Decommodification: The Dark Matter of Zohran Mamdani’s Agenda

One of the hallmarks of socialist discourse has always been the use of freighted, ideological jargon and sloganeering to distract from the truth of socialism’s aim: to abolish private property and free markets, to control the principal means of production and distribution, and, in Joseph Goebbels’ words, “to submit the I to the thou … sacrificing the individual to the whole.”

From “oligarchy” to “redistribution of wealth” and “racial capitalism” to  “restorative justice,” “social inequality,” and “the carceral state,” today’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) openly declare to use the command of government “to build a socialist society where people come before profit, basic needs are guaranteed, the largest corporations are put under public ownership and democratic control … and workers around the world join together in common struggle to construct socialism worldwide.” (RELATED: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Utopian Future?)

Enter Zohran Kwame Mamdani — limousine socialist, self-anointed champion of the working class, and New York City’s first Muslim mayor, who for years has dutifully towed the DSA party line to further its collectivist agenda. (RELATED: Mayor Mamdani: A Victory for Champagne Socialism)

As an assemblyman in 2020, he called for the government takeover of luxury properties to house the homeless during COVID: “Seize these properties,” Mamdani demanded, “House the homeless. Enact a #HomesGuarantee.” (RELATED: The ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Comes to New York)

In 2021, Mamdani exhorted attendees at a Young Democratic Socialists of America conference never to compromise on “seizing the means of production” — a statement he has never retracted — and “to win socialism” by ensuring “that we are unapologetic about our socialism.” (RELATED: From Solidarity to Statism: Mayor Mamdani’s Vision for New York City)

On last year’s mayoral campaign trail, an unearthed video produced by the far left-wing Gravel Institute, showed an Arafat-style smiling Mamdani in a dark Muslim thobe, advocating for the establishment of “community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership” — realizing his dream of creating socialist utopias where all amenities are equally shared and the righteous can await their spiritual resurrection and Day of Judgment in equity and communal celebration. (RELATED: New York’s Envy Tax)

To Mamdani, the answer is simple: “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.” In Mamdani’s view, “housing doesn’t have to be seen as a market at all.”

“Decommodification,” not exactly a word that trips off the tongues of the oppressed workers of the world, has become the common denominator in Mamdani’s “moral vision” for the ‘Reddening’ of New York City and ultimately of America. Simply put, decommodification is the process of removing private goods and services (and their value) from the marketplace and converting them into public or communal entitlements — universal childcare, city-run grocery stores, free public transportation, large scale social housing, community-based crime prevention, no-cost transgender treatments for minors, and much more — thus immunizing everyday citizens from free market dependency and the pressures of capitalist profit-making.

Like a Muslim Starbucks, Mamdani touts the wonders of decommodification in shopworn socialist grievance: human rights versus property rights; a standard of living irrespective of job status; an economic safety net that uplifts workers’ sense of well-being and self-worth; social services and benefits that reduce inequality and poverty — all ending working class exploitation and the pursuit of profit.

Never mind how decommodification ultimately erodes individual rights, stagnates investment and development, reduces the incentive to work, penalizes profit and success, and uses the power of the state to intervene in the world of business and commerce. According to Alan Charles Kors, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, socialism’s “vision of the abolition of private property, economic inequality, and the allocation of capital and goods by free markets,” culminates “in the crushing of individual, economic, religious, and political liberty.”

Ever the starry-eyed municipal socialist, Mamdani cites the Austrian “Red Vienna” period of the 1920s and 30s as a model for New York City to emulate — when Vienna’s Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP) rose to power and attempted a workers’ movement to greatly expand the public sector and the lives of the working class — demanding sweeping collectivist reforms to education, taxes, public health, unemployment, housing, and sanitation.

What Mamdani doesn’t say is that this short-lived socialist experiment resulted in abject failure: higher taxes, widespread subsidization, housing shortages, and preferential treatment — not to mention assassinations of SDAP members, legal challenges from the Catholic Church, and virulent public antisemitism — all climaxing in the banning and dismantling of the SDAP as an unworkable morass of its own political and societal contradictions.

Equally troubling as Mamdani’s demands for decommodification of NYC’s goods and services is his injection of race-based initiatives into their implementation. To justify his “Racial Equity Plan” — a framework of programs and spending engineered to tackle the “affordability crisis” — he openly advocates prioritizing resources towards “black and brown New Yorkers” and the “dismantling [of] systemic racial inequity.”

Mamdani is not alone in his thinking. Witness the seeding of his administration with like-minded appointees who are doubling down on his insistence for a more “equitable future” for “Black and Latino New Yorkers.” One case in point is Cea Weaver, a veteran DSA activist whose TikTok-style race-baiting is legendary and has long offended people on both sides of the aisle. (RELATED: Mamdani Appoints ‘Black Liberation’ Activist Afua Atta-Mensah After Accusations of Black Exclusion)

New Yorkers will remember Ms. Weaver was rejected for a City Council position on the City Planning Commission in 2021 for her incendiary social postings; notably, “Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.” Then, too, were her clarion calls to “Elect more communists,” “Seize private property,” and her declaration that, “The Police Are Just People The State Sanctions To Murder W[ith] Impunity,” to name just a few. (RELATED: The White Supremacists Have Taken Over!)

To keep Ms. Weaver in his inner circle, on his first day in office, Mamdani issued an executive order to resuscitate the defunct Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants program and installed Weaver as its new director. In disapproval, Democratic Assemblyman Kalman Yeger quipped: “Guess it’s easier to name a communist to a position that doesn’t require confirmation.”

But perhaps Mamdani’s most damaging socialist misconception vis-à-vis decommodification is his contention that everyone should have access to the “necessities of life” as a “human right.” One would think that, earning a degree from privileged Bowdoin College in bucolic Maine at $60,000 a year, he would have learned what rights actually are.

Rights are moral principles that govern one’s freedom of action in society — action to pursue the things and the values he wants — not something granted by government. When Mamdani proclaims people have a right to housing, to healthcare, or to a living wage, he’s conflating his misguided “right to things” with the proper “right to actions” to seek or acquire those things. It’s an important distinction and supports our system of free trade and the principle of value for value.

In actuality, there is no “right to housing” — just the right to buy, to rent, to lease, or to build a home. There is no “right to a job” — just the right to accept a job if one is offered by an employer. There is no “right to a college education” — just the right to attend a school after meeting its qualifications and agreeing to its rules, costs, and procedures. There is no right to these things any more than there is a right to a Cadillac, a swimming pool, or $200 sneakers.

The beauty and genius of America is that we are free to live our lives the way we choose — by our own stars, our own compass, and our own judgment — to seek our individual goals and happiness as we see fit. We respect the rights of others and do not seek the unearned or the unmerited. In the end, we are comforted in the knowledge and understanding that individual rights are what keep society subject to justice and the rule of law.

Morality can apply only to those who have a choice.

In Mamdani’s mayoral victory speech, he invoked the words of Eugene Debs, the OG American socialist activist who ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920 (once from jail), co-founded the Socialist Party of America, and famously said, “The most heroic word in all languages is REVOLUTION.”

Debs is also the hero of Bernie Sanders, who honors Debs with a plaque in his Senate office and has long called for his own “political revolution.” One can envision Mamdani and Sanders sitting together at night, beatifically smiling up at their champion — three leftist dreamers in search of a revolution.

For now, Mamdani will have to be content with a promise from his Inaugural Address: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

In other words, America, prepare “to submit the I to the thou.”

READ MORE:

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New York’s Mamdani Plays the Race Card

The Spectacle Ep. 377: Zohran Mamdani’s Socialism/Islam Experiment Isn’t Going Well

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