Bill Ayers

It’s the end of the world as we know it,

And I feel fine. ~~R.E.M.

When Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblyman and self-described democratic socialist, decisively won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City in June 2025, the entire liberal establishment lost its shit. The authorities reached for their fainting hankies, and the tone (if not the exact words) of the rulers and their enablers was unmistakable: “Bolsheviks take over NYC!”

The frenzied commentary ran the gamut: disbelief to delirium, agitation to hysteria, alarm to panic. Now that reality has settled in, the powerful have arrived at what they hope is a broad and reasoned consensus: Mamdani must be stopped at all costs! On the psycho side, the madman-in-chief suggested denaturalizing Mamdani and then deporting him; the realists, after scolding and patronizing the electorate for its misguided idealism leading to the socialist victory, got busy raising millions of dollars to buy the election—for anyone but Zohran. All the talk of the last several months about “saving democracy” and “undermining the will of the people” was shed like a dirty shirt, and the guy Mamdani crushed was dusted off and rehabilitated by the elite. 

It’s as if Mamdani were planning to defund the police, seize the banks, and nationalize the ports as well as the Yankees.

I like those ideas myself, but that’s just me; nothing in Zohran Mamdani’s policy proposals, campaign promises, or past activities suggests that these are anywhere in his sights. In fact,  what’s got the rulers in a tizzy is rather modest: making city buses free, establishing five city-run grocery stores, raising the minimum wage so that working people can afford to live in the city with some dignity, and freezing rents on rent-subsidized apartments. 

But in their minds something devilish is lurking: free buses today, and universal health care looms; rent freezes today, landlords rounded up and sent to re-education camps tomorrow. And before long people will get the idea that housing is a human right, and that everyone has a right to a place to call home. Then what? Food is a human right? Education? There’s no end! 

Plus Mamdani has refused to support Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians. He’s an immigrant from Africa, and a Muslim. That’s three strikes right there.

When a leading US Senator was asked by a reporter days after the election if a socialist mayor of the largest American city created problems for the Democratic Party, he responded, “I’m a capitalist.” There were no follow up questions, which was typical, but sad, because I have a few: do you mean that you own the means of production? Or merely that you embrace selfishness, murderous competition, selective humanization that renders large sections of human beings as disposable, and mindless growth—the vilest human qualities and the beating heart of capitalism? But “I’m a capitalist” stands alone—no elaboration, no further explanation needed—because the words “socialism” and “capitalism” function metaphorically in American political discourse: “socialism” is bad, cruel and authoritarian; “capitalism” is good, prosperous and free. 

The 1% promotes the myth that socialists want to make human beings into worker bees or indistinguishable ants in the colony, while capitalists will one day set us all free. Vote for free buses and you’re on a fast-path to the anthill.

In Chicago today we have socialist roads, socialist garbage collection, and a socialist fire department. We’ve agreed as a community over decades of living together that it’s best if everyone’s garbage gets collected by the city, and that the “freedom” to let your trash pile up in your yard or alley is unhealthy and stupid. We also think as a community that it’s a good idea to have a firehouse in every neighborhood rather than wait for a catastrophic fire to erupt, and then take bids from competing private contractors to see who will fight it. After World War II, Chicago took over the privately-owned elevated and subway lines, the street cars and bus companies, and unified and modernized a fragmented transportation system into a public entity. Everyday socialism.

Or as it was called in Milwaukee, “sewer socialism.” Emil Seidel (1910-1912), Daniel Hoan (1916-1940), and Frank Zeidler (1948-1960) were all democratic socialists who ran corruption-free administrations and took a pragmatic approach to governance. They’re remembered for things like building an extensive park system, installing public drinking fountains, and requiring owners to install toilets for workers in their factories.

We have models in the modern world, of course, of socialism without freedom, which is subjugation and control. But if we look honestly at what’s right before our eyes we can see clearly that freedom without socialism is privilege, predation, exploitation, and injustice.

The brutality of capitalism is apparent in every direction: war, invasion and occupation throughout the world exacting tribute in resources and labor from the Global South; militarized police forces at home; white supremacy cemented into law and culture and social structures; super-exploitation of an poorly paid underclass of workers; the looming catastrophic climate collapse; the banality of evil in the increasingly pervasive carceral state. Capitalism willfully and skillfully promotes greed, and turns frenzied accumulation from an obvious vice into an exalted virtue; it deliberately degrades human qualities such as mutual care, kindness, and the sense that we’re all better off when we’re all better off.  

As an 80-year-old person now, I  marvel at the all-conquering nature of capitalism, the ways market competition can be made into a model for every aspect of human life. Take elder-care, the plundering, profit-driven American care system that takes the basic human impulse to care for one another, and transforms it into a market, the Care Industry, with its fangs and talons covered with golden gauze.

If Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor of NY, the capitalists will work overtime to undermine his every initiative, and then proclaim that “once again, socialism failed.”

Let’s fight that—arm-in-arm, shoulder-to-shoulder.

~~Bill Ayers, Chicago