America's New Prophet: Intellectual, Progressive, and Agitator. Egalitarianism fueled by communist fervor

In Zohran Mamdani, the elected mayor of New York, the global utopian passion has found a new prophet. His face is the face of the new progressive radicalism that dialectically unites the appeal to Marxism and anti-Semitic rhetoric: what Mamdani promises is the revival of a politics of resentment that will give progressivism the opportunity for another class struggle, writes constitutional law professor Ioan Stanomir, in a commentary published today by Hotnews.

And even when it seemed to be historically discredited, the utopian ambition reawakens, as if to remind us that nothing is more seductive and mobilizing than this project of building the terrestrial paradise: perfect equality and omnipotent government are the foundations on which the temple of the future dreamed of by the fanatics of social reorganization is raised.

In Zohran Mamdani, the elected mayor of New York, the global utopian passion has found a new prophet. His face is the face of the new progressive radicalism that dialectically unites the appeal to Marxism and anti-Semitic rhetoric: what Mamdani promises is the revival of a politics of resentment that will give progressivism the opportunity for another class struggle. Breaking away from social democracy and the prudence of an entire American democratic tradition, Mamdani opens a new path. His democratic socialism is the elegant and aseptic name he gives to egalitarianism nourished by communist fervor. Intellectual and agitator, the mayor of New York is the embodiment of this utopia that does not want to become the past.

The man and the state

What the followers of utopia detest is the caution of the gradualist approach. Lovers of an abstract humanity, they subscribe to the political religion of unlimited government. The state is, for these utopians, an instrument meant to accelerate the revolution of society. The state must be conquered in order to free humanity.

Property and individual, economic and political freedom become suspect in this universe dedicated to collective emancipation. Property is denounced as a symptom of rapacity, and the socialization of the means of production is the formula that can finally free the broad popular masses from exploitation. The ideology of equality involves statism, as a fundamental lever in changing not only society, but also the man himself.

For utopian statism abhors private property, regardless of the dimension in which it is expressed: the autonomy it confers is an obstacle to the ambitious experiments imagined by a visionary administration. The new contemporary class struggle carries forward the vocation of leveling and massifying communism. The new salvationist radicalism means the return of the illusions of totalitarian planning.

And how can one resist the advance of the utopian momentum, hailed as a sign of the bright future? As so often, returning to the order of politics on a human scale is the alternative to wandering. Man, not abstract humanity, must be at the center of our vision: unlimited government is the mortal enemy of our liberties.

Politics on a human scale, which rests on the solidity of a liberal-conservative and Christian-democratic tradition, regards human dignity as the very expression of the sphere of natural sovereignty that the state cannot violate. Human dignity defines the nature and limits of politics itself: egalitarianism is the totalitarian dream of those who aspire to total control, invoking the chimera of a collective salvation.

And perhaps the core of politics on a human scale, in our times, is the refusal to accept the new saviors, with their devastating statism. One cannot imagine dignity in the absence of property, as an institution that allows the continuity of a tradition and the increase of general prosperity, within the rule of law: the economy based on order and planning condemns to the terrible equality of slavery. Diffusion of property as widely as possible, and not its liquidation, this is the way suggested by the line of politics on a human scale. The lesson of Wilhelm Röpke's ordoliberalism is worth recalling.

Inevitably, politics on a human scale cannot seduce or awaken the messianic emotion of restorative discourses. It relies, modestly and thoroughly, on the instinct of freedom and the solidarity of local communities, as lines of defense against the omnipotent state. The critique of egalitarianism and statism is not a free intellectual exercise, but the form in which a natural part of our destinies is affirmed and defended.

The ambition of utopia, politics on a human scale, is opposed by the firm simplicity of trust in freedom. Imperfect beings, people do not need a perfect state to guide and reeducate them: limited government is the framework within which our lives can be organically organized. We can only respond to the immensity of the fanatical dream with the tenacious modesty of our human unhappiness.

*Text originally appeared on Contributors.