#De Blasio quotes Karl Marx in WNYC radio interview

Mayor Bill de Blasio reached back to his salad days as a young radical to quote the father of communism on Friday.

During his weekly appearance on WNYC radio, de Blasio was asked about a recent report that said his “long-held antipathy toward well-heeled private sector interests” was jeopardizing the city’s economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

In response, de Blasio admitted that “my focus has not been on the business community and the elites” before adding, “I am tempted to borrow from Karl Marx here.”

Hizzoner then went to recite from memory a concept expressed in Chapter 1 of the infamous “Communist Manifesto” written by Marx and comrade Friedrich Engels in 1848.

“There’s a famous quote that the ‘the state is the executive committee of the bourgeois’ and I use it openly to say, ‘No,’” de Blasio said.

“I actually read that as a young person and I said, ‘That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.’”

The mayor added: “The business community matters, we need to work with the business community, we will work with the business community — but the city government represents the people, represents working people, and mayors should not be too cozy with the business community, governors should not be too cozy with the business community.”

During his failed presidential bid last year, de Blasio sparked controversy by quoting a rallying cry associated with Guevara, the late Cuban communist revolutionary.

He later apologized for that remark.

The mayor’s memorization of the Communist Manifesto is fairly accurate, according to a version posted online at the marxists.org website.

That translation of the pamphlet, which was originally written in German, says, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”