NIMA ALKHORSHID: Hi, everybody. Today is Thursday, November 6, 2025, and our dear friends, Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson, are here with us. Welcome back, Richard and Michael.
RICHARD WOLFF & MICHAEL HUDSON: Glad to be here.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Let me start with what has happened in New York. And the mayoral election, the outcome was someone — you look at him, all red lines are on him: he's a Muslim, socialist, immigrant — it's amazing to see, you know, because the billionaires invested, they paid more than, if I'm not mistaken, $40 million against him in this campaign. And after all, [Zohran] Mamdani was successful in his way of getting to the position.
Michael, looking at what has happened in New York, what is your understanding of what has happened, and what does it mean for the future of the Democratic Party?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, both parties are trying to spin the election. The Democrats are trying to say, well, you see, we won. It's all a rejection of Trump. And the Republicans are trying to make it appear it's all about socialism — and look at the right-wing Democrats who won in Virginia and New Jersey.
But the fact is that both the Republicans and the Democratic parties lost, as a result of New York City. All of the attention, as you've just pointed out, is on New York City. Even though that was the most local election, it had a national scope because it's the future of not only the Democratic Party, but what the next year's midterm elections are going to be all about.
The Republicans lost the elections in New Jersey to the governor who wanted to lower the electric bills that have been raised against the population; and Virginia elected a CIA Democrat, who obviously is part of the right-wing part of the Democratic Party. So, the Democrats are claiming a victory.
But all of this was overshadowed by Mamdani's victory in New York City, and his win is what made the Democrats the loser, despite the fact that the election was local. He was really running against the Democratic National Committee; and its leaders have announced their outright hatred, not only for him, but, for the last year, for Bernie Sanders, for AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. The Democratic National Committee is saying: We have to prevent the party from turning left. We have to support Israel. We have to support Wall Street. We have to oppose progressive taxation — and essentially [keep] doing what we've been doing all along, being soft-core Republicans.
And now all of that has been repudiated. And so Mamdani was running not only against the disgraced former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, not only against the Republicans, but really against all of the money — the $40 million that you mentioned — that was all mobilized against him. And in that sense, he was defined not simply by his program of providing free bus rides and child care, but he was defined by his enemies, who were attacking him by making all sorts of claims that he was a Marxist, a socialist —
It's as if the newspapers are too embarrassed to say that there have been public opinion polls (that Richard and I have mentioned before on your show), that the voters prefer the word "socialism" to "capitalism." "Socialism" isn't a bad word. So, by calling him "socialism" for wanting to improve transportation; "socialism" for protecting tenants' rights against landlords; "socialism" for improving the lot of New Yorkers and progressively taxing wealth — he not only takes away the Democratic base, but the Republican base for this.
And the reason that the $40 million came from wealthy Zionists wasn't because of his socialism. It was because they're trying to defeat him. [W]hat made people so passionate over this election was the whole issue of Zionism — brought up by his opponents, such as the Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, who refused to support Mamdani, saying that Mamdani was defending the Palestinians against the Israeli bombing and he could not support that.
Well, what better support could you want from a New York population? And the fact that over 70% of New York's Jewish population voted for Mamdani shows the attempt to slander him, how off-[putting] it is. And if you look at the only districts that Mamdani lost, [they] were in the fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn area, and Queens (near Long Island) — who, of course, saw that the election was all about Zionism.
A Wall Street Journal editorial today really, I think, spells out the story best of all. It said, "If [New York Governor Kathy] Hochul turns left [in next year's election for the governor], she may defeat [her Lieutenant Governor] Antonio Delgado, who will run from the Mamdani left. [But] [i]f Ms. Hochul turns left, she may defeat Mr. Delgado but leave herself open to a likely GOP [Republican] challenge from Rep. Elise Stefanik."
Well, Stefanik was the hectoring lady in Congress, who attacked the presidents of Columbia [University] and Harvard [University] for permitting protests against the Israeli attack on the Palestinians. And she attacked these universities for not expelling students who opposed genocide, students who said: The Palestinians are human beings, they're civilians. This is against the laws of war. It's against all international law. She said: They must be expelled, and any professor who gives voice to a Palestinian point of view must be expelled from your university. Harvard and Columbia duly expelled the professors, expelled the students from the university.
