Commentary: The Epstein files and monopoly capitalism

San Jose, CA – On Wednesday, November 12, House Democrats released selected emails between the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his associates, providing additional evidence that Donald Trump was aware of and complicit in Epstein’s sex crimes against women and girls. In one email, Epstein wrote, “Of course [Trump] knew about the girls…” In another, Epstein wrote to his imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump had spent hours with one of the trafficking victims at Epstein’s house.

This news comes after mounting mass pressure for Congress to release the Epstein files, with House Republicans delaying the release and with politicians on both sides of the aisle using the case as political ammunition against the opposite party. The call to release the files has been raised broadly and spontaneously by the masses, including online and at anti-Trump protests.

Meanwhile, there is longstanding evidence that Epstein consorted with high-ranking Democratic and Republican politicians alike, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, along with billionaire monopoly capitalists like Peter Thiel of PayPal and Palantir, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Elon Musk of Tesla.

Epstein was an elite financier with a net worth of almost $600 million, who provided financial advice and services to his clientele of billionaire monopoly capitalists. Although there are different camps within the monopoly capitalist class, recent history has made it abundantly clear that they are united on many fronts, from support for Israel to political repression. It comes as no surprise that Epstein’s sex crimes and exploitation of women and children would be another area of class unity for billionaires.

Monopoly capitalists earn their existence by stealing from workers and extracting riches from oppressed nations the world over. Their very existence is parasitic. Their exploitation knows no bounds – they manufacture genocides to fuel their war industry, they incarcerate generations of Black and Chicano people to fund their private prisons, they leave the poor to die on the streets to enrich their real estate investments. These treacherous conditions leave women and children increasingly vulnerable to sex trafficking.

The Epstein case is a potent reminder that the monopoly capitalist ruling class, along with both the Democratic and Republican parties that represent it politically in the U.S., is incompatible with working people’s demands for justice and liberation. These criminal exploiters will never be brought to justice while they remain in power. It will require the organized power of the working and exploited people of this country to put an end to the evils of sex crimes and sex trafficking. Another world is possible, and there is only one path to get there: revolution and socialism.

#Opinion #Commentary #Trump #Epstein