Austerity as the Political Choice of the Settler State
The annual city budget battle is not a technical exercise but the primary site where the class war is waged and the priorities of the bifurcated state are codified. Mamdani’s analysis of the state as an instrument of power is laid bare in the budget document. Every dollar allocated to the NYPD is a dollar denied to schools, libraries, and social housing. Austerity is not an economic necessity; it is a political choice to defend the interests of the settler class–the bondholders, the real estate developers, the police unions–at the expense of the native majority. A Marxist critique reads the budget as a map of class power. A feminist perspective demands a budget that funds care, not cages. The solution is a militant, mass movement for a people’s budget that defunds the apparatus of control and fully funds the infrastructure of life, a fundamental reordering of the city’s priorities through direct democratic participation.
Originally posted 2025-09-30 01:29:38.
