It began with four defiant words directed at a former president: "Turn the volume up!"
When Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a 34-year-old socialist, claimed victory in New York City's mayoral election, he wasn't merely accepting a new job. He was issuing a challenge to the decaying political order that has brought our nation to the brink of fascist autocracy. In a city still bearing the scars of the Trump era, his triumph represents more than a changing of the guard, it offers a glimpse of an alternative future for the United States, one where solidarity trumps supremacy, the public good triumphs over private wealth, and participatory democracy defeats fascist nostalgia.
To those who would dismiss this vision as fantasy, consider the coalition that delivered Mamdani's victory: an unprecedented multiracial alliance of young people, working-class New Yorkers, and those who've grown weary of choosing between the calculated neglect of centrism and the theatrical cruelty of the right. They weren't motivated by mere party loyalty, but by a bold platform that included universal childcare, a rent freeze, free bus transit, and the radical notion that a city should serve its residents rather than discipline them.
Let us be clear: Mamdani's victory is not an isolated phenomenon. It arrives as Gallup polling reveals a stunning shift in American political consciousness, with 66% of Democrats now viewing socialism favorably and only 42% expressing positive views of capitalism. This isn't the result of some abstract academic conversion; it's the logical conclusion drawn by millions who've witnessed capitalism's failure to provide basic security while concentrating obscene wealth in the hands of a tiny oligarchy.
The policies that propelled Mamdani to office speak directly to the crises crushing ordinary Americans:
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Frozen rents in a city where the average worker would need to work 128 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom apartment
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Universal childcare in an economy that treats care work as optional rather than essential
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Public grocery stores in neighborhoods where profit-driven corporations have created food deserts
These proposals, once dismissed as radical, are simply practical solutions to engineered crises. They represent what sociologist William I. Robinson calls "socialism from below," not a gift from benevolent bureaucrats, but the material demands of a mobilized populace.
The evidence of this shift is everywhere, from the 69% of Americans who support Medicare for All to the 63% who favor free college tuition. What Republicans dismiss as "socialist fantasy" is, in reality, the popular will of the American people.
Simultaneously, we're witnessing the quiet resurgence of anarchist principles in movements across the country. Though rarely named as such, the anarchist tradition of mutual aid, direct action, and horizontal organizing has become the default operating system for much of the contemporary left.
We see it in the community fridges that sprouted up during the pandemic, the tenant unions resisting eviction through collective defense, the abolitionist collectives reimagining public safety beyond policing.
The anarchist ethos, skeptical of state power while committed to building radically empathetic cooperative alternatives, complements the democratic socialist project of state transformation. Where socialists work to repurpose state power for collective good, anarchists build autonomous spaces where goods and services are distributed according to need rather than ability to pay. Both recognize that the current arrangement serves only the propertied class.
This anarchist sensibility emphasizes decentralization, direct action, and the creation of alternative institutions that prefigure the world we wish to build . It understands that changing who holds power matters less than changing how power is organized.
No word provokes more panic in the American political lexicon than "communism." But the egalitarian kernel of the communist ideal, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs," predates and will outlive any autocratic perversion of this ideology we’ve seen in the past.
The contemporary left understands that we must reclaim this vision from its authoritarian captors. The communism worth fighting for isn't the top-down hierarchies of the 20th century, but associational democracy, a society where the means of production are socially owned and democratically controlled, whether through the state, through cooperatives, or through common ownership.
We see glimpses of this in the growing movement for worker cooperatives, in community land trusts that remove housing from the speculative market, in the demand for participatory budgeting that lets residents decide how public funds are spent. These are the building blocks of a society where the economy serves human needs rather than capital accumulation.
What makes this political moment extraordinary isn't the dominance of any single left tradition, but the emerging synthesis between them. The democratic socialist seeks to transform state power, the anarchist builds power outside the state, and the communist keeps sight of the horizon of full economic democracy. Together, they form a robust ecosystem of resistance and reconstruction.
This convergence was visible throughout Mamdani's campaign, which combined electoral politics with movement building, policy expertise with grassroots energy. It understands that elections alone won't bring liberation, but they can create breathing room for social movements to grow.
The same fascist forces that would dismiss this vision know exactly what they're facing. When Trump warns that Mamdani would bring "disaster" to New York , when his allies threaten to withhold federal funds, they recognize the threat that a successful left project poses to their system of extraction and exclusion.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the brilliant historian of authoritarianism, reminds us that fascist movements thrive by turning citizens against each other, by framing political opponents as enemies to be eliminated rather than adversaries to be debated. Against this politics of dehumanization, the left offers a politics of mutual recognition, the understanding that our fates are intertwined, that my liberation is bound up with yours.
The road ahead is treacherous. Mamdani will face fierce resistance from real estate interests, financial capital, and the entrenched bureaucracy of the NYPD he once criticized as "racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety." The anarchist mutual aid networks will struggle with burnout and limited resources. The communist horizon will feel distant on days when merely stopping the worst seems victory enough.
But in the words of Mamdani himself, "We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible." This is the enduring power of the left, not that we have all the answers, but that we dare to ask the most important question: What if things could be different?
As Trump and his allies threaten to "liberate" America from its people, as they rail against "the enemy within" and promise retribution against their opponents, the left offers a different liberation, from the tyranny of the bottom line, from the prison of profit, from the cold logic of the market that treats human beings as disposable.
The victory in New York is just one battle in a long war. But it proves that another world isn't just possible, it's already being built in our cities, our neighborhoods, and our streets. Our task is to turn the volume up.