And if that is what the election for New York Senate is going to be all about next year, you can be sure that this is going to be splitting the whole U.S. electoral campaign, just as the split over Charlie Kirk has been splitting his right-wing Republican following over the issue of Zionism.
And that's what the newspapers are hesitating from [writing].
The Republicans are afraid to acknowledge that that is what the election was about. They're pretending that it was about Marxism. And it's not about Marxism at all. There's nothing Marxist about providing subsidized education, so that workers can afford to earn a lower salary from their employers and make their employers more competitive. I mean, that's basic 19th century classical-industrial-capitalist strategy to become more competitive. It's all really about the Zionist issue.
And in the Wall Street Journal (same issue), you have on the next editorial page, a Jewish writer [worrying] — "[i]f socialists become the Democratic Party's face" [as Karl Rove wrote in the same issue] — he's going to be afraid to wear his kippah (his yarmulke) in public; and he bought a newsboy's hat because he thinks that somehow the Jewish population will be threatened. This is hysteria. And the hysteria is part of what has really motivated, I think, Mamdani's voters to say: We don't want any part of this. We're not going to go along with this demagogy — at all.
Trump has already said that if New York voted for Mamdani, he's going to pull all public federal support for New York out. And the Republicans and Democrats want to treat New York City like the United States and Europe treated Soviet Russia after its revolution: try to do everything you can to oppose it, to drain it, to isolate it, to make it harder to govern — and, then, say socialism doesn't work — when they have to spend all their time defending themselves. This is what it's going to be about.
In fact, I just got (yesterday) this month's The Nation magazine, the left-wing magazine from the last century. And there's an article about how the black caucus in the United States (the representatives in Congress), has been dominated by AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], saying that if they do not follow the AIPAC pro-Zionist line, they will be opposed; and AIPAC will fund their opponents in order to, essentially, mobilize election money for Zionism. So, somehow this issue has overwhelmed the whole electoral process here.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, looking at who voted for Mamdani, the young people under the age of 30, more than 75% voted for Mamdani. And here is what Donald Trump [posted] before the election happened: "Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self-professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!"
And we know that Bernie Sanders, since the Democrats, they didn't want to support Mamdani, but Bernie Sanders went after him. And we know what has happened to Bernie Sanders during the presidential election. This time, he came and supported Mamdani. In those days, [Sanders] had nobody to support him against Hillary Clinton.
But what's your understanding of what has happened?
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, I'm coming at it from a little bit of a different perspective from Michael, but I think they're complementary [perspectives], or they can go together.
I want to talk about the history here, because I think this is a historic shift. It began with Bernie — no question. It was given an extra boost by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the group of young women who came into prominence with her. And now it has taken a quantitative new additional leap with the election of Mamdani.
But I want to talk about the hysteria in historical perspective. It ranges from the pathetic to the ridiculous. I mean, we are watching — whether it's the Wall Street Journal, or Elise Stefanik, or anything like that — spewing their hysterical reaction that makes no sense. It's a revelation of their ignorance. They ought to be embarrassed, and they will, one day.
What do I mean? Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist. He emphasizes the phrase "Democratic Socialist," which he has every right to do. It is a kind of socialism that he advocates. It's very close to what used to be called "municipal socialism." Why? Because it is the kind of limited, moderate policy changes that mayors have tried to do in American and in foreign cities — for the last two centuries! It is not revolutionary. It doesn't usher in anything like the hysterical remarks being made by Americans.
You know what this response shows? It shows that for 75 years, since the end of the Second World War, the United States has buried its head in the sand, pretended that socialism, communism, Marxism, are all something evil and horrible — over there. They haven't understood how it developed. They don't understand the different points of view within socialism. None of it. They don't know or care. And so they see a socialist, they don't understand how to understand it, other than in their underdeveloped, 75-year, out-of-date backwardness.
Let me get at this a second way. Someone once counted up: seventy-five American cities in the history of this country have had mayors who were socialists, and said so. I know from my research — I did a lot of work once on the mayoralty in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I did that because I ran for mayor of the city of New Haven, Connecticut, which, like Bridgeport, is one of the three sizable cities in the state of Connecticut. Bridgeport had a socialist mayor for many years. Nothing of the sort of the hallucinations of the right wing happened in Bridgeport during the time of their mayor. Ditto, Milwaukee. Ditto, all the 75 [cities]. Number one.
