this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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I'm curious what your approach would be instead.
I mean this with no snark intended and would appreciate it being kept our of my replies.
My thoughts:
Maybe I am exaggerating your expectation (straw manning your argument) by focusing on police abolition，when you meant something else?
To me Zohran is completely within expectations of a Democratic Socialist politician in 2026. My expectation is that major police reform would be a second or third term project, due to the risks involved.
Money is the root of all political power, and the police need to have their budget slashed in almost every municipality in the US. Mamdani has been playing footsie with 70 million dollars which is frankly a joke compared to the NYPD's budget which is over 6 billion. I understand that he can't just come out and say "I'm going to cut it to 10% of its current amount", but he should come out of the gate with an opening bid of something like reducing the budget by 1 billion dollars by retiring all of the expensive military equipment that they have stockpiled, reducing officers and reducing hours, etc.
Personally I would also like to see a rhetorical shift towards the police's role in society, something like "more accounting, less patrolling", with the message being that we should be spending more money getting people's stolen wages (the number one form of theft in terms of dollars stolen and it's not even close) back and fighting white collar crime in general. Then the remainder of the budget could be put to useful things instead of paying overtime for bored thugs to stand around in the subway browsing their phones.
I think your approach is a very reasonable standard to hold Mamdani to. I hope activist groups (and/or NYC-DSA) will push for him to start trimming the budget, even if he can't slash it to death quite yet. It would probably take some on-the-ground effort from activist groups to start building the grassroots needed to support that effort (and beyond).
Ending qualified immunity, private prisons, mass involuntary survailence. Instead of blanket statements such as "defund" start itemizing, listing the crimes, violations, false arrests, and make our opponents go on the defensive. Speak to the corruption of the hundreds of billions. Speak of the IDF to local pig policy pipeline.
Yeah this tbh. I think he's playing the expected role and doing it well. The DSA is not gonna bring about socialism imo and it's why I'm not a DSA member, but I have and will continue to work with DSA people when there's important concessions to be won from the ruling class. He shows that a well meaning socialist is better than the alternatives in electoral politics, but also demonstrates the limitations of working within bourgeoisie democracy. He's the union that I'm thankful for the existence of as a worker, but that needs to become more radical and militant or be replaced as soon as the conditions allow and demand it.
I think its just a fundamental limitation of sewer socialism or reform socialism or whatever. Especially without the threat of revolution. You can't take on the most powerful reactionary elements because you're playing a game that depends on their cooperation. You can't push them too hard, especially now, because there are far right revolutionary factions out there. So you're stuck going soft on police, stuck downplaying white supremacy, &c.
Revolutionary struggle is much more free to critique the system because it doesn't need to limit itself to bourgeois democracy. Elections can be a tool, but they aren't the only available avenue. Yes the stakes are higher, but so are the rewards.
I probably have terrible political instincts, but I think he could openly call the NYPD bastards even as he concedes he can’t do anything about it yet. That would be better than rhetorically defending them for no reason at all.
Imagine he says that, and the masses are 80% concurring. Then what? He would have a mandate against the NYPD, more than he has now.
No offense (cause I dont really disagree with you), but I think it is poor political instincts.
I think the US DemSoc movement is just now emerging into the Overton windows, and it is likely to become a real force in the next few cycles as the "easy topics" (M4A, defund israel/military, political finance reform) enter the conversation and are hopefully dealt with.
Future leaders in the movement would need to take up the "point positions" on new issues including police reform, after the legitimacy has been established. It is possible that the movement will be co-opted before that happens, but we dont know because it hasn't happened yet.
Consistency on principle is of paramount importance, even and especially for a burgeoning social democratic movement. It is the only way it stays alive in the medium to long term, even if it causes difficulty in the short term.
Mamdani should say what he thinks or say nothing at all. He shouldn’t say incorrect things or things counter to his principles.
A party that shows consistency in its principles demonstrates that it has a clear vision, that they are reliable, and that they are not opportunist. All important traits to possess in a future unstable, revolutionary situation.
