Zohran Mamdani — An Analysis of His Video Propaganda Piece Shows That His Core Beliefs Are Communist Dogma

‘Profits? You don’t need no stinkin’ profits.’

In New York Accelerates Toward the Cliff I discussed the disaster that New Yorkers are facing as a result of Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. In that I cautioned that “Like some other Democrat ‘progressive’ politicos, Mamdani camouflages his communist economic preferences with the label ‘Democratic Socialist.’” But when his statements are analyzed, they show who he really is. Private property and capitalism be damned.

Capitalism provides the freedom to earn a profit

Although some might be fooled by Mamdani’s camouflage of his commitment to communism, he has made clear that he is an enemy of the economic system that has lifted more people out of abject poverty and created more wealth for more people, than any other system in history. That system, of course, is capitalism with its emphasis on freedom, private property rights, and the profit motive. And, no, “profit” is not a pejorative as Mamdani and other communists and socialists try to persuade us. The incentive to earn profits is the fuel that makes the system work.

Capitalism and communism

I will not wade into the Serbonian Bog¹ of a lengthy analysis to show that Mamdani is a communist rather than a garden-variety or democratic socialist. Communist economic doctrine seeks to abolish a profit-based economy and the freedom of private property ownership and replace them with property that is government-owned and communally controlled. One of its core principles is its rejection of capitalism, which is powered by the engine of the profit motive.

Communism is the antithesis of capitalism; the two systems are polar opposites. If we see someone who wants to do away with capitalism, whether they label themselves as anarchist, socialist, progressive, or whatever, know that their core principles are communist.

Mandani tries to deny that he is a communist. To gage his honesty, let’s look at his fundamental economic principles, as he has articulated them. We will look at just his proposals for a government take-over and elimination of the housing market. When we analyze Mamdani’s own words, we see that he is an enemy of capitalism; that he rejects the profit motive that is fundamental to our capitalistic system; and that he wants the government to seize your property so that it can be pressed into the service of achieving Nirvana here on earth, modeled on what he calls “beautiful Red Vienna.”

Mamdani’s core values and phony arguments

Four years ago, Mamdani, as a New York councilman, made the video below titled “How Socialists Solved The Housing Crisis. It reveals his antipathy to capitalism. Let’s look at a few highlights evidencing his antipathy to the engine that drives a capitalist economy: people who are in business to make a profit.

His video sets the stage with phony arguments about a “housing crisis.”

And the crisis isn’t just in big cities: in 95 percent of ALL U.S. counties, workers making the minimum don’t make enough to afford a one-bedroom rental on their own.

The Harvard Center for Housing Studies warns of “a new normal” for housing in the United States, in which nearly half of all renter households spend almost a third of their income as rent.

Let’s pause there for a minute. Since 1981 the government has recommended that renters should generally limit their rental payments to 30% of their monthly income. This is generally in line with amounts that mortgage companies will lend to fund the purchase of a home. Yet Mamdani posits that if “nearly half” of renters spend “almost a third” of their monthly income on rent, it is a national crisis that must be solved by upending the fundamentals of our economic system, including ownership of private property. Basis math is not his strong suit.

Mamdani continues by insisting that precisely because “nearly half of all renter households spend almost a third of their income as rent,”

[t]hat’s why even before the fallout from the coronavirus started to hit, more than half a million Americans nationwide were already homeless, millions more were on the brink of losing their housing, and countless families were struggling every month to make ends meet.

We have all seen people living on the streets. There are a myriad of causes of this. Many are drug addicts. Their addiction certainly is a cause of their “homelessness.” Many of them choose to live on the streets and refuse housing. A large number are simply mentally ill persons who should be housed in an institution. But some years ago, courts limited the ability of cities and states to institutionalize such persons. Mamdani ignores this plethora of causes. For him, the free market and the desire of private businesses to make a profit by building and selling housing are “at the root” of it all. They are greedy. Their motives are selfish. Radical measures must be taken!

The problem? People trying to earn profits by building housing.

Mamdani then emphasizes the supposed root cause of “America’s housing crisis.” It is those damn profits!

At the root of all this suffering is the fact that in this country, housing is treated as a COMMODITY, not a right. It’s a consumer product, just like clothes or cars, that private businesses can sell on the market to make a profit.

* * * *

Why do so many people end up homeless? It’s not because there aren’t enough homes to go around. There are plenty of empty homes.

No. It’s because housing people IS NOT the primary goal of developers or landlords. Their goal, simply put, is to make a profit.