Number two. Right now in Europe, there are socialist mayors. A number of the major cities of Europe — by the way, places like Paris, London, Milan, and so on, are governed by socialists, or have been at various moments in their history — nothing of the fantasy-horrors that are being spun out in the American media ever happened there. Socialist parties are regular participants in every country in Europe, and beyond. But I want to talk about Europe, otherwise, I'll take too much time.
So, what you're seeing in the response of the right wing in this country is a sign of its utter ignorance, bad education — and being, as I say, 75 years out of date: talking like they talked back in the days of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Think of the very name — ridiculous, you know, as if they have the sole authority to decide what is, and isn't, American. It's a joke. That's the first thing.
The second thing. It's important to understand that this is a sign of real serious trouble. This is something Michael and I have tried very hard to get across. My language: it's a decline of our empire. It is a series of problems, many of which Michael has very, very creatively shown us: how they've accumulated; what their history is; how the people in charge have not solved these problems, have basically kicked them down the road, during which time they have accumulated and gotten worse. If you don't solve your medical problems, they get worse; you don't solve your psychological issues, they get worse. Well, it's in economics, as well.
And this is a sign that the people of New York, who aren't that different from people anywhere else, made a decision. And here's what I think the election showed. Mr. [Curtis] Sliwa (the Republican) and Mr. Cuomo (the Democrat) represent, in their totality, the same old, same old, same old. Literally — Sliwa has been a candidate for as long as I can remember here in New York. And as we all know, Cuomo was a governor, he worked with the Clintons, and blah — it's all the same. And nothing either of them said gave anyone any reason to believe that they would be, in the future, any different from the nothing that they were in the past.
Therefore, Mr. Mamdani had an unbelievable opportunity. All he had to do — and by the way, I don't take away anything. He ran a brilliant campaign. He's very successful. He deserves everybody's amazement and congratulations. So, I don't want any confusion in what I'm about to say — but he cashed in, as successful politicians always do, on something much bigger, and different, from himself. He was the obvious, different, new change. He embodied it: a Muslim in New York, a socialist in this country. Wow. Who would have thought it?
Things are changing. Of course, young people come (75%). They want change. They know that the "American Dream" promised to them is not available anymore. No one has to persuade them. They're already there. They want change. And looking at Sliwa and Cuomo and Mamdani? That's easy, where your best chance for change is!
Now, the last point. Yes, he's a socialist. And I don't know exactly what that means to him, since I'm very aware that socialism means very different things to different people. The Soviet Union was one kind of socialism. Norman Thomas, who was the great leader of the American socialists for many years, was a deadly opponent of the Soviet Union, and all that it stood for. So that shows you that people who wanted the name "socialist" could mean very different things. There's a Trotskyite tradition, which goes in yet another direction. The current people who lead China refer to their country as "socialism with Chinese characteristics."
Okay, where in all of that does Mamdani fit? Well, America is too backward in this area to be even able to ask the question. So, everyone's fantasy of what it might mean just blurts out — and I mean the pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — it's embarrassing, that you know so little that you don't even understand this "socialism" of Mamdani, who calls it "democratic," and who tells you, quite clearly, what he plans to do! This is a remarkable statement, but it carries enormous implications, also for the emerging new left in the United States; because he, like Ocasio-Cortez, and like Bernie, [they] are going to be the standard-bearers. By virtue of what has happened, they are going to be "socialism."
But I guarantee you what I'm about to say is true. (I don't believe in prediction — I can't predict anything, and nobody else can — but I'm going to do it anyway.) The other kinds of socialism are waiting in the wings. They will emerge now. Why do I say that? Because they have everywhere else on this planet; so they're going to do that here, too. So, a word to the wise, if they're smart enough to listen. Mr. Bloomberg (who gave the most money); or the owner of Airbnb (who gave a lot of money); or Home Depot's Mr. [Ken] Langone (who gave a lot of money); let me give you a piece of advice: You better be glad that Mamdani won, because the other socialists coming down the road are going to be a lot worse for you than he will be. That's the reality.
