Welcome to 2026, the year we fight collectivism. And we’re already seeing early signs that we’ll have to wage this fight not just overseas but also right here at home.

The new year has been packed with news. Fortunately, it augurs well for those who want to fight collectivism, i.e., the government appropriation of private property to turn it over to “collective” ownership under state control.

In quick succession last week, we saw two collectivists move into public housing in New York. The first was Zohran Mamdani, who took up digs at Gracie Mansion, the city’s mayoral residence, on New Year’s Day. Three days later, former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro moved into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, after a well-publicized extraction from Caracas.

These two different stories are tied at the hip. Mamdani could have learned a lot from Venezuela’s own experience with collectivism, as well as that of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, and countless other dark and sad societies that are politically repressive and economic basket cases.

The problem with collectivism is simple. Because the government lacks a profit motive, and government officials are spending other people’s money, finite resources that might have been put to profitable use are mismanaged or even misappropriated, and thus wasted, to the detriment of society.

In the first volume of Capital, first published in 1867, Karl Marx wrote that by acting collectively, individuals would cooperate to........

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