Socialist Workers Party: ‘Workers need to take political power!’
The 2025 elections took place with workers having faced declining living standards under both Democratic and Republican administrations for years. At the same time, trade conflicts intensify and the threat of more wars between capitalist rivals grows, with each seeking to defend its own interests and profits worldwide.
Increasing numbers of workers sense both bosses’ parties aim to put the burden of the deepening crisis of their capitalist system on our backs and that they’re determined to defend U.S. imperialist interests abroad, no matter the devastating consequences for our class.
Democratic candidates won races for governor in the largely blue states of New Jersey and Virginia. In New York City, liberals and the middle-class left fueled the win of Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who was the Democratic Party’s candidate. Voter turnout in New York was higher than normal, but didn’t top 40%.
Mamdani campaigned on “affordability,” modest reforms to alleviate some of the hardships created by capitalism. DSA candidates across the country said they were advancing “municipal socialism.”
Mamdani spoke often during his campaign against the existence of Israel, the only state that provides Jews an unconditional refuge. His campaign served to advance the normalization of antisemitism in capitalist politics.
Ten months into Donald Trump’s presidency, stubbornly high prices for basic necessities continue. Coffee has risen by 19% over the past year. Workers with employer-sponsored health insurance can expect to pay 6.5% more next year. Child care costs are up 29% over the past four years.
Sky-high rents in New York, which Mamdani promised he would try to address, have risen 5.6% over the past year.
Spurred by sharpening worldwide competition, the bosses are laying off workers. UPS has cut 34,000 jobs this year and plans to eliminate 14,000 more. Amazon announced plans to cut 14,000. Thousands of white-collar workers are being thrown out of work, as bosses replace them with a combination of “artificial intelligence” and speedup. So far this year, total job cuts have topped 1 million.
In addition to deep-seated anger toward the bosses’ attacks on wages, jobs and conditions, many workers oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and deportations that target undocumented workers, including their friends, neighbors and co-workers.
The working-class voice in 2025
The only working-class voice in the race in New York — or any other election across the country — was the Socialist Workers Party. In New York, Paul Mailhot got a serious hearing for the SWP’s perspective of mobilizing labor’s power to combat capitalism’s twin scourges of joblessness and inflation; advancing the political organization of working people independent of the Democrats and Republicans; and charting a course to replace capitalist rule with workers power.
“Two key issues that we get a big response to,” Joanne Kuniansky, SWP candidate for governor of New Jersey, told NewsNation, are “the possibility of another world war” and the “complete devastation of workers’ wages and conditions.” Despite being excluded from the main candidates debates and ignored by much of the capitalist media, Kuniansky got 7,834 votes.
Liberals, Stalinists and the “woke” middle-class left hailed the outcome of the New York race. Mamdani “inspires young people who are cynical about politics,” the New York Times editors wrote. “We are rooting for his success.” His win “represents a major political breakthrough,” declared the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Stalinist group.
But 61% of voters stayed away, concluding there wasn’t anything worth choosing between Mamdani; disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of older people in the state’s nursing homes during the COVID pandemic; and former Guardian Angels boss, Republican Curtis Sliwa.
Mamdani’s campaign was lavished with a $12.8 million subsidy from city authorities in the form of “matching funds.” Cuomo and Sliwa got in on the scam, getting $7.1 million and $4.5 million. But the same officials denied funds to incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, claiming his paperwork was “misleading.” Adams dropped out and backed Cuomo.
In contrast to the bosses’ parties, SWP candidates rely solely on contributions from working people.
Mamdani is one of a growing number of DSA members running as Democrats, along with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Bosses adjust to election result
“For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” Mamdani told supporters in his victory speech. “New York, this power, it’s yours.”
Rhetoric aside, political power remains firmly in the hands of the exploiting class, which is adapting itself to the incoming administration. While opposing him, the capitalist rulers will find ways to continue raking in profits.
Mamdani’s course is not to urge working people to fight to take political power, relying on the capacities of our class and its allies, but to look to middle-class radicals like him to speak for us. And to depend on sops he’ll hand out, like some free bus rides, to try to soften the blows of the capitalist crisis. His administration will continue to promote the illusion the imperialist Democratic Party is a vehicle for advancing workers’ interests.
The SWP candidates say that all political questions are class questions, that a working-class road forward starts with a union-led fight for a government-funded program to provide millions of jobs at union scale to build housing, child care facilities, clinics and other things working people need. They present a course to strengthen workers’ confidence in our own worth and capacities to fight.
Mamdani’s backing is based on “woke” middle-class meritocrats who view everything through the left/right divisions within capitalist politics, as well as the lens of nationality, race or gender, not the sharply counterposed class divisions that underlie all oppression.
These layers are part of a growing polarization in politics today, inspired by “cancel culture” and the use of violence to dispense with those who challenge their self-satisfying perspectives.
Mamdani campaigned against Cuomo by charging him with “Islamophobia.” He won support from some workers, looking anywhere for a change.
Mamdani has a long history of antisemitism, championing reactionary efforts to boycott Israel, refusing to demand Hamas disarm and repeating dangerous age-old slurs about an international Jewish conspiracy. In 2023 he said the boot of police brutality in New York is “laced by the IDF” — the Israel Defense Forces.
These positions are dangerous for the working class. This will become clearer as Mamdani’s Democratic Party administration takes office.
The SWP points to the two great revolutions of our epoch — the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia led by V.I. Lenin and the 1959 Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement — as examples for workers today. Workers need to take political power into our own hands, dismantle capitalist exploitation and oppression, and join hands with fellow workers worldwide to build a future.