But that's also a challenge to Mr. Mamdani. He also has to face the scale of his solutions, which, I suspect, he knows, is inadequate to the scale of the problems he faces: You are not going to solve the problems of the United States (that we have been spending months on this program, trying to clarify and explain). You're not going to solve them — not with free buses; and not with public grocery stores in food deserts; and not with a 2% tax on wealth above $100 million; or whatever it is that is his [program] —
It's perfectly good as a program. I'm glad he's putting it forward. But here's the problem — and he should learn from Mr. Trump. This was a resounding defeat for Mr. Trump. And you know why? Not because of how he speaks, or the extreme stuff he does. (I wish it were a defeat for those reasons — but it wasn't.) It was a defeat because what he's doing, Mr. Trump, cannot, will not, and did not solve the problems he inherited. His Big Beautiful (tax) Bill makes those problems worse. His tariff program, whether or not the Supreme Court allows it, doesn't solve these problems. It can't.
That, Mr. Mamdani, you have to understand, too. You, too, will be confronted, like Trump, with asking the difficult question: What has to be done to deal with the actual problems we have? You can do it, but you have to admit that that's the case. Otherwise, you will discover — like Mr. Trump is discovering — that promising people quick-and-easy solutions — as if they were available, and as if you could deliver them — doesn't work. And it will turn those people away from you. And that's what happened to him. And it's going to happen to him more, and more, and more. And as it does, the people around him will abandon him. It's already happening, and it will happen more.
But the cautionary tale is, that problem confronts the left as well.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Thank you, Richard, for reminding us about municipal socialism in America. That always has been one of the forces behind socialism. In the 1950s when I grew up, it was Robert La Follette [Jr.] of Milwaukee who led this whole reform, and it made all of Wisconsin progressive. And the city where I grew up (Minneapolis) was, I think, the only Trotskyist city in the entire world, that led to the Minneapolis general strikes of the 1930s. And even the governor of Minnesota, Floyd B. Olson, said he hoped capitalism went right to hell. That got him re-elected! You could say that socialism in America demonstrated the way in which it worked from the only place where it had a chance of doing that — and that was at the local level.
I want to get back to the national level in this case, because the national level is where the money comes in for campaigning for the local level. And what terrifies both the Democrats and the Republican Party leadership is that most of the midterm elections are going to be, as I said, over Zionism and the Israeli violence in Gaza and the West Bank.
That was the issue that was largely responsible for the Democrats' loss in the November presidential election. As Jill Stein and I forecast in our interviews with you, Nima, the Islamic voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota, refused to vote for the Democrat Kamala Harris because of her reliance on Zionist donors and her steadfast support of Israel First. And that is one of the reasons why yesterday's Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia were much stronger margins for the Democrats than the presidential vote for Harris. She was unpopular because she continued Biden's pro-war policy, the policy that Trump has escalated in making the wars in Ukraine, Israel — now Venezuela and Nigeria — his war.
So, there's a movement to oppose any candidate that's receiving election financing, basically, from AIPAC. And that's threatened to become a litmus test for candidates. The Democrats' opposition to the National Committee is going to be: Will you refuse to vote for any politician who receives money from AIPAC? Well, AIPAC already realized this, and said: We've got to create a Zionist pro-Israel campaign system that's not AIPAC, that's funded by the wealthy billionaires from Silicon Valley, and other billionaires who are defending Israel. The fight against Mamdani is, in that sense, going to be a fight by politicians to keep receiving campaign contributions for themselves — above all from AIPAC, but also from other donors with special interests.
And that's what the entire American political election system has turned into. The election system has been privatized in this country, and sold to the donor class. That is the consequence of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, that any corporations and any donor can give as much money as they want to politicians. There is no limit at all.
Well, Mamdani came in with much less funding than anyone else, and won. So he's challenged this whole system, but he's raised the issue for what's going to be the statewide elections and for next year's national elections in the United States: How is American politics going to survive this privatization and financialization of elections? If it doesn't solve this, then the United States is going to be a failed state politically, because the right-wing demand for "originalism" in the Supreme Court is to say, well, what would the slave owners who wrote the Constitution rule today? Well, they would back all of the right wingers.
And you had the same fight occur in Athens, in the 4th century BC. What was the original Constitution of Solon? What did Solon really do? Well, there were rival views of what the Constitution was all about.
One of the upshots of this New York election and municipal socialism is going to be the whole issue of, basically, oligarchy and campaigns. And that's why Mamdani has again and again used the word "oligarchy." And that's where he's distinguishing himself from others. And the issue? Really, it's not Marxism; it's not socialism as such because there are so many different kinds of socialism, as Richard has pointed out. It's oligarchy versus real democracy, which means policies that are enacted to protect the population at large — of tenants, of wage-earners, of the bottom 90% of the population — not just the top 10%, as we've been talking about.
