There’s going to be a lot of ink spilled on the meaning of Mamdani: is he or isn’t he, will he or won’t he, can he or can’t he, etc. Much of this will be less about Mamdani himself and more about what he has come to symbolize.
So, what has he come to symbolize?
The return of class politics? The revenge of multiculturalism? Is this when September ends?
Someone wake up Billie Joe.
I read an article from an Italian network of communists that describe Mamdani’s promises as both unrealistic and less revolutionary than a Christian Democrat in the 1960s, and that says a lot about the state of this place.
What has he come to symbolize? The faint pulse of something fighting to breathe in the belly of the beast? The sharp end of the blade slicing through?
It’s so easy to be swept up in celebration or snark. It’s much harder to wake up to the world with unclouded eyes: a world not of our choosing and our responsibility to shape and transform. What happens next is in our hands. x
“[Man] opposes himself to nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway.” (Karl Marx) x
“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works but he also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention.” (Karl Marx) x