Musings 3

Municipal Socialism

Mamdani’s victory speech opened with a quote from Eugene Debs: “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.” His program consists of three measures: rent freeze, making buses free and faster, and universal childcare. This combination of a lofty vision with minor concrete steps to improve the lives of poor people may seem pretentious but it has a long tradition, typically referred to as “municipal socialism.”

According to deepseek, policies of municipal socialism typically included:

Public ownership of essential services, such as waterworks, gas and electricity supply, public transportation (trams and buses).

Provision of housing.

Provision of public libraries, baths, and washhouses to improve hygiene and education for the working class, parks and recreational facilities.

School meal programs for needy children.

Public health care services and sanitation.

Implementing a minimum wage for municipal employees.

Demanding fair wages and better working conditions from contractors working for the city.

Using municipal purchasing power to support ethical businesses.

Progressive taxation: Funding these initiatives through local taxes, often designed to place a heavier burden on wealthy landowners and businesses.

The first program of this kind was in London in 1889. In the US, it was the program of “sewer socialism” in Milwaukee. Elsewhere, it reached its apogee in Vienna between 1919 and 1934.

Thus Mamdani is following a well trodden path. This is in a city where (the last three items are from City Harvest) more than 150,000 school children do not have a permanent residence, one-half of working-age households in the five boroughs don’t make enough to cover the minimum cost of living, visits from to food pantries and soup kitchens are up 88% from 2019, 1 in 4 children doesn’t always know when they will have their next meal.

Whether he will succeed is hotly debated. The specter of a flight of the wealthy from the City is just a right-wing blah-blah. New York City has the resources to finance Mamdani’s three concrete measures without much uproar. The danger, I fear, lies elsewhere. One is that the Trump administration will do everything possible to hurt New York City. The second is that Mamdani will fumble facing some unexpected crisis, as did several of his predecessors. But if he succeeds?

P.S. According to an editorial in New York Post, a pro-Trump newspaper, the ICE raid on Canal Street on October 21 was targeted at “illegal street vendors.” According to ABC News, the arrests included four US citizens. According to a tweet by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as quoted by the New York Times, “Everyone does not, in fact, like counterfeit products being sold. Not do they like violent illegal aliens.” To my best knowledge, this is a first. Pursuing “illegal street vendors” is an ordinary local police function. Even if NYPD does not perform it to the satisfaction of DHS, there is nothing in the existing laws which authorizes ICE to supplant the local police. Does ICE now act as a federal police on matters that do not entail homeland security? How will the NYPD respond: welcoming the help or resenting interference? If Trump invades New York City, much will depend on the posture of the NYPD.

Subversive surveys

Here are the questions and the potential answers asked by the two worldwide surveys on democracy:

World Values Survey (WVS):

“I’m going to describe various types of political systems and ask what you think about each as a way of governing this country. For each one, would you say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of governing this country?”

V163. Having a democratic political system.

V164. Having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country.

V165. Having the army rule the country.

V166. Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections

Regional Barometers:

“There are many ways to govern a country. Would you disapprove or approve of the following alternatives?”

Q: “One-man rule?” / “Presidents who do not need the consent of parliament or elections?”

Q: “Military rule?” / “The army governing the country?”

Q: “One-party rule?” / “Only one political party being allowed to stand for election and hold office?”

Ms. Smith, living in Iowa, has been indoctrinated to choose V163 from the WVS cafeteria; Ms. Zhou, living in Guandong, to choose V166. Same with the alternatives posed by the Barometers: Ms. Smith would opt for democracy, Ms. Zhou for one-party rule. Neither has a faintest idea what living under the counterfactual system would be like. These questions are just inane. They may measure the satisfaction with the regimes someone lives under but -- except for people who lived under more than one regime, myself included -- they ask people if they would prefer to live on the earth or on the moon.

They are not just innocently inane. For people living in democracies, they formulate alternatives which most people do not entertain. Does Ms. Smith ask herself what would be like to live under military rule? She may be dissatisfied with the democracy really existing in the US and may have views about how to reform it, for example, limit the influence of money over politics, equalize political influence across districts or states, abolish the electoral college, ..., some reforms. M. Dupont living in France may have views about proposals to change the electoral system, about the idea of citizen’s assemblies considering particular policies, about a more frequent use of referendums, ..., again, the list of potential reforms is long. None of these possibilities -- possibilities of improving democracy -- are on the menu of answers. Instead, the potential answers insinuate that people dissatisfied with the way democracy functions in their countries envisage living under some form of autocracy. Forcing such choices on the respondents rings alarm bells -- echoed in newspaper headlines -- but only by denying to us the possibility of reforming the democratic institutions under which we live.