When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani equated the lobbying group AIPAC to “monsters” in a blistering get-out-the vote speech last week in Brooklyn, people paid notice.
His remarks justifiably drew quick condemnation as a blatant example of antisemitism. The trope of Jewish people as being less (or more) than human is a central and recurring theme among Jew-haters. “Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books,” tweeted Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat. “That’s not criticizing a lobby. This bullshit is dangerous.”
The controversy over antisemitism rightly made the headlines, but what got lost in the reporting – and is just as revealing of the mayor’s mindset – was the prelude to Mamdani’s attack on AIPAC. He led into his remarks this way: “As Gramsci says, ‘The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.’”
This is a loose but serviceable translation lifted from “Prison Notebooks,” one of the tracts in the pantheon of influential but unreadable books on Marxist political theory. Its author is Antonio Gramsci, a cofounder and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party, who wrote his treatise a century ago while serving 11 years in prison under fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
Gramsci is of interest to modern-day Marxists like Mamdani because of the way he wrestled with one of the knottiest problems facing communism in the 20th century: namely, the failure of the revolution of the proletariat to arrive.
A key tenet of “Communist Manifesto” is Karl Marx’s confident assertion that a worldwide communist revolution was not simply desirable, it was inevitable. Class struggle was the real driver of human history, he asserted, meaning that capitalism held within it the seeds of its own destruction. Workers were – at some point in the future – certain to revolt against their exploitation at the hands of their capitalist overlords. Marxism wasn’t postulated as a political theory, but as a sociological fact. In other words, the vaunted revolution wasn’t merely aspirational, it was destiny.
The problem was that as Western-style democratic capitalism advanced and living conditions improved, workers turned out to be not all that interested in “making revolution.” Free market capitalism, coupled with growing entrepreneurship, particularly in America, rewarded efficiency. Economic growth produced more material goods, and living and working standards improved – not just for the corporate capitalists at the top, but for small business people, farmers, bureaucrats, laborers, government workers – everyone. Understandably, this frustrated true believers who fervently yearned for revolution and the “people’s paradise” that would follow. Tom Petty’s observation about unrequited love is just as true for socialists impatiently awaiting their turn at power: “You take it on faith, you take it to the heart, the waiting is the hardest part.”
Antonio Gramsci’s rationalization for the Revolution That Never Arrives was bold: He expanded the Marxist critique beyond the realm of economics. In his view, the problem wasn’t just capitalism, it was the entirety of Western culture, which consisted of a web of institutions, customs, and practices that together suppressed workers’ revolutionary zeal. Like all practiced Marxist theoreticians, he came up with a catchy name for the concept, which became part of his personal brand: “Cultural Hegemony.” According to Gramsci, revolution can only happen if the underpinnings of society are removed. In short, institutions like organized religion, education, and the family structure itself must be hollowed out and destroyed.
This shift of emphasis – away from economic determinism to a broader critique of Western life and culture – gave Marxism a second life. Notwithstanding the economic calamities and mass murder that epitomized communist regimes in Russia, China, and elsewhere, Gramsci’s prescription is at the heart of modern-day leftist thought. Fear not, says Gramsci: The revolution is coming – we just have to slay the “monsters” whose very existence thwarts “a new world waiting to be born.”
On Monday, the day before New York’s primaries where three Mamdani handpicked socialists swept to victory in primary elections that will all but certainly make them members of Congress in November, the mayor stood before the press and defended his attacks on the pro-Jewish lobby. He pointedly reminded reporters of his admiration for the long-dead leader of the Italian Communist Party.
“I was quoting Gramsci, who said that ‘the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters,’” Mamdani said. “I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world, not solely AIPAC.”
Given Marxism’s failure at every turn, it may be hard to understand how a 21st-century New York mayor would feel compelled to quote an Italian Communist whose major intellectual contribution is a justification for the destruction of such American institutions as family, church, and education.
Perhaps Mamdani just wants to make sure his acolytes know he’s read up on Marxist theory. More ominously, the lesson for the rest of us may be this: Listen carefully to what “democratic” socialists say about the true scope of their agendas. Because every now and then, they may be telling us the truth.
