Zohran Mamdani: Déjà Vu All Over Again

He is taking a page from Alexandra Ocacio-Cortez's playbook—and the opposition is still evading that morality trumps politics and economics.

Back in 2019, shortly after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) burst onto the scene as a progressive democrat poster child, I wrote an article about how, despite her youth, she had a better grasp or reality than her much more seasoned opponents and of pundits with decades of experience. In contrast to them, I explained, she understood that morality trumps politics and economics.

We’re now experiencing a déjà vu all over again with the election of Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor. His primary win has the NY political establishment in panic, scrambling to come up with an antidote ahead of the November election. Mr. Mamdani—like AOC a democratic socialist—is a charismatic campaigner who knows how to rally an audience. His populist message promises free stuff for all: government run grocery stores, rent freezes, affordable housing, fast and free buses, universal childcare, and minimum wage increases. Politicians and pundits are bending over to explain the negative economic impacts of Mamdani’s proposed agenda: government grocery stores would be run like the DMV, minimum wage increases shut out the young and inexperienced from the job market, rent freezes reduce the supply of housing, etc. All true but fail to address the real reason both he and AOC keep winning: a morality premised on sacrificing the individual rights of some for the benefit of others.

Both Mamdani’s and AOC’s moral and political compasses are aligned; unlike most of those who oppose them, their political and economic goals are consistent with their moral code. Combined with their charisma they could be a tremendous force for good. It is therefore regrettable that they sound like Bernie Sanders, two generations removed. Instead of being true radicals for a rational morality, they subscribe to the same old, reactionary, conventional but lethal moral code that repeatedly has brought, and continues to bring, misery on mankind: altruism.

“The basic principle of altruism,” explains American philosopher Ayn Rand, “is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

“Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.” 1

Strong words, no doubt, but the past 200 years of history bear them out; all modern tyrannies have justified their immoral actions in the name of altruism resulting in millions upon millions of sacrificial deaths and stunted or no progress for countless others.

Altruism’s impact is not limited to rogue societies: every welfare state on the planet, the United States included, is violating the individual rights of its citizens through taxation, redistribution and regulation in the name of altruist catch phrases such as the common good, the public interest, the wish of the majority, the protection of a minority, or helping those in need.

Moral arguments cannot be refuted with political or economic arguments alone, no matter how rational and true, because morality is the foundation of both politics and economics.

A claim that rents must be frozen cannot be refuted by arguments that it will reduce the housing supply as long as the prevailing morality of altruism considers it good to sacrifice the individual rights of property owners for the benefit of renters.

Dreams of “universal childcare” will not be crushed by arguments that it is too expensive as long as it is considered moral to sacrificially tax some for the benefit of families with young children.

The only strategy that will work against the AOCs and Mamdanis of the world is to reclaim the moral high ground. Their lethal altruist moral code can only be defeated with a human life-centric morality of “...rational selfishness” to continue from Ms. Rand ”—which means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the 'aspirations,' the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment.” 2

Again, no holding back, but again the evidence is there to support her: the fits and starts of human progress the past 200 years with its frequent, always disastrous tyrannical interludes are explained by altruism’s stranglehold on morality. Without it, Stalin’s, Hitler’s, Mao’s, Chavez, Khamenei’s and countless other irrational brutes’ call to sacrifice for the nation, the race, the class, the tribe or the faith would have gone unheard. And without the altruist argument that sacrifice is the essence of moral virtue, the peoples of the civilized world would not have given up as much of their freedom to government controls.

Why do most critics of AOC and Mamdani refuse to take the fight to the battlefield of morality? Why do they limit their critique to economic arguments rehashed without much success since the time of Adam Smith, despite those arguments not having deterred the proponents of altruism from putting their moral code into political and economic practice?

The answer is that the critics are conflicted. Why? Because the vast majority subscribe to the same moral code of altruism as AOC and Mamdani, albeit in a milder form. And in a conflict between the conflicted and the consistent, the consistent have the upper hand, regardless of how disastrous the practical results.

Hence, AOC’s and Mamdani’s opponents choose to play in the “safe” sandbox of economics where they don’t have to face an inconvenient truth: that to effectively challenge democratic socialists and their ilk once and for all, you must challenge their moral foundation, altruism.

Until the critics can claim with moral confidence that a rent freeze is an unethical monstrosity sacrificing property owners to renters, they will be defenseless.

Until they can confidently and convincingly argue that sacrificially taxing some to provide childcare for others is immoral, they will continue to lose.

But most importantly, until the rest of us are prepared to examine our moral premises and reject altruism in favor of a morality of rational self-interest, not much will change for the better. Because it’s up to us to put pressure on our elected representatives to reject sacrifice in favor of championing the respect for and protection of individual rights.

New York will most likely survive Mamdani as mayor. Its citizens may, like San Francisco, get it hard and good for a few years before coming to its senses. The city has weathered worse. But surviving is not the same as thriving—something the city would only truly do if guided by politics based on a morality of rational self-interest.

1 “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” from Philosophy, Who Needs It, p 61

2 Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics” from The Virtue of Selfishness, p 31.