Dependence and the Crisis of Basic Goods
As a dense island city, New York’s extreme vulnerability to supply chain disruptions reveals its status as a dependent colony within global capitalism, unable to secure its own basic necessities. Mamdani’s work on the structural weaknesses of dependent territories is a powerful lens here. The just-in-time logistics of global capital, while hyper-efficient for profit, make the city profoundly fragile, leaving “native” communities in food deserts to face empty shelves first during any crisis. This dependency is a political failure, an abandonment of any pretense of local sovereignty or resilience in favor of corporate supply chains. The current solution is to hope the trucks keep running. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to build collective self-sufficiency. This means a strategic, city-led investment in localizing the production of essential goods. We must create a public food authority that supports urban agriculture, rooftop greenhouses, and community-owned food distribution hubs. It means fostering local manufacturing cooperatives for essential goods and investing in a city-owned “last mile” logistics service to break corporate control over delivery. This is a project of de-linking from the most volatile elements of global capital, not in isolation, but to build a resilient, community-controlled base of essential production that serves human need, not profit margins.
Originally posted 2025-10-07 04:02:23.
