🖙It's Accurate to Call Zohran Mamdani a Socialist—But That's not why Opponents Are Doing It
The New York Times ran an interesting piece. Interesting to me, at least, because in the past the paper has published some pieces that suggest significant bias against him by the editors (or maybe the publisher).
I suspect the reporter was aware that people labeling Zohran Mamdani a socialist are not really doing so in good faith. I further suspect he didn't feel he could say that outside of the opinion pages, resulting in a slightly weird piece. It basically says that Mamdani is not a socialist without saying so explicitly. Even ignoring how it dances around, this take is weird. I mean, Mamdani calls himself a "democratic socialist," rather than sticking to "social democrat" or a "progressive." Progressive is a pretty common term for relatively left-wing politicians and avoids the word "socialist" altogether. He doesn't stick to those words, so I think we should take him at his word.
Besides being wrong, it lets other publications run bad-faith counter pieces, like this one from Pirate Wires that mock this wishy-washiness and point out instances where he's fine with the label socialist, no qualifier.
The New York Times piece even includes an example of that bad faith argumentation. Cuomo's spokesman says Mamdani holds "radical extremist positions against basic democratic values." As a capitalist, it's obviously fair for Cuomo to attack Mamdani's socialism, as with any disagreement he has with Mamdani, but this claim is incendiary and false. If I were the editor on this piece, I would probably suggest it be rewritten around that claim.
Similar to the Cuomo campaign, the Pirate Wires piece includes this sarcastic bit:
See, democratic socialists don’t force your business to hand over its assets to the state at gunpoint — the people vote for your business to hand over its assets to the state. Isn’t that sweet.
While there are socialists who support nationalization (or municipalization as I suppose it would be called), Mamdani doesn't include that in his platform, as far as I know. The piece certainly doesn't support with any examples. Even when the public sector acquires formerly private property, it also needn't be handed over for free or be mandated1. The government could gain ownership purely by buying shares on the open market, for example, or by offering cash in exchange for equity, similar to the venture capitalists who fund that publication. There are many other things I could add here, but I'll stop. Suffice it to say, Pirate Wires is less interested in correcting the record and more interested in spreading misinformation about what socialism means.
When it comes to median Democrats, the socialism label is basically just an insult. When it comes to someone like Zohran Mamdani, however, it's more of an equivocation. Rival politicians or billionaire-funded outlets may accurately point out an association with socialism but they want you to think of extreme takeovers and authoritarianism, rather than the actual beliefs they have that caused them to adopt the label "socialist," many of which are popular.
The merits of all these different ways would be a long discussion and vary based on the circumstance. I personally think there's a better case for nationalizing industries without compensation if the business' assets were directly obtained by colonialism or outright theft, for example, rather than just the widespread exploitation that is a feature of capitalism.↩