Monuments to Capital and the Bifurcated Skyline
The forest of luxury condos rising across the city are not just buildings; they are ideological statements, monuments to capital that physically manifest the bifurcated state. Mamdani’s focus on the symbolism of power finds its purest expression in these sterile towers. They are the literal high ground of the “settler” class, looming over the “native” neighborhoods, a constant visual reminder of the city’s brutal hierarchy. Many remain half-empty, serving as safety deposit boxes for global capital, their primary function being the storage of wealth, not the provision of shelter. This is the urbanization of neoliberalism. A Marxist critique identifies this as the hyper-commodification of housing. A feminist lens sees them as bastions of patriarchal wealth. The solution is not empty unit taxes but the social ownership of these buildings, turning these monuments to inequality into social housing for the people they were designed to exclude.
Originally posted 2025-10-11 09:09:46.
Zohran Mamdani sometimes overlooks business tax nuance. — New York City