Sending Capitalists to the Gulag

Confiscating the “Means of Production”

In 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to a friend:

Is not the hope of being one day able to purchase and enjoy luxuries a great spur to labor and industry? May not luxury, therefore, produce more than it consumes, continued Franklin, if without such a spur people would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?”

When asked to explain Communism vs Socialism, Adolf Hitler reportedly replied, “Why bother owning the means of production if you can simply tell them what to do?”

At the Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton discusses Zohran Mamdani. One avid follower of Menton’s Manhattan Contrarian regards Mamdani as a “chutzpah on steroids.” Following in the footsteps of unionized teachers in taking over K-12 and the Claudette Gays in dominating higher education, Mamdani is now the wanna-be NYC socialist mayor.

The Manhattan Contrarian passes along to readers some of Zohan’s choicest phrases:

• “Violence is an artificial construct
• Under capitalism, housing is a commodity from which landlords & developers extract huge profits while our communities suffer eviction, foreclosure & displacement.”
• We need to dramatically curtail the power & presence of the NYPD.”
• “[A] statue of Columbus remains in Astoria, in defiance of the values of humanity, empathy & justice that we stand for.”
• (firm belief in) “Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel
• The end goal: seizing the means of production

Going Retro

Finally, there is the “means of production, which Mr. Menton refers to as a “retro concept.”

It was good Commie talk back in the 19th century, when Karl Marx and his followers looked around and saw things like steel mills, railroad engine factories, iron foundries, coal mines, textile mills, and other such big facilities to make lots of stuff.

Could Mamdani be confused? What even exists today in NYC, a bewildered Menton wonders, that could you call a “means of production”?

Does Zohran not notice that NYC produces almost nothing that is tangible?

In a previous post (May 2016), “The Devastation of New York’s Economy.” Menton documented the complete transformation of NYC’s economy from “the 1950s to the time of the post, and in particular the almost complete disappearance of manufacturing.”

• In the aftermath of World War II, New York City’s economy had over 1 million manufacturing jobs, distributed among some 37,000 different companies.
• The post in 2016 lists the total number of manufacturing jobs in New York City in all industries to be about 80,000.
• According to the most recent statistics from the New York State Department of Labor, the current number of manufacturing jobs in the City (May 2025) is only 57,700. That’s out of total private-sector employment of some 4,248,300.

Manufacturing that continues to exist today is confined to a few specialized niches.

For example, there continue to be specialized clothing manufacturers to make things like costumes for Broadway shows and samples for runway fashion shows.

Are sewing machines what Mamdani means by the “means of production”?

Mass production of physical goods for human consumption? Almost none of it occurs in New York City:

• Food? Obviously, we don’t grow food here.
• Clothing? Almost certainly, nothing in your wardrobe or mine was manufactured in New York City.
• Housing/other buildings? They are put together on site, but the materials almost all come from elsewhere (structural concrete is one exception).
• Automobiles? There are no assembly plants in the five boroughs. (If you know of a manufacturer of some kind of parts for the auto industry in New York City, Francis Menton asks that you let him know.)

How did all the wealth that is generated in the hundreds of office buildings in Manhattan get there? And does Mamdani have plans on how to seize it?

When he sends in his shock troops to make the seizures, all he’s going to find are a bunch of laptops no different from what you could get at the Apple store.

New Jobs in NYC?

“Business services:” a general description of the kinds of things that people do who work in office buildings — things like accounting, auditing, law, advertising, consulting, publishing.

The huge “tech” sector didn’t exist at all 20 years ago and was only getting started 10 years ago. That sector consists of hundreds of companies doing wildly different things.

The hot new thing in the office market is for an entrepreneur to set up a few floors of an office building as “shared space” and sublet units to dozens of small and start-up companies, reports Francis Menton.

Indeed, that’s the kind of place where Menton uses for his office.

Then, there is also a big government and the healthcare sectors (much bigger than Menton thinks appropriate).

Foolish Ignorance Visits NYC 

Investment bankers, traders, and hedge funders make millions of dollars per year dealing in the capital markets. Could that mean that their “means of production” mainly consists of the proprietary software that they use in their businesses?

… bankers may know how to make big money using this software, but seized and distributed among the masses, it would be almost completely useless.

It’s really … funny to contemplate.

Ha, ha …