Social Democracy is not the same as Socialism. But, I wasn’t following the race, maybe he does want the public to own the means of production.
Also Democratic Socialism (Mamdani’s beliefs) are not the same as Social Democracy. They are slightly different.
I get the hesitation since in US politics they often get conflated and I can’t say I’ve followed him very closely but someone else shared this. I know he’s also advocating for city owned grocery stores.
Quite a lot of red states have state owned liquor stores,[0] so city owned grocery stores doesn’t sound that radical. Apparently, Atlanta is doing it.[1] I hadn’t heard of this idea before, but web search shows it is a thing. I’d consider it socialism if he also wants to close down the privately run grocery stores. He doesn’t seem to be doing that
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_state
The government running public alternatives isn’t socialism. Socialism is specifically about control of the means of production. The only people who think socialism is when the government does stuff are Bernie bros who think Sweden is socialist and MAGA who also think Sweden is socialist. Basically, if someone think that Sweden is socialist then they have no idea what they’re talking about.