Both Lenin (fight with the economist etc) and Marx/Engels (Gotha critique) had to figure this out too. Don’t compromise your actual principle and theory. Compromise on policy if needed, for practical reasons. But don’t concede the theoretical correctness while doing it!
True! I certainly have concerns that these next couple of years will be "as good as it gets" for US socialism, because the core principles aren't always clear! I hope the messaging will get better defined before it's too late (I think there's still some time to get this straightened out).
"To what" is the question we need to develop a firm answer on before anything besides reform gains mainstream support.
Yeah, nobody likes "abolish the police" in the US anymore. Frankly Americans never liked the idea partly because it was never well communicated. It's not up to Zohran to educate the masses, it's up to him to meet them in the middle and show them the left aren't demons. And he has been doing that well with all his day one accomplishments.
On the other hand I dont think police abolition should be a defunct idea the way "woke 1" seems to imply. The left just needs to be smarter. What might help is shining a spotlight on massive police stockpiles of weaponry, and the estimated budget to maintain said weaponry. Like others have said, shine the spotlight on corrupt police union and officers, and fire them case by case. Then its no longer abolish the police, its fighting corruption (while actually moving towards abolishing the police). If leadership gets Allende'd in the process, then the police remain the corrupt enemy that way. The left fights a war for public perception, so they must be smart.
given that demsoc=socdem=progressive liberal, i agree
I think flattening definitions like this reduces the level of conversation and analysis. Ancom=syndicalist=mutualist, Marxist-leninist=MLM=CPC would also flatten the conversation around relevant topics on our left-wing discussuon forum.
I wouldn't disagree that these factions currently have a lot of alignment in the current US political context. We see this demonstrated with AES being a "unity candidate" between the left and even part of the liberal establishment.
I think the conflation is fairly accurate in this case, as the "DemSocs" in question don't believe in (and therefore constantly contradict) forwarding and defending socialism, but maintaining and moderately reforming capitalism. This means they are actually SocDems at best and SocDems are just a kind of "progressive" liberal.
I would phrase it differently, but it's very hard to contest that the bulk of "democratic socialists" in America are literally socdems ("Nordic socialists" or whatever) which literally is a type of liberal.
There are also genuine democratic socialists, who are incorrect but for different reasons, but I think they might be in the minority of people using that title.
If we are discussing from a perspective within the US, I think that flattening our vocabulary weakens our analysis. I think there is a chance (though not overwhelmingly likely) that the differences between these factions will become more pronounced in the future, rather than less. I would like our community to retain the vocabulary to identify it if it happens.
I dont expect discussions from a non-US perspective to care too much about it, though.
I agree that we shouldn't flatten our vocabulary, but consider that treating all self-identifying demsocs as just being "demsocs" is flattening the distinction between actual demsocs and "Nordic socialist" socdems.
I'm actually referring to a subset of the DSA. DSA does have DemSocs and many other tendencies and I wouldn't say they are all just DemSocs or SocDems. I mean the people who are the topic of this post, the people who are really into electoralism and dedicate their political lives to running and supporting candidates above all else (literally). These folks tend to be highly liberal and are barely even in the reformist discussion because their idea of reformism is something quite vague, it is plainly evident that it is more about gaining power in bourgeois electoralism than actually standing for anything other than there being 7 Bernie Sanders instead of 1. There is no additional game plan, no discipline outside of lashing out at others (pro-Palestine, pro-BLM, none of it matters unless it serves getting elected for these folks), no plan for having real fights and what they will lean on for support aside from having some people in office.
It is not in any way a coincidence that this is identical to how "progressive" left electoralism functions. There is no difference at all except for the aesthetics and trappings and they will abandon even those if it serves the "elected". There is no reform vs revolution debate, there is no real plan to reform anything much beyond dog catcher level challenges, it's all incoherent. The same "strategies" and excuses are trotted out as are used for other liberals. "We can lobby X candidate better than Y once they are in office!" And then once in office, now that is not the priority, keep your criticisms quiet, we need unity. lmao.