The empty homes, you see, are for the rich. The greedy developers would rather build mansions for the rich and let them sit unsold and vacant, than make a profit by building less expensive homes that will be occupied by “the poor.” He assures us this is true:

And it’s much more profitable to build luxury apartments for the rich [which he just told us are sitting empty] than decent homes for the poor. This gives us a big shortage of homes for ordinary working people.

And the solution?

So, what is the solution? Why, don’t you see? It is the abolition of the capitalist system with its market for goods to be freely produced and sold. We must do away with the housing market. When the government eliminates the market for purchases and sales of homes, it will then be the government’s responsibility to providing housing. That is right and necessary because housing is a “right” and rights must not be subject to the vagaries of a “market.” Mamdani explains:

This is a TERRIBLE way to organize a housing market. It might be profitable for landlords and developers, but it’s not efficient or beneficial for the rest of society. In fact, housing doesn’t have to be seen as a market AT ALL.

Eliminate the housing market?

To conceptualize what eliminating a market for houses means and how it might work, consider this: There is no “market” for drivers’ licenses. They are not commodities that can be bought and sold like shoes. You cannot buy one from a businessperson who creates a market for drivers licenses and offers to sell you one. No, the government controls their sale and makes the rules through something we know as the DMV.

So, if you want a Department of Housing Availability that is run along the lines of a typical state DMV, by all means vote for the communist.

Mamdani offers us a model of what he calls the “decommodification of housing.” He bases it upon a Nirvana that he imagines is what “beautiful Red Vienna” created for its citizens in the early 1900’s. Presumably such “decommodification” will be administered by the DDH (Department of Decommodification of Housing). Mamdani’s 100+ year old model for us to emulate is a city-state created from the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He explains how to adapt this model to 21st Century America:

So, how can we do it?

We can start by making sure people who access housing on the private market have ironclad protections against abuse and exploitation: preventing landlords from increasing their rents too sharply, requiring that evictions be approved by a judge, and giving tenants a right to renew their lease.

“Ironclad protections against abuse and exploitation.” Who could be against that? But what does it mean in practice? If we give the above remedy just a moment’s thought we see: (i) Price fixing — If you are a landlord who owns property, you will have your rents set by the government and some functionary in the DMV DDH which will decide if you will be permitted to cover costs by “increasing rents too sharply.” And, of course, you will probably need to absorb more costs by hiring a lawyer to make that case for you. (ii) Lawfare: Tie property owners up in court and make them pay more lawyers — If a tenant refuses to pay rent or trashes your apartment, you will have to hire a lawyer and go to court to have an eviction “approved by a judge.” (iii) Still more litigation over mandatory rent renewals— Tenants will have “a right to renew their lease.” So a tenant trashes your lease? Tough luck. They will have “a right” to renew it. Want to try to stop them? Back to court you go, you greedy capitalist, you.

What we must do — Confiscate private property. But history is on our side.

Mamdani continues with his description of what we must do:

But to go further, toward the Vienna model, we’ll have to go beyond the market.

We can establish community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership. We can give tenants a right of first refusal to buy out their landlords when buildings go for sale. * * * * We won’t decommodify housing overnight. But we know what we have to do, and we have history to guide us.

So, if you support yourself by buying property to rent, the government will establish a “land trust” to appropriate your property and “convert it to community ownership.” Think you will be satisfied with what they offer to pay you? No? Off you go to court again, capitalist pig. And who will be the trustees and who will select them? And because these will be trusts, who will be the beneficiaries and how will their rights be protected? More and more layers of government bureaucracy and control.

For those who can bear to watch the whole thing, here is young Zohran’s video.

A real economist explains

I will not add to the length of this article with a lengthy discussion of the importance of the profit motive and why appeals to developers’ (or others’) “greed” is misplaced. The late and venerable Milton Friedman did that much better than could I, when Phil Donahue made Mamdani’s arguments about capitalism some years ago. Watch the whole thing.

So who is right?

Zohran Mamdani?

If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full DECOMMODIFICATION of housing. In other words, moving away from the status quo – in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market – and toward a future where we guarantee high-quality housing to all as a human right.

* * * *

We won’t decommodify housing overnight. But we know what we have to do, and we have history to guide us.

Or Milton Friedman?

The great achievements of civilizations have not come from government bureaus.” * * * * In The only case in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding property you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free enterprise system.

You be the judge.

1. The Serbonian Bog has often been used by Supreme Court justices and other judges as an analogy for wading into an inextricable mess of a complex analysis. See, for example, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor writing in Air France v. Saks (1985), that the Court had no desire “to plunge into the ‘Serbonian Bog’ that accompanies attempts to distinguish between causes that are accidents and injuries that are accidents.”