Great piece, but we need to be careful about taking Bernie Sanders' "Democratic Socialist" self-description at face value. After all, he didn't honeymoon in Copenhagen or Stockholm - instead he chose romantic Yaroslavl as any good Communist would - because that's what Bernie has always been. It's just that his is the musty Stalinist variety of his youth among the peasants of Brooklyn, so it seems more quaint and quirky than menacing. Of course, as he became wealthy and began amassing an impressive real estate portfolio, his revolutionary ardor somewhat diminished. He used to denounce "millionaires" until he became one, now he denounces "billionaires and trillionaires". The world looks different out of the window of a private jet and somehow the problems of the working class seem far, far away.
At your best when explaining the links to communism that are permeating western democracies. Fascinating points on mamdanis father thesis and his points on the Allies and Nazis that we see today in revisionist self taught autodidacts podcast world.
I object to using the misleading term "democratic socialism". Socialism has a clear and consistent meaning, which Mamdani embraces. It is the state's ownership of the means of production. This was the economic system of the USSR, Mao's China, Cambodia and the rest of the disaster zones of the last century that killed far more people than Nazi Germany. Even though the parties that spearheaded this class genocide mostly called themselves "communist" (not all of them), it was aspirational. Communism, as Marx defines it, is a classless society with no money or private property. It never existed.
"Democratic socialism" is a deliberate ideological obfuscation of the history and economy of socialism by the left. It is an oxymoron that cannot exist. What actually exists is social democracy. It is a market-based economy that uses taxation and other forms of profit redistribution to create a welfare state. This is (or used to be) the system in the Nordic countries. Whatever you think of it, it's not socialism. Sweden has as many startups per capita as the US, and most Nordic corporations are privately owned. Mamdani is clear in his speech that he wants the Soviet system, not the Swedish system.
Great piece, but we need to be careful about taking Bernie Sanders' "Democratic Socialist" self-description at face value. After all, he didn't honeymoon in Copenhagen or Stockholm - instead he chose romantic Yaroslavl as any good Communist would - because that's what Bernie has always been. It's just that his is the musty Stalinist variety of his youth among the peasants of Brooklyn, so it seems more quaint and quirky than menacing. Of course, as he became wealthy and began amassing an impressive real estate portfolio, his revolutionary ardor somewhat diminished. He used to denounce "millionaires" until he became one, now he denounces "billionaires and trillionaires". The world looks different out of the window of a private jet and somehow the problems of the working class seem far, far away.
At your best when explaining the links to communism that are permeating western democracies. Fascinating points on mamdanis father thesis and his points on the Allies and Nazis that we see today in revisionist self taught autodidacts podcast world.
I object to using the misleading term "democratic socialism". Socialism has a clear and consistent meaning, which Mamdani embraces. It is the state's ownership of the means of production. This was the economic system of the USSR, Mao's China, Cambodia and the rest of the disaster zones of the last century that killed far more people than Nazi Germany. Even though the parties that spearheaded this class genocide mostly called themselves "communist" (not all of them), it was aspirational. Communism, as Marx defines it, is a classless society with no money or private property. It never existed.
"Democratic socialism" is a deliberate ideological obfuscation of the history and economy of socialism by the left. It is an oxymoron that cannot exist. What actually exists is social democracy. It is a market-based economy that uses taxation and other forms of profit redistribution to create a welfare state. This is (or used to be) the system in the Nordic countries. Whatever you think of it, it's not socialism. Sweden has as many startups per capita as the US, and most Nordic corporations are privately owned. Mamdani is clear in his speech that he wants the Soviet system, not the Swedish system.
Zohran = Mohran
Mamdani = Mandumi
Therefore,
Zohran
The Moron Man Dummy
Mamdani