Socialism

One of the things I admire about Zohran Mamdani is his candor. You know where you stand with him. Mamdani, who was sworn in a few days ago by Senator Bernie Sanders as New York’s first Muslim mayor and also its first avowedly socialist mayor, makes no bones about his ambitions. He was elected as a “democratic socialist,” he said, and he intends to govern as one. “We will,” he said in the most commented upon phrase from his inauguration speech, “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” “The warmth of collectivism.” If you are not a political simpleton or a conniving totalitarian (or, as often happens, both), that phrase should send a shiver down your spine.

William F. Buckley Jr. once quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. New York City is about to be governed by the Columbia University student body. A city that used to think of itself as grown up has just elected a mayor who seems the very embodiment of the American college student: uninformed, entitled and self-important, enjoying a regal quality of life that depends parasitically upon a civilization about which he knows nothing, yet for which he has nothing but scorn. American college students regularly act out little psychodramas of oppression before an appreciative audience of diversity deanlets and associate vice-provosts of inclusion and belonging.

After nearly two decades of reign over Bolivia, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party was banished at the ballot box on August 17. Its fall is a dramatic political realignment to the right for Bolivians, and a rare opportunity for the United States to reform relations with a geopolitically critical nation. As one expert, Leonardo Coutinho, told us, “The Trump administration can not only contribute to the restoration of democracy but also play a central role in dismantling a fully functioning narco-state.” Despite its 25 percent inflation rate and a 93 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, Bolivia is rich in natural resources, boasting some of the world’s largest lithium reserves, making it an attractive target for both American and Chinese grand strategies.

Zohran Mamdani’s presumptive victory will make history: if elected in November, he will become New York’s first Muslim and first Indian-American mayor. Powering his win in the Democratic primaries was a massive surge of young, urban, progressive voters changing the city’s political future. But beneath the energy and hope lies something more troubling: a generational embrace of a politics of entitlement, poised to undermine not only the city’s finances but also the values that have historically bound together American civic life. The city’s youth voting base turned out in force: voters aged 18–29 gave Mamdani the win.

Bolivia is to be treated to a nail-biting run-off this autumn between two conservatives in the race to be the next president after the spectacular collapse of the socialist movement that has dominated the landlocked state for the past twenty years. A presidential race between two right-wingers is unusual in Latin America whose countries in recent years has been largely run by democratically elected leftists after the fall of the brutal military dictatorships that ruled so many states in the 1970s and 1980s. The second round of Bolivia’s presidential race will be decided on October 19th between the veteran former President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, 65, who gained 26 percent of the poll, and his center-right rival Rodrigo Paz Pereira, 57.

From college campuses to the media, socialism is increasingly getting repackaged as a solution to every problem: homelessness, housing, policing and education. For a generation grappling with high rent, student debt and political distrust, the collectivist utopia may sound like the moral, modern choice. But it isn't – and this year’s Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago proved just why it is doomed to failure. The conference brought together scholars, activists and self-styled revolutionaries to sketch out what a “just” society might look like. The vision was as radical as it was impractical.

It should come as no surprise that Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in last week’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York was celebrated so vociferously by the French far left. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) regard the 33-year-old Socialist as a chip off the old block. In a post on X Mélenchon delighted in Mamdani’s defeat of Andrew Cuomo, saying: "Opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, he is obviously already accused of anti-Semitism. He won against a figurehead of the centre-left backed by the local leaders of the cheating Democratic party." As in France, continued Mélenchon, the "traditional" left no longer speaks to the people; it is the radical left.

At its narrowest point, the Florida Straits is only 93 miles wide. You could swim it, if you were exceptionally motivated and athletic. I remember the first time I landed at Miami airport. I was struck by the amount of Spanish being spoken, and the signs advertising Cuban coffee. I immediately understood the dynamic that led to southern Florida jokingly being dubbed ‘Northern Cuba’.As one of the earliest states to announce its results, Florida crushed Biden supporters’ hopes for a landslide early in the night. Trump’s victory has been attributed to the Cuban vote. Comedian Jaboukie Young-White tweeted ‘the kkkubans came out in full force’ after Trump’s victory in Florida was announced.

It’s widely agreed that Bernie Sanders fell short in the Democratic primary because he described himself as a socialist. As a movement, socialism has never had mass appeal in America. Even at its strongest, in 1912, it garnered fewer than one million votes for presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was trounced by Woodrow Wilson. More often, Americans have used the word ‘socialism’ as a synonym for communism, to signify everything America doesn’t stand for. Pundits put Sanders’s failure down to his attempts to give the word a positive spin. On the other hand, a dispassionate glance at American history shows that Uncle Sam has already gone a long way down the road of democratic socialism.