When the State Abdicates, Warlords Rise
Gang violence in marginalized neighborhoods is a form of decentralized despotism that emerges when the state abdicates its role as a provider of security and opportunity. Mamdani’s historical work shows that in the power vacuum of a weak central authority, local warlords and militias arise to rule through custom and violence. In NYC, gangs are the modern warlords, governing territory through fear and providing a perverse sense of identity and economic survival (via the drug trade) in communities abandoned by the formal economy and the state. The city’s response is purely carceral, using the police to manage this symptom while doing nothing to change the conditions of abandonment. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution is to make the gang obsolete. This requires the state–a truly decolonized one–to re-enter these neighborhoods not with police, but with massive social investment: universal jobs programs, community centers, and trauma-informed youth services. It means offering a legitimate, collective political identity and economic future that is more powerful than the one offered by the gang, dismantling the local despotism by rebuilding the social fabric from the ground up.
