Socialism Yesterday and Today, Mamdani, and the Democratic Party
1) Before getting to today's linked articles, a personal note on my relationship with socialism as an ideology: Despite having learned classical liberal economics at the U. of Chicago, including the privilege of being allowed, as a senior, to take Milton Friedman's legendary graduate-level Price Theory course, I entered a Marxist phase in the early 1960s that lasted a little over a decade, until my classical liberal side reasserted itself and I returned to an allegiance I still have. I was a very learned and serious Marxist, read virtually everything he wrote -- including the newly translated "Grundrisse" -- and even, during my first teaching job, taught an undergraduate seminar at Yale on Volume I of Das Kapital. I was not only an "intellectual" Marxist, but put it into practice, becoming a member of first SDS and then the ultra-left Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and actively participating in the anti-Vietnam War movement.
What motivated my commitment was a combination of the youthful utopian egalitarianism that still impels young socialists today and the horrific violence of the war. Those who were not yet mature at that time can have no idea of how strongly the incomprehensibly brutality of that war affected young college-educated Americans. It is well known that the U.S. Air Force dropped more explosives on Vietnam than it expended in all of WWII, that upward of 3 million Vietnamese died, that many others were burned by napalm, and that the bombing of Laos and Cambodia by the Nixon administration contributed to destabilizing those countries and led to the victory of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent deaths of millions of Cambodians.
Many of us, being intellectuals for whom everything has to hang together in a neat systemic package, were looking for an explanation comprehensive enough to explain how our government could be acting so brutally. We found it in Lenin's Theory of Imperialism, which tied state global expansion to the needs of the underlying capitalist ideology. It was, of course, possible to oppose the U.S. involvement without going so far off the deep end ideologically, and many people based their actions on liberal, pacifist, strategic, or other grounds. But for us, Marxism, particularly in its Leninist or Maoist incarnations, provided a more satisfying -- and deceptively profound -- answer, as well as explaining the historical connection between capitalism and slavery that had led to the contemporaneous Civil Rights Movement, in which we also participated.
I knew all about the lamentable past and present of "real socialism," but we, just like so many of today's young Marxists, thought that we could correct its historically contingent defects and restore the "purer" vision we thought had inspired Marx. Only later did I come to fully recognize, as Hayek had so brilliantly explained in "The Road to Serfdom," his "knowledge" articles, and in his last book, "The Fatal Conceit," that the political authoritarianism that invariably accompanied a socialist economy was not an "accidental" conjunction, but a necessary consequence, that the labor theory of value was invalid, that "exploitation" didn't exist, that Marxism was an incoherent jumble of Hegelian philosophy, classical political economy, and Rousseau's anti-liberalism, and that the innovation-generating free-market economy (capitalism, for short) was the only system capable of eliminating global poverty, just as it had brought unparalleled prosperity to the developed world starting in the 17th century.
I grant that many of today's young socialists are impelled by the best of intentions and that their version is based more on a distorted picture of an idealized European (mostly Scandinavian) "social democracy" (deriving from the late 19th-century German Marxist Eduard Bernstein), than on the strain coming down from Lenin and Mao -- although Mamdani has been known to talk about "seizing the means of production." It rests on a misconception of the economic systems of countries like Denmark and Sweden, which, while they do have high redistributional income transfers -- utilizing consumption-based taxes like the VAT --, are very much free-market systems at their productive core, with labor and product markets characterized by less government control than the U.S.
So what is the source of today's socialist resurgence? Allison Schrager, in a post this morning titled "Fat and Angry," has at least part of the answer:
I might be losing it. I was at a party recently and found myself screaming at someone about rent control. “NO, it is not just a theory some economists have that it increases prices for everyone else!!!!”
I am never one to judge people’s choices, but this wholesale rejection of the most basic economic principles by some voters is driving me crazy. I turn to the data to calm myself. It seems much of the probable Mayor’s base is college-educated, high-ish earners who live in the bohemian parts of Brooklyn. If you look at their economic situation, there are reasons they feel resentful, and it’s important to understand what’s going on with them—because historically, a disappointed and entitled haute bourgeoisie causes all sorts of trouble.
It is more complicated than elite overproduction. Many of these people are elite; this is not just baristas with feminist studies degrees. I wrote for Bloomberg about the growing divide between the economic and cultural elite.
Many of these socialists who want fewer cops have cultural elite jobs: in media, the arts, non-profits, and the like. These jobs require living in a big, culturally dominant city. But these cities have gotten very expensive—too expensive to buy a home or raise a family, even if you earn a decent living. According to the data, I estimate that “creatives” in Brooklyn have median earnings of about $125,000, and only about 30% own a home. To make matters worse, they live alongside the people they grew up with and went to school with who “sold out.” The “sell-outs” work in law, consulting, or finance, make much more, and almost 60% own their homes. This may be why the new Marxists believe the economy is zero-sum; when it comes to buying a Brooklyn brownstone, it is.
It’s getting worse because a generation ago, cities were much cheaper. You could work in a non-profit or be a somewhat successful journalist and raise a family in the city. The returns to an economic elite job have also increased relative to the cultural elite. True, the culturally elite made their career choices—they could have worked in finance too. And they still earn more than most New Yorkers. But that’s not much comfort; affordability is a real problem.
But the tragedy is they are making choices that will make their problems worse. Either that, or the public safety issue will make the city more affordable—but not in a good way. Unfortunately, a nice smile does not overcome the basic laws of economics. Markets come for you eventually.
2) In a similar vein, Tyler Cowen explains why socialism keeps recurring in new generational cohorts, despite its dismal historical record (USSR, Maoist China, N. Korea, Cuba, etc). His explanation is rooted in social psychology, emphasizing that socialist sentiment today is very negative, focused on bad feelings about rich and successful people, resentment, and a dark pessimism concerning the future. Back in the '60s, we were much more hopeful about the future and viewed socialism as a way of making the world a better place. We were wrong and, especially, didn't recognize that a utopian "perfectionism" could turn out to be a dangerous thing.
3) Mamdani is recycling a lot of the worst socialist-leaning policy proposals: rent control, government-run stores, subsidies, high taxes on upper-income people, and minimum wage hikes. David Henderson shows how these policies, if actually implemented, would make NYC's economy worse and hurt, rather than help, the people whose economic interests he claims he wants to improve.
https://www.hoover.org/research/look-mamdanis-economic-ideas
4) Rob Henderson notes that Mamdani's beliefs fall in the category of "luxury beliefs," supported most strongly by the cultural and economic elite of the city:
...elites who endorse these ideas believe they’re pursuing justice. In practice, it’s a new form of political elitism. If the policies fail, the voters who backed them will be largely shielded from the consequences.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/zohran-mamdani-new-york-city-mayoral-election-luxury-beliefs
5) It is, of course, quite possible that we shouldn't take these ideas too seriously because their impracticality, combined with the fact that many of them would require the concurrence of the governor and/or the City Council, will prevent Mamdani, if elected in November, from carrying them through. Josh Barro examines the "bull and bear" cases on Mamdani.
6) This is, after all, only an election for mayor of New York, a position bringing no great amount of national political power, despite being symbolically important. In another of his trenchant diagnostic examinations of where the Democratic Party is headed, Ruy Teixeira includes the Mamdani victory, along with other ongoing political developments, as signs of whether the Democrats can change enough to return to power.
You are completely out of touch. But a great example of failed America.