Alexander Zevin in Sidecar:
New York City politics can seem intensely local. Yet occasionally something happens here that transfixes the world. In 1886, the insurgent mayoral campaign of Henry George seemed to shake the foundations of power in the city, defeating the Republicans and coming close to beating the powerful Democratic machine. That George did so at the head of the recently created United Labor Party inspired Friedrich Engels to salute the creativity of the American masses – who on this ‘epoch-making day’ had contested the election as an independent political force. It seemed clear that the great commercial and industrial capitalists of the city had only prevailed through bribes, ballot stuffing and other forms of brazen cheating. Notwithstanding his reservations about George’s ‘confused’ and ‘deficient’ programme built around a ‘single-tax’, Engels was thus quite hopeful: ‘Where the bourgeoisie wages the struggle by such methods, the struggle comes to a decision rapidly, and if we in Europe do not hurry up the Americans will soon outdistance us.’
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor represents the most concerted outsider challenge to the ruling order of the city since that time – an indication both of how venerable the quest for a socialist alternative to the party duopoly here has been ever since the relocation of the First International to New York in 1872, and of how rare the moments when it has achieved any kind of mainstream breakthrough.
More here.
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