It would be much more interesting if it tied into other forms of building power and maintaining momentum, something that requires sticking to clear principles and positions. Maybe defunding police isn't particularly salient for enough people yet in a given city - so work with orgs to (1) agitate and (2) increase the number of orgs making demands. An organizer that wanted to follow through on this would not have any trouble developing a strategic longitudinal campaign to attempt this sort of thing. The SocDem opportunist doesn't know how because that is not how they approach the topic at all, it isn't about building a base that is always there or a larger policy campaign, it is about the getting the person in office and then staying in office. If anything else happens intentionally it is in support of the politician, not the politician in support of the left projects.
I think we may be agreeing with one another but I'm not totally sure lol
I agree with pretty much everything you said here, except I think I'm just somewhat more optimistic about DSA developing a more principled position as time goes on. I don't have a strong argument to support my position except for my (vague) impression that the farther left caucuses are continuing to gain power in the national level of the organization.
I have seen some activities beyond electoralism in Portland and Seattle, but it is not well developed and properly bonded to the electoral front in the way that you and I would like to see.
I think the liberal electoralists within DSA have grown via the electoralism and their recruitment efforts around them. Those groups don't do much political education, they just get people who like vaguely left electoralism to join the org and volunteer in elections, so their political alignment tends to be fairly to the right within DSA aside from those who are committed to specific moral principals that eventually run up against the opportunism of the liberal electoralists - e.g. those who will not accept any level of Zionism regarding Palestine get alienated pretty fast. Which is to say I think a lot of DSA's growth lately is unfortunately not particularly politically educated and is a bit tot the right, though I'd welcome being wrong.
The left formations in DSA are much better organized (electoralism itself is what organizes the electoralists) and have indeed gotten leadership positions and are overrepresented at conventions, which of course I think is a good thing. They tend to do political education, event organizing, solidarity work, etc in their local groups, they distinguish themselves.
We'll need to see how things shake out in the next few years, but I appreciate that we are both hoping for the best
I am indeed saying that they seem to mostly be social liberals, though there are many genuine reformists as well. I don't have census data on the matter though, and I do think the factions of genuine reformists have been growing overall.
I appreciate the recommendation and will read the essay.
The one thing that I would add to your summary of the issue is that there are different kinds of reformists, the genuinely counterrevolutionary electoralists vs the people seeking to advance socialism by every means available, having chosen pushing for reform as their particular job at the moment. I think this latter camp can be helpful and have historically been important (revolutionary organizations historically have often had both legal and illegal wings), the biggest problem with this distinction in my perception is that members of the first camp, counterrevolutionaries, will often pretend to be members of or at least strong allies to members of the second camp, when that is false and they are roughly as dangerous as any other kind of liberal.
Really appreciate yout contribution to the discussion! The article is very interesting (redsails is almost like the xkcd for the left haha)
I am not an insider, but based on my understanding the DSA encompasses both typical social liberals, but has been moving in the direction of reformist, especially at the higher levels of leadership. The org is not sufficiently centralized (it is not even a party, for instance), so it has a ton of flaws and contradictions that make it less effective, but in my view, it is largely moving in the direction of reformism.
I like that the author of the article highlights how reformism "gets the masses in motion" so they can actually develop their understanding of things like reform v. revolution and similar topics, just like you pointed out.
The article also highlights the political stagnation that is offered by social liberalism. I think it is important for the masses to be politically activated to defend the gains of the working class (whether from reform or revolution). I know this is something the DPRK takes seriously, for instance. USians aren't ready for all that, and sort of need "baby steps" until reformism has its own momentum. In my view, either "reformism works and we voted our way to communism for the first time ever" or it will force people toward a more revolutionary stance when it fails.
This does not resolve the contradiction of "what if your reformism delays back to social liberalism and nothing happens". I still wrestle with that often. I dont think "just discard reformism and only take the revolutionary angle" is the answer, but maybe im just wrong about that and im fucking it up for everybody idk.