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THE GOAL OF SOCIALISM IS EVERYTHING  
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Bhaskar Sunkara
November 24, 2025
Jacobin
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_ Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty will be a fight for what’s winnable
right now. Our job is to let that fight expand, not narrow, our
horizon — and to keep alive the goal of socialism in our time. _

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announcing the members of his transition
team in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, on November 5, 2025. ,
(Shawn Inglima / New York Daily News)

 

_On Saturday, November 22, Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara
delivered the keynote at New York City Democratic Socialists of
America’s (DSA) biannual organizing conference at the First
Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn. Below is a transcript of
his remarks on why the Left must win real gains today — but also
keep fighting for a socialist society beyond them._

I'm so excited to be here with you all. It feels to me that this is
the political moment so many of us have been waiting for and working
to build for years.

We’re a month away from one of our comrades becoming mayor. We’ve
built a network of socialist elected officials, we have a real
organization to call home, and there’s a growing base of support in
this city for our immediate demand of taxing the rich to expand public
goods.

This moment extends beyond New York — we have a huge political
opening in the United States as whole. But we know that we have that
opportunity because millions of people are living through hard times.
We have an erratic and authoritarian president, we have an
affordability crisis, with millions struggling to pay their bills and
to live lives where they’re treated with dignity and respect.
We’ve seen the return of forms of nativism and racism that should
have been long vanquished by now.

And at a social and economic level, things may get worse very soon.

The country — not just this city — is crying out for principled
political leadership. Not just a kind of populist leadership through
great figures, though I’m grateful we have one of the greatest
figures on our side. I mean class leadership through organization.

The leadership that says that the disparities that we see in our
country and the world are not the natural laws of God but the result
of a world that human beings have created. The leadership that says
that the interests of the working-class majority are distinct from the
interest of capitalist elites, and that we need to organize around
those interests to win not only a better distribution of wealth
_within capitalism_ but a different type of society all together.

GOD’S CHILDREN CAN GOVERN

Ijoined the Democratic Socialists of America when I was seventeen
years old. I don’t need to tell you what DSA was in New York back in
2007. Some of you here remember it. I made so many good friends, but
we were lucky if a dozen people showed up to a meeting.

We made progress through the patient, steady work and commitment of
those people and the many more who joined later. We were marathon
runners for socialism.

This, though, is a moment for sprinting. This is the biggest opening
our movement has had in decades. The time we devote to political work
in the next few months and years will have an outsize impact in our
city and country — for now and for posterity.

But what exactly should we be doing, and how should we relate to both
the new mayor’s administration and our other comrades in elected
office? In my mind, our tasks as organized socialists outside of
government are both different and largely compatible with theirs.

The key demands of our moment are around the affordability agenda. Our
mayor-elect will be leading an effort to raise revenue to fund social
programs and empower the city’s working class. If Zohran , our other
electeds, and the grassroots movement around them deliver positive
change in people’s lives, we’ll build a deeper social base for the
Left.

Right now, our electoral strength has far outpaced our base. But
people are ready for our message and ready for results.

But fundamentally, there are constraints to any sort of social
democratic governance. Just as under capitalism, workers are dependent
on having profitable firms for jobs. Cities are dependent on big
corporations and wealthy people for tax revenue.

Zohran needs to navigate these constraints. He can’t undermine the
old regime of accumulation and redistribution without having a
replacement for it, and certainly there can’t be a total replacement
in one city.

These concerns aren’t new. This is the dilemma of social democracy.
This is the tension between our near-term and long-term goals that has
existed in the socialist movement for 150 years.

Our elected officials in the near term need to manage capitalism in
the interest of workers, while our movement also has a long-term goal
of constructing a new system through the self-emancipation of those
workers.

We need to see the constraints that Zohran will be under in these
structural terms, rather than moral ones. But having patience and
being supportive of him doesn’t answer how we reconcile the _near_
and the _long _— social democracy and socialism.

At the very least, it’s important that we remember the end goal. The
great theorist of reformism, Eduard Bernstein, once said that “the
goal is nothing, the movement everything.” I think that’s not
quite right. If we don’t talk about socialism after capitalism, no
one else will. The historic dream of our movement, a world without
exploitation or oppression, will be lost.

But we shouldn’t just avoid reformism because we want to feel pure
as “true socialists” or as an intellectual pursuit. We should
avoid reformism and remember the goal of rupture with capitalism
because it can offer a compelling vision of the world to those we’re
trying to reach.

Socialism isn’t “Sweden” like Bernie sometimes says. Socialism
isn’t even _just_, as Martin Luther King Jr said and Zohran has
beautifully invoked, “a better distribution of wealth for all of
God’s children.”

Socialism means a better distribution but also democratic control over
the things we all depend on — workers holding the levers of
production and investment, and the state guaranteeing the basics of
life as social rights.

Socialism means no longer begging corporations to invest in our
communities or the rich to stay and pay their taxes.

Socialism means overcoming the labor-capital dialectic through the
triumph of labor itself, not a more favorable class compromise.

Socialism means that the people who’ve kept this world alive — the
caregivers, the drivers, the machinists, the farmworkers, the cleaners
— stop being an invisible backdrop and become the authors of their
futures.

Socialism means a society where those who have always given without
having any say finally show their true capabilities. Where, as C. L.
R. James said
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every cook can govern.

Socialism means replacing an economy built on hierarchy and exclusion
with one built on the intelligence and creativity of working people
themselves.

That is the goal we keep alive. Not because it’s utopian, but
because it is the only horizon equal to the dignity and potential of
ordinary people.

And because, it’s _compelling_. This isn’t just offering workers
some of their surplus value back in exchange for their votes. It’s
offering them _the future_, a society that they can own, a chance to
assume their rightful place as agents of history.

Something like this is real socialism. It isn’t an interest group or
a label to distinguish ourselves from other progressives. It’s a
fundamentally more radical goal than those of our allies. It’s
premised on a different analysis of the world around us and the world
that can be built.

Perhaps we can think of ways to bridge some of the gap between near
and long through a set of demands that at least raise the concept of
socialization immediately. Ideas that offer not just more badly needed
social welfare but a taste of ownership and control. A hint at a
different political economy.

Just one example: when a business closes down or its owners are
retiring, workers supported by a public fund could get the first crack
at saving it by converting it into a labor-managed firm. At the city
level, we can have a municipal office to help workers turn shuttered
shops into cooperatives by providing the backbone of legal and
accounting support and fast-tracking permits.

We’ve already been talking about city-owned grocery stores and the
need for public housing. We need more ideas like these. Reforms that
fit within social democracy but gesture beyond it.

Socialism in Our Time

It’s been thrilling to meet people who’ve just joined DSA. It’s
been nice to see old friends too. I’ve been complaining about
missing the first half of the Knicks game, but even Jalen Brunson
can’t keep me away from here.

I’m really enthusiastic about what we can do in the next couple of
years. We _will_ improve the lives of millions of people. And we will
grow our movement.

But in addition to enthusiasm, we need

 honesty about how far we still have to go to root ourselves in
working-class communities. We need more power not just at the ballot
box but at the points of production and exchange. And we need to be
honest about the battles and constraints that Zohran will face, and be
ready to support him when times get tough.

Zohran’s mayoralty will be a fight for what’s winnable right now.
Our job is to let that fight expand, not narrow, our horizon — and
to keep alive the goal of socialism in our time.

_Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin, the president of
the Nation magazine, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The
Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality._

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