So, this is exactly what the 2026 Senate elections are going to be about. And if AOC runs against Chuck Schumer, trying to unseat him — same thing with the House of Representatives — you're going to have the Democrats, particularly, running against Bernie Sanders, AOC, [against] any attempt to have public health care because that threatens to cut off their own flow of election contributions from the special interests.
So, all of this goes beyond political ideology itself. It has to do with the whole structuring of the political system. And that's why both the Republicans and the Democrats were so shocked by Mamdani's win, and why his win is so historical — if it will actually change things.
People have been saying: Well, look at how Bernie and AOC ended up surrendering to [Nancy] Pelosi and Schumer, and just going along with the Democratic majority. They were co-opted. Well, Mamdani is free of the pressure that was brought against both Bernie Sanders and AOC because there's no party above him as Mayor of New York. There's no one who can tell him what to do, or say: If you don't support this policy, we won't put you on a powerful committee, a such-and-such committee; or we won't give you any voice.
He now has the voice to do what he wants. Today he appointed Lina Khan, Biden's excellent anti-monopoly lawyer, as one of his co-chairs for his mayoral [transition] campaign. He's bringing all the progressives on this [transition] team with him. And what he's going to be doing is not simply a personal fight for New York — he's a very gifted politician, he's a natural as a politician, for any of you who've listened to his victory speech the other night. It's really a whole — his team will say: There is an alternative, and there's no other alternative on the schedule; and we're going to start with this alternative on a New York scale, if we can.
And if we're opposed by Trump and by the federal government, trying to starve us for transportation funds and all the federal funds that come in; if Trump sends in the National Guard to begin arresting citizens — one of Trump's supporters yesterday said he wants ICE (the Immigration authority), to look at Mamdani's citizenship application, and said: Was there anything wrong? Was there a typographical error? If so, let's deport him back to Africa. You already have seen that breaking out yesterday. That's the stakes that we're seeing in what is going to be the policies he has for mayor.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, I think the main point, what Michael just said, is so important: Who's going to be on his team and what would be the policies that he's going to adopt? After all, we know that the status quo doesn't work in the United States. That's why people are voting for Mamdani and people like him.
And it's not just about the Democratic Party. Within the Republican Party, the same thing is happening. And here is just a short clip of what Tucker Carlson said.
LINDSEY GRAHAM (CLIP): […] the Republican Party. We're killing all the right people and we're cutting your taxes.
TUCKER CARLSON (CLIP): Cutting your taxes, and killing all the right people. That really is the crispest way to describe the marriage of libertarian economics and neocon foreign policy: cuttin' taxes and killin'. And if you think about it, who'd want to be associated with that? Cutting taxes itself is hardly a virtue. It's a contextual matter. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is. It totally depends. But in Lindsey Graham's simplistic-but-heartfelt formulation, cutting taxes is just a positive good, always. And so is killing people. Killing the right people. No, they got to be the right people, but killing people. Killing people is just a good thing. Like, it's one of the things you don't need to describe […]
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah.
RICHARD WOLFF: You know, the problem with Tucker Carlson is he doesn't understand how far that reaches, so he can only come up with the examples that he comes up with.
But let me take it another step, because it's all about what Mamdani is going to have to do.
When Mr. Trump comes into office, he has a problem. The American national debt has ballooned faster than anything else. What is it now? $35 trillion, or more than that. In a very short time, it went from a few hundred billion to $35 trillion — out of control national debt. So bad that we lose our AAA credit rating. So bad that we get statements by lenders that they don't want to lend to the United States anymore because they're not confident in the ability to pay — which is why you don't have a AAA rating.
So, he comes in, and he's got a problem. He's going to do something. He promises he's going to do something about this national debt, about the ability of the United States to borrow.
And for those who don't understand, a reminder: Every major war, starting in Vietnam, that we have fought in recent time has been paid for by borrowing; and the reason is you cannot fight these wars if you were to make the American people pay the tax to pay for it, because they'd oppose it right from the beginning. Now it takes a year to get into these wars before the American people begin to realize the hopeless[ness] and pointlessness of it — for them.
So, you've got to be able to borrow. You cannot run your foreign policy. You can't even run your government. Why is that? Very simple. We have a politics in which corporations and the rich demand of the government all kinds of services — but they don't want to pay taxes. And by donating — or not — they can force the politicians not to tax them. Okay?
