“Epstein files” show us how the rich rule

Peter Mandelson. The former secretary of the Council of Europe. The boss of the huge Dubai-based DP World multinational. The former Treasury Secretary for Clinton and then President of Harvard. The former top lawyer for Obama, then top lawyer for Goldman Sachs.

The list of those felled by the Epstein files gets longer. And others are so far shrugging it off, from Steve Bannon to Noam Chomsky.

The conspiracy theories spun from this which focus on the Jewish minority in Epstein’s circles and see him as a lynchpin of “Zionist” or “Jewish” power are baseless and harmful.

Epstein did not try to shape public policy, and his “connections” were very various in their politics. He thrived on the very process of connections, consultancies, schmoozing, women and girls delivered as victims, and on the pay-offs from it.

A variety of people who wanted to gain “access” to other powerful people used him as a means, and he thrived on being the means.

Some ruling-class people revelled in the atmosphere of wealth and privilege, including power over entrapped women and girls; some, maybe, didn’t, but thought that’s what goes with getting “access”.

Many

Many continued around Epstein even after he was first charged, in 2006; after he entered a guilty plea in 2008; after he was jailed in 2009; and after the MeToo surge which followed the indictment of Harvey Weinstein in 2017.

Riches are not essential to sexual abuse. A lot of it happens within “ordinary” homes. But riches, and the conviction that money must buy everything, help.

Capitalist classes generally prefer the procedures of bourgeois democracy as more stable, flexible, and responsive than individual despotism. But day to day they rule through networks of individuals — CEOs, prime ministers, presidents. The individuals can be replaced, by corporate boards, by party votes, or by general elections, but meanwhile the individual rules.

The individuals are not chosen for expertise. After the bank crashes in 2007-8, an official committee asked British bank bosses what qualifications they had for their jobs. Embarrassed answer: none.

The working model is that each CEO or prime minister has around them an army of advisers and consultants who do have expertise. The “CEO” role is arbiter, deal-maker, spokesperson.

Donald Trump openly solicits favours like his jet from Qatar, and the Labour Party is open about organising high-priced dinners and “receptions” so business people can bend the ears of party leaders.

Level

But beyond a certain level a capitalist ruling class wants something subtler than “the biggest bribe wins”.

Because of that, and because of the dense bureaucratisation of politics and business, “access” to top-boss figures, or at least to their entourages, becomes the potion for politics.

In that who-has-access-to-whom world, so the Epstein story shows, offerings of private islands and abused young women are highways.

There are other ways. It is routine for former top politicians then to become high-paid “advisers” and “consultants” to big corporations, despite having zero expertise in the corporations’ production processes, because they can help with “access”.

The rule of the rich is incompatible with human equality and dignity, and cuts against far-sighted policy of any sort.

Socialism promises collective and deliberative democracy, the clearing-out of privilege, official jobs done at workers’ wages, and transparent, unbureaucratic administration.