Mamdani Says He’s a ‘Democratic Socialist,’ Not a Commie. But What’s the Difference? – PJ Media

When many Democrats on Friday voted in favor of a resolution condemning socialism, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was on his way to what turned out to be a surprisingly cordial meeting with President Donald Trump. Asked about the resolution, Mamdani responded: “I have to be honest with you, I focus very little on resolutions, frankly. I think the focus is on the work at hand. I can tell you I am someone who is a democratic socialist. I’ve been very open about that. I know there might be differences about ideology, but the place of agreement is the work that needs to be done to make New York City affordable. That’s what I look forward to.” 

Mamdani has indeed been open about being a democratic socialist, and has even affirmed the label in the context of denying that he is a communist. When he won the Democrat primary in late June, President Donald Trump, less friendly than he was during their Friday meeting, called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic.” Asked if he really was a communist, Mamdani responded emphatically: “No, I am not. I call myself a democratic socialist, in many ways, inspired by the words of [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] from decades ago, who said, ‘Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism: There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.’”   

Mamdani’s answer, which he has repeated on other occasions as well, actually raised more questions than it answered. The democratic socialist wunderkind invoked Martin Luther King in speaking of the alleged need for a “better distribution of wealth,” but did not explain why the best distribution of wealth isn’t the simple process of someone working, getting fairly compensated for his or her labor, and being able to dispose of that compensation as he or she sees fit. Why must there be government-mandated “distribution” of wealth at all? To talk as if such government action is necessary is to talk like a communist, the very thing Mamdani has repeatedly denied being.

In fact, the program of the Democratic Socialists of America, to which Mamdani belongs, sounds very much like communism. The Democratic Socialists of America denounce capitalism as a “system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit” and proclaim: “We want a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish not just survive and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all. We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation. We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear.”

Peel away the lofty rhetoric, and that’s a call for collective ownership of “the key economic drivers that dominate our lives,” which in practice has always meant government ownership of the means of production — for which Mamdani himself called in 2020. Democratic socialism, then, and communism are essentially identical. 

Many people assume, of course, that what distinguishes democratic socialism from communism is that democratic socialism is genuinely “democratic,” while communism aims to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.= 

This, too, however, is a distinction without a difference. Communist regimes have not infrequently called themselves democratic: think of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Many in the West have taken such names as an exercise in cynical deception, but there is more going on here than just that. In his biography of the founder of the Soviet Union, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror, Victor Sebestyen explains that “Lenin in power had no intention of allowing a free parliament. He may on occasions in the past have written in praise of elections. But he didn’t believe in ‘bourgeois democracy’ on principle and certainly not in practice for a revolutionary state. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the authority of the Soviet were ‘not only a higher form of democracy…[but] the only form of democracy.’”

Related: Mamdani: Like Father, Like Son

How could it be otherwise? The dictatorship of the proletariat was the workers’ tool for establishing a just society in which he would finally enjoy what was his due: a “better distribution of wealth,” as Mamdani put it. Thus it was the truest and fullest expression of what democracy really was.

Zohran Mamdani is therefore both a democratic socialist and a communist. There is no contradiction between the two. This will become clearer as he settles in as mayor and begins to implement his agenda. Pay close attention, comrades!