loading . . . Zohran Mamdani Is Right About the Warmth of Collectivism ### The Right had a spectacular meltdown about Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration speech rejecting “rugged individualism” in favor of what he called the “warmth of collectivism.” But Mamdani is right that community is a value worth extolling.
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Zohran Mamdani became the mayor of New York City with his inauguration ceremony at City Hall on January 1, 2026. (Selcuk Acar / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Zohran Mamdani became the 112th mayor of New York City on New Year’s Day. He followed custom by being legally sworn in at midnight and holding a big public ceremony in the afternoon.
Anyone who expected the mayor to back off his previous commitment to socialism was sorely disappointed. Mamdani was sworn in by Senator Bernie Sanders, whom he praised in his inaugural address as “the man whose leadership I seek most to emulate.” He said, “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” And in the line that most infuriated the American right, he rejected “rugged individualism” in favor of “collectivism.”
In the lead-up to that line, Mamdani talked about the “voters from Hillside Avenue or Fordham Road who supported President Trump a year before they voted for me, tired of being failed by their party’s establishment.” He said:
> Many of these people have been betrayed by the established order. But in our administration, their needs will be met. Their hopes and dreams and interests will be reflected transparently in government. They will shape our future.
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> And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.
In response, journalist Matt Taibbi compared New York’s new mayor to Joseph Stalin, describing “collectivism” as “an infamous Stalinist term.” Wealthy tech CEO David Sacks joined Taibbi in fretting about the allegedly innate bloodthirstiness of “collectivist political experiments.” The official X account of the House Republicans posted that rugged individualism is what “made America great” and declared that “communism has to be defeated before there’s nothing left to save.”
> New York City has officially fallen to a radical communist agenda. Zohran Mamdani is openly declaring war on the self-reliance and grit that made our country great. If "rugged individualism" is the enemy, then freedom is dead.
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> Communism has to be defeated before there's nothing… https://t.co/NlpNLQy2yV
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> — House Republicans (@HouseGOP) January 1, 2026
Even Sohrab Ahmari, one of the most thoughtful writers on the contemporary Right, rejected Mamdani’s statement on the basis that “collectivism” supposedly means “destroying individuality.” He counterposed both collectivism and individualism to a Catholic-inflected notion of “the common good.”
Many right-wing outlets simply posted the clip without commentary, apparently taking it for granted that everyone would share in their horror. Former Fox News personality Megyn Kelly made the assumption explicit, posting, “No, actually, we are Americans and we don’t believe in that sh-t.”
Judging by the double-digit defeat Mamdani handed Andrew Cuomo on election day, not to mention the fact that Bernie Sanders consistently polls as one of the most popular politicians in the country, it seems that quite a few Americans do, in fact, believe in that sh-t.
More importantly, though, Mamdani is correct on the merits of the issue. The phrasing was provocative — likely deliberately so — but it’s a fight that makes sense to provoke, on terrain where the Left can and should prevail. Socialists often emphasize democracy and equality, but community is also an essential socialist value, and one that the mayor is right to highlight.
# What “Collectivism” Is and Isn’t
The term “collectivism” has had many uses and connotations over the centuries. Its original use comes from nineteenth-century anarchists, for whom it meant a stateless egalitarian order based on shared ownership of the means of production. When referencing the Soviet Union, “collectivization” connotes Stalin horrifically forcing Russian peasants to live on so-called collective farms — quite the opposite of anything an anarchist would endorse. Later in the twentieth century, Ayn Rand used “collectivist” as an all-purpose catchall for socialists, communists, nationalists, religious people, and anyone else who questioned her right to be maximally selfish, again a totally different definition.
In truth, most Americans are not historians of the nineteenth century left, nor students of Stalinist state policy, nor devotees of Ayn Rand. For them, “collectivism” likely means something like “pursuing left-wing economic policies” (such as collective ownership of resources or collective efforts to meet people’s needs).
Even some left-wing commentators expressed concern that, in contrasting collectivism with individualism, Mamdani was conceding important ideological territory to the anti-socialist Right. But the key word this critique misses is “rugged.” Given Mamdani’s past fondness for invoking the democratic socialism of Martin Luther King Jr, it’s likely that part of his intention here was to reference King’s classic observation that in America we “all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.”
If “individualism” connotes individual rights like freedom of speech or freedom of religion, or the ability of individuals to live their own lives in whatever way seems best to them within reasonable limits set by everyone else being given the same freedom of action, then democratic socialists are ardent individualists. (Indeed, Oscar Wilde argued precisely that in his famous essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”)
But individual striving playing out over “rugged” terrain means leaving everyone to their own devices. In this conception, obstacles to flourishing are always your problem alone, and you should pull yourself up by your own individual bootstraps instead of expecting help from the rest of society. _That’s_ the type of individualism Mamdani is rightly contrasting with what he calls the warmth of collectivism.
# A Fight Worth Picking
On the talk show _Breaking Points_ , producer Griffin Davis joked that Mamdani sounded like an “Ayn Rand villain.” He’s not wrong. The villains in Ayn Rand’s novels tend to talk about society coming together to collectively care for one another. And this, in turn, gives us a clue about what the mayor may have been up to.
While we can’t know his intentions for certain, someone as rhetorically savvy as Mamdani probably wouldn’t have included a line this likely to reduce conservatives and libertarians to spasms of fury without knowing exactly what he was doing. In contrasting collectivism with rugged individualism, he ensured that his remark would be the subject of intense scrutiny.
That would make a lot of sense if his calculation was that most normal, persuadable working-class Americans find the morality of Ayn Rand novels repulsive. They believe that we _should_ live in a society that cares for all its members, and hearing right-wingers respond to that suggestion by ranting about Stalin will only make the Right look unpleasant and unhinged.
In the society we live in right now, some city dwellers learn not to make eye contact with homeless people in order to psychologically function around the results of extreme inequality. People who don’t have health insurance and those who’ve exhausted what their insurance will pay for are often left to beg for donations on GoFundMe. The escalating spiral of social cruelty has reached the point where Republicans in Congress voted last year to impose work requirements for Medicaid at the national level.
In other words, the rotten fruit of “rugged” individualism is hanging all around us. Don’t be surprised if more and more Americans like the sound of collectivism by contrast.
* * * https://jacobin.com/2026/01/zohran-mamdani-collectivism-rugged-individualism-inauguration-speech/
