Democratic New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani quoted Socialist Party of America (SPA) founder Eugene Debs during his victory speech on Tuesday.
Mamdani quoted the famous socialist who believed that capitalism exploited workers and created a system of “wage slavery,” where workers were dependent on capitalists for their livelihood. The self-professed democratic socialist won the mayoral race over former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo with 50.4% of the vote.
“The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity,’” Mamdani said.
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Debs, who unsuccessfully ran for president several times, blamed capitalism for poverty and crime and that these issues could be eliminated with socialism. He maintained that capitalism was fundamentally anti-democratic because it created a class of economic masters whose power diminished political democracy.
As a result, Debs believed that the government should have seized the means of production and that wealth should be distributed according to need. He believed these solutions would have eliminated poverty, end the struggle for existence and lead to a more democratic society.
Debs served a ten-year prison sentence for giving an anti-war speech in 1918, which prosecutors said violated The Espionage and Sedition Acts. In 1920, he famously decided to run for president from his jail cell as a member of the Socialist Party of America.
Mamdani said during a 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America conference that the end goal of socialism is about “seizing the means of production.” He received endorsements from Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who are both self-professed democratic socialists.
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