Why Mamdani’s Success Depends on Civic Communitaria
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign has mobilized New Yorkers on a breathtaking scale. But a Mamdani mayoralty will quickly run up against the trap of neoliberal managerialism and the danger of cultish overreach. Its strength will come not from charisma or technocracy, but from civic communitaria: living assemblies where New Yorkers sustain collective competence.
The Promise of a Mamdani Mayoralty
No one can miss what has just happened in New York City. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign brought tens of thousands of people into motion, united by clear demands: affordable housing, childcare, and a city that works for the people who keep it running.
That movement already distinguishes him from the “CEO mayors” of the last generation. Yet as Ross Barkan and others have warned, the role of mayor is not only agitator-in-chief. It is also manager of one of the most complex municipalities in the world. A Mamdani mayoralty cannot evade this reality.
The Managerial Trap
Managerialism insists that “competence” means efficiency, budget discipline, and keeping business confidence high. Its success is measured in bond ratings and growth indices.
If Mamdani allows himself to be judged by these standards, he will find himself fighting on the enemy’s terrain. He will be forced to reassure markets rather than mobilize people. The result: promises whittled down, demands deferred, energy dissipated.
The Charisma Trap
There is another danger, equally real: that Mamdani’s ability to mobilize people in motion gets misread as charisma.
Charisma can inspire, but it cannot institutionalize. If competence is located in the aura of the leader, then a Mamdani administration risks devolving into a personality cult. That is as sterile as managerialism, for both collapse the civic into a single figure — either the technocrat or the hero — rather than the living intelligence of the people themselves.
We call Mamdani’s alternative approach schmoozalism — a radical etiquette of encounter that defined his campaign.
But schmoozalism, on its own, is an ethos. It is the soil of politics, not its full harvest. To bear fruit, it requires structures that make the ethos durable. That is what we mean by civic communitaria.
A Schmoozalist Alternative: Civic Communitaria
What the campaign has proven is that competence can be distributed. Fifty thousand volunteers, disciplined coalitions, neighborhood roots: this is not charisma, it is infrastructure.
Civic communitaria would extend that achievement into governing.
- Unlike New York’s community boards, they are not bound by municipal charters or limited to advisory roles.
- Unlike conventional civic organizations, they do not simply represent members to City Hall.
- They are porous ensembles, open to anyone, oriented to the life of the city, cultivating mutual practice alongside deliberation.
What are they in practice? Civic communitaria are set up, run, and maintained by their own members. They are organized online through open-source, federated platforms that ensure no single company or city agency controls them. The online layer is only a tool — a facilitative space where neighbors deliberate, coordinate, and share resources — always oriented toward real-world action: meetings, mutual aid, monitoring, and mobilization.
Think of them as people’s fora in that they provide ongoing space for deliberation and collective decision-making. Think of them as community centers in that they anchor real-world projects, practices, and forms of care. But unlike either alone, communitaria weave these elements together. They are independent but aligned: starting from support for Mamdani’s broad policies while remaining free to evaluate, pressure, and articulate needs in their own voice.
Why Mamdani Needs Civic Communitaria
- They preserve campaign energy, preventing post-election demobilization.
- They measure success in lived outcomes — secure housing, accessible childcare, reliable transit — rather than abstract efficiency metrics.
- They inoculate against cultism by dispersing agency and competence among plural assemblies.
- They erode managerialism’s monopoly by showing that competence can be collective, deliberative, and reproducible.
A Mamdani administration that welcomes such formations at its side will be stronger, not weaker. It will be accountable to real people, not merely to markets or the myth of charisma.
Because communitaria are not just instruments. They are the fields in which the soil of schmoozalism bears fruit: the spaces where everyday radical etiquette ripens into collective governance, where socialism becomes livable.
The Larger Horizon
Civic communitaria are one expression of a broader communitarian project: building living formations of shared life that complement but are not captured by state institutions.
If Mamdani’s mayoralty helps plant and nurture these new civic forms, his legacy will not be limited to policy wins. It will be remembered as the moment New Yorkers began to rebuild the civic in full — together, in deliberation, in care, in common action.
Takeaway: Zohran Mamdani won’t save New York — but with civic communitaria, New Yorkers can save it together.
➡️ Read the introductory essay: Schmoozalism: The Radical Etiquette Behind Mamdani’s Appeal
➡️ Read the clarificatory essay: Schmoozalism: A Clarificatory Introduction
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