What about the mass of people? They want the government to give them all kinds of benefits: schooling, hospitals, roads, policing, fire department, you name it. And they don't want to pay taxes — but they've been forced to.
The burden of taxation, as anyone knows who studies it, has been shifted, over the last century, from corporations and the rich to the average person, the middle class. That's what's happened.
So, Mr. Trump comes into office after this; but he's got a problem. He can't just borrow some more. He did that in his first presidential run, and everybody pointed out, you didn't solve the government's debt, you made it worse — which, of course, was true because he inherited the structure that was doing that before him, did it during him, and did it after him under Biden.
So, what is he going to do? The only thing he knows: try to do what Republicans do — more so.
What does that mean? Don't tax corporations and the rich. Once again, the first act of his new presidency, the current second term, Big Beautiful (tax) Bill — extend the tax cuts of the first regime, and add a few more — which is what he did.
So, what's left? There's no way to reduce the government debt if you're not going to tax the corporations and the rich. You dare not tax the mass of people because that's your political base.
So, what do you do? There's only one thing left. You have to cut expenditures. The first phase he does with Elon Musk, and he raises the banner, Efficiency: I'm going to cut the government, by efficiency.
And when that runs out of gas, and runs into every difficulty imaginable, he has to drop it. He kicks Mr. Musk to the curb, throws him under the bus, and comes up with a new way to save money called the government shutdown that we're living through.
That's as fanciful nonsense as the efficiency bullshit was before. All he's doing — and of course, this is not enough — he's trying to save money so he can do something about the national debt, which he's inherited. But he can't do it on the scale that will make a difference.
So, he's stuck. And you know how he knows he's stuck? Because of the elections two days ago. That's his sign: You're stuck, Jack. The collection of things you're doing adds up to people finding reasons not to vote for you, or for the people you endorse. Everyone he endorsed lost. Everyone he opposed won. Not just Mamdani.
And I understand what Michael said about the other Democrats. They're nothing to write home about, but those were the people that Trump was able to defeat before — can't do it anymore. That is a problem. Michael is right: Mamdani is going to face every conceivable kind of obstacle, opposition. If he begins to do the things he's going to have to do, that opposition will get worse.
But if he doesn't do it, he's going to find the same sad story.
The people who voted for him are giving him a chance. But if he doesn't produce, they will vote against him next time. They really will. And they'll have a lot of help doing that. New York City is the home to more billionaires in this country than any place else — so, he's got ‘em.
England has a whole bevy of laws, in case he needs them, that require anyone who leaves Britain to pay for all the benefits they got while they were in Britain, as a condition of leaving.
Oh, oh. Here, billionaires threaten to leave, and nobody dares say anything.
Will Mr. Mamdani have the courage and the foresight to know he cannot give the same answer? He has to go — not just because that will pay for his programs, which it will. His programs are modest. If you look at the cost of grocery stores and free bus rides, it's not expensive, relative to the budget of the City of New York, anyway. But he has to do it. He has to do it for political reasons. And he has to have advisors who are able and willing to see, and to help him navigate that situation.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think you're right about the fact that many of the reforms that he can do don't cost more money. For instance, one of the things he can do to support tenants' rights is you end the building department corruption that was inherited from [the] Mayor [Ed] Koch regime and from [Rudolph] Giuliani, where the building departments run by the developers have enabled developers, like Trump, to simply tear down landmark buildings without really being fined more than a token cost of doing business.
The developers have run the city; and the landlords have run the city courts against the tenants. And by providing public lawyers for the tenants, you can defend against the landlord interests in these tenant courts. And the fact that Mamdani has said that New York is unlivable — with an average rent of over $4,500 a month in New York, who can afford to actually live here if you don't inherit enough money, [or] get a [high-paying] job?
He can tax Wall Street, as you said. That's really the key. Are these billionaires, concentrated in New York City as the nation's financial center, really going to move out? Well, hard to move to Florida these days, with all of the hurricanes threatening the property there. There's really nowhere for them to move out. So, of course, he can raise the rents. He's going to have to drag the city council and other agencies along.
It would be nice if he can drag the current center-right Governor Hochul around to imposing the (originally higher) charges for driving your automobile into the city that is still paralyzing traffic here.
