Zohran Mamdani is likely to be the next mayor of New York City come November, having won the Democratic Party primary this week. That comes as a surprise for several reasons. The 33-year-old Mamdani was little-known prior to the primary campaign, certainly in comparison to the expected front-runner, former state Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But the bigger surprise involves Mamdani’s platform, having run as an unabashed democratic socialist opposed to establishment liberal party politics.

Zohran Mamdani is likely to be the next mayor of New York City come November, having won the Democratic Party primary this week. That comes as a surprise for several reasons. The 33-year-old Mamdani was little-known prior to the primary campaign, certainly in comparison to the expected front-runner, former state Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But the bigger surprise involves Mamdani’s platform, having run as an unabashed democratic socialist opposed to establishment liberal party politics.

What exactly makes Mamdani a democratic socialist? Why did he mostly earn support from the city’s middle classes? And how dependent is the city on taxes from the wealthy?

Those are just a few of the questions that came up in my recent conversation with FP economics columnist Adam Tooze on the podcast we co-host, Ones and Tooze. What follows is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, look for Ones and Tooze wherever you get your podcasts. And check out Adam’s Substack newsletter.

Cameron Abadi: What qualifies Mamdani as a socialist rather than a liberal? How should we differentiate between the two?

Adam Tooze: I think it’s fair to say that he isn’t a liberal either on the more capacious historical definition of what liberalism is or on the narrower definition that characterizes American political discourse today. He isn’t a liberal in the classical sense because he believes that inequality and hierarchy shape society in a structural way, right, not i