Since Zohran Mamdani’s electrifying victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, there have been a couple dozen pieces written which advance a generic critique of socialist electoral engagement with the Democratic Party ballot line. Overwhelmingly, outside of writing from DSA cadre, these pieces have been lackluster and dogmatic, completely disinterested in the particularities of Zohran’s campaign and the politics of NYC-DSA, or in advancing anything more than the most superficial critique of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately N.R.’s recent letter is no different.

Critiques of the Zohran campaign need to ground their arguments in what the campaign actually was. “No investigation, no right to speak,” as they say. In this case, cross out the couple of sentences that reference Zohran, and N.R.’s letter looks exactly the same as dozens and dozens of similar articles I’ve read about socialist electoral strategy in the last thirty years. This is a problem; it reveals a total lack of interest in what’s actually changed in the last decade around socialist politics and groups like DSA, or what the actual nature of the Zohran campaign was. And this leads to getting basic facts wrong. Zohran’s campaign was not that of an AOC or Bernie, which were built around the candidates and through a loose network of progressive NGOs and electoral outfits; it was built and led by NYC-DSA, a democratic, member-based socialist organization. Critiques of Zohran should begin with recognizing the basic fact that the campaign was rooted in this independent socialist project, unlike the campaigns of previous high-profile socialist candidates.

Beyond starting off on an incorrect basis, N.R.’s analysis makes a fundamental theoretical mistake by fixating on the question of the ballot line. Again, this is a common argument that has been copy-pasted across hundreds of similar essays in the last thirty years: that running in Democratic primaries, and on the Democratic ballot line, means integrating into the Democratic Party and its fundamentally capitalist/neoliberal political framework.This is ultimately a very superficial analysis of what the Democratic Party is and the nature of the ballot line. Ultimately there are no actual legal or institutional restrictions that come with running on the Democratic ballot-line; you can be as oppositional and independent as you want. Running on the Democratic ballot line only leads to integrating with the actual party if that’s what the campaign and the candidate want to do. There is no inherent power in the ballot line, beyond being able to capture votes in the general election from the masses of voters who want to vote for a Democratic candidate, which itself is typically a cynical calculus of voting against the Republican candidate.

Where power does lie, however, is in the state. In fact, I would agree with much of N.R.’s critique if we simply replaced the term “Democratic Party” with the term “State.” The state is where the institutional inertia, laws, and restrictions actually come into play that can kneecap socialist electeds and undermine a socialist programme, even one of basic social-democratic reforms. But this further underscores the general pointlessness of fixating on the ballot line; a socialist candidate who wins on an independent socialist ballot line would face the exact same issues once they took power. Changing the name of the ballot line would solve nothing.

To be clear, there are issues around the ballot-line that should not be hand-waved away. There are obvious pitfalls with the socialist movement getting too close with the Democratic Party brand, insofar as it can confuse people about the need to build independent socialist organizations like DSA. Interestingly, N.R.’s piece does not discuss this angle at all; but it is a key part of discussion and debate within DSA itself, along with the obstacles around holding executive power in a city.

Which brings us back to the point, that critiques of these campaigns need to actually engage with the most advanced debates happening around these topics. Marxist factions within NYC-DSA, like Emerge and Marxist Unity Group, have been involved with the Zohran campaign, while also advancing informed and well-thought-out critiques of the campaign’s shortcomings, as well as proposals to ensure political independence and the centering of socialist politics and organizing. Other socialists wanting to join the debate should catch up with this level of sophistication and match it, instead of blindly copy-pasting tracts from five or ten years ago that don’t increase our collective understanding of the tasks at hand.

-R.K. Upadhya