Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz argues Mamdani and other democratic socialists present an appealing form of social democracy that still lies somewhat to the right of many European social-democratic parties and could just as well be called “progressive capitalism.”
Mamdani’s victory has triggered a sharp response on the right, where he has been compared to Benito Mussolini and democratic socialists to Maoists. President Donald Trump has declared a “week against communism,” even as Politico, citing Gallup and Data for Progress polls, says Americans are losing faith in capitalism and many Democratic voters prefer left-wing figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Writing in the Washington Post, Stiglitz says the program of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) seeks to curb market “excesses,” restore balance between markets, government and civil society, and secure a middle-class standard of living for all Americans. He portrays the DSA model as one that recognizes healthcare as a basic right and assigns the state a significant role in social protection, environmental policy and public investment.
Yet the same newspaper notes that hostility to socialism crosses party lines. In 2023, the House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning “the horrors of socialism” with support from both Republicans and Democrats, though it later failed in the Senate. In an editorial, the paper branded Mamdani “generalissimus Mamdani” and predicted a “new era of class struggle” in New York.
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek, writing for Project Syndicate, sees Mamdani’s win as evidence that U.S. politics is shifting from a two-party system to a contest between establishment parties — Republicans and Democrats — and populists on the alt-right and the democratic socialist left. He argues that real political choice now lies in a clash between Trump and a democratic socialist, both capable of mobilizing “new, disillusioned voters.”
The DSA gained prominence with Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, which he rooted in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vision of guaranteeing a “decent” life for all and fighting oligarchy and extreme inequality, the New York Times recalls. In the U.S. context, the paper notes, democratic socialism aims not to abolish capitalism but to rework it by embedding left-wing values in the system.
Conservative commentator Bill Kristol writes in the Bulwark that extreme inequality and a plutocratic capitalism “à la Elon Musk” have created a mood reminiscent of pre–French Revolution France. Calling the current model of American capitalism “unsustainable,” he says preserving liberal democracy will require reviving “healthy elements” of the social-democratic tradition and warns that “the defense of capitalism is too important to be left to capitalists.”
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, authors of The Right Nation, argue that the “center of gravity” of U.S. public opinion lies far to the right of Europe and that America’s conservatism is deeply rooted in religion. They say church attendance is a better predictor of whether a white American votes Republican than income, and that since the 1980s the U.S. right has moved steadily further right.
Founded in 1982, the DSA now has around 85,000 members, including 11,200 in New York, half of whom joined last year. Mamdani has cast himself as a successor to early 20th-century socialist leader Eugene Debs, who won about 6% of the vote in the 1912 presidential election.
Socialism once played a significant role in U.S. politics for much of the 20th century, before its decline during the postwar boom and its later survival mainly as a cultural reference, the New York Times notes. The Los Angeles Times adds that Americans respond differently to questions about a “welfare state” than to those about government help for the poor, underscoring how attitudes shift with language.
Even so, mainstream U.S. media broadly judge that, outside heavily Democratic New York, the DSA has little chance of major electoral breakthroughs, despite discontent with the Democratic Party establishment.
This analysis originally appeared in the Polish Press Agency (PAP) and was written by Marta Fita-Czuchnowska.