Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Theory of History

Does Zohran Mamdani Matter?

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On June 26, 2025

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So, Democratic Socialist (ie. has politics a 70s liberal would have agreed with, but is less racist) Zohran Mamdani has won the nomination as the Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor.

The best analysis I’ve read of this is definitely from Matt Stoller. He says this win helps define this as a “system-defining election,” that is, an attempt to not just to change who runs a system, but how that system is run. Read the article.

I’ll point out here that there have been a few such attempts. Stoller writes about Lamont’s challenge to Lieberman, in which Lamont won the primary, then Lieberman won the election. It’s similar to what will be tried here: The oligarchical part of the Democratic party will align behind another candidate, possibly even the Republican one. Those who don’t will try to co-opt Mamdani, and turn him into a centrist left-winger.

Mamdani is more radical than Sanders; he isn’t a Zionist, for example. But he’s basically suggesting policies than no Democrat during the 50s, 60s, and even into the 70s would have found extraordinary.

What Stoller calls system-defining elections, I call sub-ideological revolutions. FDR changed the form of capitalism practiced in the US, so did Carter and Reagan. Mamdani, for all the screams from rich operatives like Larry Summers and various oligarchs, isn’t a radical — any more than FDR was. He doesn’t want to switch to economic Communism (i.e., worker ownership of the means of production or Soviet-style central control), say, or a single-party state. He wants real changes in how capitalism is practiced, and some changes to who has power in Democracy.

Sanders’ runs in 2016 and 2020 were an attempt at a sub-ideological revolution, or, system-defining elections. This is why Obama intervened and lined everyone up behind Biden, a nearly unprecedented step.

Likewise, Corbyn represented such an attempt, except Corybn got further, winning the Labour leadership. It’s not an accident that (and we have receipts, so don’t argue) Labour operatives actually sabotaged him in two elections to ensure a Conservative win. They wanted the old ideology/system to keep running more than they wanted their party to win. And once Corbyn was removed, his successor, Starmer, purged the party of the democratic socialist left. Once in power, Starmer doubled down on austerity and politics no different in substance, but actually more punitive, than those followed by the Conservative party.

The Reform Party in the UK is now coming on hard.

Be clear that sub-ideological transitions/system changes can be bad. Neoliberalism was a bad change. In the UK, if Reform sets the new system/ideological norm, it will be awful.

This is one reason why I said that Corbyn was the UK’s last chance: If the left failed, the right would then get its shot, and what the right wants to do is beyond awful.

It’s why Germany is beyond hosed: Doubling down on military Keynesianism (which won’t work in a corrupt, neoliberal system), while cutting social welfare will simply lead to the new-right getting into power. Their policies will make most people worse off, not better.

As for Mamdani, he’s a good sign. The fact that men, as well as the youngs, went for him is also excellent, because it shows that men and youngsters aren’t really “right-wing” in any way that matters. Yet. What they want is change. If they are offered good change, they’ll take it. However, they’re so desperate that if all that’s on the menu is shitty change, or the status quo, they’ll take shitty change.

This was obviously going to happen. I wrote years ago that we wouldn’t see real change until the mid-2020s, at the earliest, because it required generational change as well.

Mamdani tells us that what sort of change will finally win in the US is not yet decided. It doesn’t have to be MAGA stupidity and meanness.

So if you want something better in the US, if you want a chance at a New New Deal, get behind Mamdani and people like him — hard.

There still remains a question of whether Mamdani can deliver, even if he is elected. Will he be be co-opted? Will he run into opposition from enemies so powerful he either can’t overcome them? Or will he use them as a rallying call? Is he competent enough to create and run a new system like the one he’s suggesting?

This is a chance because, if Mamdani wins and then improves New Yorker’s lives, he’ll be copied. And if you’re in a position to do something to improve the chance of this happening and then working, I suggest you do so.

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Understanding Absolute Vs. Comparative Advantage & Why It Matters

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On December 9, 2022

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There are two types of advantages.

A comparative advantage is when you have or can produce more of something than someone else. (Person, country, whatever.)

An absolute advantage is when you have or can do or produce something others can’t. This can be threshold matter: in World War II the Allies had more than enough oil and the Axis didn’t have enough to run their war machine. While in numbers terms it looked like a comparative advantage, it was actually an absolute advantage: it strangled Axis production and their ability to field mechanized troops, aircraft and ships. Up until the nuclear bomb, in terms of tech, the opposing great powers were about equal, but in terms of the key resource required to run everything, the Allies were in surplus and the Axis never had enough.

Firearms were an absolute advantage. Once they spread, European firearms were usually still better and Europeans understood how to use them properly, while their opponents rarely did. Cultural understanding is often necessary to get the most out of a technology. In India, the British East India company often faced off against Indian armies with the same weapons as them, but they deployed them atrociously: they didn’t know how to use them properly.

Machine guns, when first deployed, were an absolute advantage. The Maxim gun, deployed in Africa, let British troops defeat armies literally 100 times larger than it.

Horse archers, properly deployed, were an absolute advantage. Genghis Khan didn’t just united Mongolia (making many tribes all into Mongols), he changed society and military organization and how horse archers were deployed. For about a century the Mongols were essentially undefeated, creating the largest land empire in history, and when the first real loss happened, the Mamluks inflicted it by using a Mongol style army effectively against the Mongols.

The steam engine plus factories produced goods in such quantities that it was a relative advantage which become an absolute advantage. Factories had existed before steam, indeed we have evidence of factories in India before the Aryan invasion, thousands of years ago. But add steam, and BOOM. (Oil and electricity merely increased production, but they weren’t the quantum leap.)

In the invasion and conquest of the Americas, the absolute advantage wasn’t cannons and firearms nearly so much as it was European diseases, which the Europeans had some immunity to and the natives had no immunity to. End result, 90% of the population killed off by disease. Without that Europeans might have done an “India” and conquered various North American areas, but they would never have been able to colonize all of it and drive most of the population to extinction so they could keep it in the long run.

Cannons were an absolute advantage for a time. The monarchs of the early Renaissance were able to use them to reduce the noble power massively and turn them from semi-independent rulers (feudalism) into aristocrats dependent on the king, since castles could no longer hold out in sieges for any length of time.

Further back, the European Knight had an absolute advantage over peasants and most European infantry (minus the Scots and Swiss and a few exceptions.) That advantage didn’t extend much out of Europe. Knights were better than Byzantine cataphractoi and Muslim cavalry, but not so much as to allow lasting conquest. However, against internal enemies in Europe, their superiority was massive, especially against peasant armies.

Absolute advantage is about having something or being able to do something your competitors don’t have or can’t do. The current imbroglios over computer chips and airplane manufacture are the West’s attempt to keep the few places where they still have an absolute advantage over China, since they’ve given (sold) the rest to China, and lost most of their comparative advantages.

In eras of absolute advantage, small societies can do astounding things. The Mongols conquered vastly more populous areas and so did Europeans in general and the British in particular.

Eras of relative advantage, on the other hand, are eras of the most and the biggest.

Reader question. Are we in an absolute or relative era?

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