still important to debate "end-game" goals and philosophies, all the theories in the world won't matter if they can't be turned into realistic actions. Rome wasn't built in a day and we can't expect to just flip a switch a reverse decades of oppressive structures. Change will happen piecemeal, through lots of hard work, and publicly attacking each other over issues we don't currently have the power to fix will just weaken us all.
The state is both a capitalist institution but also a site of struggle and contradiction. State authority and its application mosey definitely depends on a power analysis. It requires, from a socialist perspective, an active workers movement taking action at work and in communities (even accounting for the sprawl).
The power analysis is an important part of good socialist strategy.
Like Bernie Sanders and AOC, Mamdani is a social democrat, not a democratic socialist. IMO, he should be regarded as such and not be expected to oppose capitalism.
You write that the backlash against the Civilian Complaint Review Board “fueled Rudy Giuliani’s narrow mayoral victory the following year.” Between 1989 and 1993, only 50,000 votes swung between the two candidates. The CCRB was hardly a decisive issue. Far more important were the Crown Heights riots. Far more important than that was that Dinkins was an indifferent, even a poor, administrator.
Well said. Keyboard warriors demand perfection but in real life political capital needs to be balanced with realistic priorities.
You nailed it here, Eric. Part of our left is only oppositional. Not only can't it help Mmdani with governing power, but it also has no clue about how they might do it themselves. Onward to governing power for a Third Reconstruction, valuable in its own right, but it can also serve as a transition to a new order.
So good to see the mention of the power analysis. Its important to try to understand the levers of power/influence that a movement wields and use those to their best advantage to obtain tangible results. While it is still important to debate "end-game" goals and philosophies, all the theories in the world won't matter if they can't be turned into realistic actions. Rome wasn't built in a day and we can't expect to just flip a switch a reverse decades of oppressive structures. Change will happen piecemeal, through lots of hard work, and publicly attacking each other over issues we don't currently have the power to fix will just weaken us all.
The state is both a capitalist institution but also a site of struggle and contradiction. State authority and its application mosey definitely depends on a power analysis. It requires, from a socialist perspective, an active workers movement taking action at work and in communities (even accounting for the sprawl).
The power analysis is an important part of good socialist strategy.
Like Bernie Sanders and AOC, Mamdani is a social democrat, not a democratic socialist. IMO, he should be regarded as such and not be expected to oppose capitalism.
You write that the backlash against the Civilian Complaint Review Board “fueled Rudy Giuliani’s narrow mayoral victory the following year.” Between 1989 and 1993, only 50,000 votes swung between the two candidates. The CCRB was hardly a decisive issue. Far more important were the Crown Heights riots. Far more important than that was that Dinkins was an indifferent, even a poor, administrator.