And the subways have spent all of the money to help developers on the upper east side from the Second Avenue extension, so that they have not fixed the subways going outside of Manhattan — to Queens, to Brooklyn, and to the Bronx. (Last night, my wife's 45-minute trip took her an hour and a half, including sitting in the dark for over half an hour when the electricity was turned off on the line to where we live in Forest Hills, Queens.) The subways are falling apart — which is where most of the wage-earners live, who have to earn a living in Manhattan, and can't afford to live there anymore because of the rents.
So, all of these things can be done without much money. The money squeeze, I think, is not going to be from what Mamdani does, but from the withdrawal of state and federal support that has been subsidizing New York — as long as it was pro-landlord, pro-Wall Street, pro-oligarchy — all along.
That's going to be a fight. And again, that fight is going to be more than just a municipal fight. It's going to be a national fight, against municipal socialism and the obvious things that Mamdani has promised, which is why he got so many good followers from the beginning.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, I think this is a huge opportunity for a socialist working in New York City. How helpful could Bernie Sanders be for this sort of movement in New York City? And how is [Mamdani] going to use the experience of Bernie Sanders? What do we know about the relationship between the two?
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, at this point, the first answer is he could use help from Bernie Sanders, all the time. I mean, he needs Bernie to be out there helping him carry the message, if you like, nationwide.
Bernie is at the top of many polls. People should know this. There are people who go around asking the question: In your judgment, as an American citizen, who's the most popular politician you can think of? And Bernie wins that contest, over and over, because even though he didn't win the election, he, therefore, has none of the negativity. He hasn't had to face promises made that he couldn't deliver on — because people didn't give him the job. So, he's able to say: I told you so. This needs to be done. You didn't do it. And so we have a problem. And that's a very much better position to be in, when an empire is declining, because you're going to be facing losses, one after the other.
I mean, let me remind people — because Americans don't want to face it — that, for example, the CEO of NVIDIA, Mr. [Jensen] Huang, gave a speech yesterday, in which he basically said that we should understand that the artificial intelligence revolution has now been won, and the winner is the People's Republic of China. This is true across the board — militarily, politically, economically. The BRICS alliance is exploding in the world. It has lots of problems, of course. It encompasses very different political and economic — I don't want to make it simple — and it's not all pro-Chinese, or anything like that — but it's a viable alternative.
The power of Mr. Trump — the last cudgel he could use on the rest of the world to beat them into shape — is: I won't let you come and trade here. I won't let you buy here. I won't let you sell here. You're going to have to give me a lot of money, if you want to sell your goods here. I'll only hit you with a low tariff, if you make big [investments] —
He's demanding tribute from the whole world.
But it's too late. It would have had to have been done 20 years ago. It might have worked then. But it wasn't necessary. Now that it's necessary — too late. That happens often in history.
The BRICS are the alternative. China is turning to them, and they to China. The United States is, in a busy way, isolating itself. That's the reality. And that is going to implode on the United States in many ways. Mr. Mamdani, whether he wishes it or not, is going to be finding himself in the following situation: What can a socialist do (about what I've just said) to distinguish a better socialist response to a declining empire, than a capitalist one?
And that's where Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez, that's where they come, because they are the national and, therefore, the appropriate international.
Let me be daring and say something that people may remember: There are two ways for the United States to deal with the People's Republic of China.
One is aggressive, hostile maneuver[ing]: that's what we got. Here's an alternative: Sit down, divide the world up in such a way that both of you can find opportunities to grow and to develop.
What might it mean if socialists became advocates of that second approach, as part of a transformation of the United States? Wow. Might that bring to them a level of support, if only from all of the Americans who already worry that the relation with China is on its way to nuclear war? Wow.
A socialist movement worthy of the name has to think like that, has to have the large — as well as the public grocery store in the food desert. And I wish there were enough socialists to divide the labor, but there isn't. So, Mr. Mamdani, who's going to be the face of socialism for a while, it's up to him. He can mobilize Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez — probably — if he understands the situation he's actually in.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Michael?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Richard made the point. You're right. The socialists have always been against war because most wars are against socialism.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah. Thank you so much, Richard and Michael. Great pleasure, as always.
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, this was an important conversation, made possible by an important election. And I think we will be talking about the implications and ramifications many times in the future of these conversations.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Exactly. Yeah. Thank you so much. See you soon. See you next week. Bye-bye.
Transcription and Diarization: scripthub.dev
Editing: Kimberly Mims
Review: ced