Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has come under fire from critics who label him a “communist” – a charge he dismisses as a distraction.
However, the criticisms may not be as unfounded as Mamdani claims. Videos show the NYC mayoral candidate espousing language and theories rooted in communist revolutionary language.
In one 2021 video, Mamdani urges fellow socialists at a conference to not compromise on goals like “seizing the means of production.” In a second video, released on YouTube by progressive advocacy group The Gravel Institute that same year, Mamdani discusses the need to turn housing from a private commodity to a public one, calling for luxury condos to be replaced with communal style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.
“Why do so many people end up homeless?” Mamdani asks in the video. “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 a primary goal of developers or landlords. Their goal, simply put, is to make a profit.”
According to Mamdani, this is a problem. He lamented in the video that housing is “a consumer product, just like clothes or cars” that private businesses sell on the market to make a profit. As a result, Mamdani complains, there is plenty of housing for “the rich” but not nearly enough opportunities for poor and working-class people.
“[It’s] not efficient or beneficial for the rest of society,” Mamdani says. “Housing doesn’t have to be seen as a market at all.”
Hellbound and Down 