Municipal socialism is back. But was it ever gone? In his election night victory speech,
Zohran Mamdani invoked arguably the most famous socialist in U.S. history: "The sun
may have set over our city this evening," he began his speech, "but as Eugene Debs
once said: ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.'" From New York City to
Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Jackson, Mississippi, socialists and fellow travelers
are playing a role in local policymaking not seen in recent decades. But what is
"municipal socialism" (more fundamentally, what is "socialism" to begin with)? What
does it mean to implement socialism at the subnational level, as opposed to at a
national or even global scale? How should we understand the limits and possibilities of
ambitious policy change at the municipal level in general, given the constrained position
of cities under U.S. federalism?
This new course uses the case of municipal socialism to introduce students to important
themes in urban politics and municipal policy, including municipal finance, fiscal
federalism, state-local governance, public vs. private resource provision, political
strategy, and social movement and voter mobilization. We will read across a wide range
of academic disciplines, including history, sociology, political science, anthropology, law,
and political economy. Throughout the semester we will make generous use of historical
case studies that include Red Vienna (Austria), communist-led Kerala (India), and the
"sewer socialists" in the U.S. who reportedly held more than 70 mayoralties in the early
20 th century, a significant number of them concentrated in the Midwest. We will also
consider contemporary case studies like those mentioned above, notably from the
perspective of practitioners with direct experience in municipal government and
policymaking.
