Epstein and the unity of the ruling class
Beyond the immediate demands of the moment, the Epstein Affair calls on us to wage a systematic struggle against world capitalism as a whole.
Since the Miami Herald’s expose, “Perversion of Justice,” brought knowledge of the Epstein conspiracy to the mainstream in November 2018, we have entered a period in which elements of the most lurid conspiracy theories are revealed to be realities. Jeffrey Epstein, once referred to glowingly as a mysterious “New York financier,” was revealed to be the organizer of a massive pedophilia and sex trafficking operation servicing many of the most powerful figures of international capitalism—from politicians to CEOs and intellectuals.
Though the ruling class has tried to kill and bury the Epstein case through all possible means, its reverberations keep pulling it back up to the surface in all its grotesqueness. The shocking details of the case would have attracted mass interest in themselves, but the depth of the affair and the way in which it implicates and exposes the ruling class have ensured that it won’t leave public consciousness.
The Epstein case has incited a protracted crisis of legitimacy in which the facade of bourgeois society has slipped and revealed the true nature of the system to millions. It has exposed the linkages of capitalists across the world despite supposedly irreconcilable national and political divides. It has revealed that the ruling class stands above the law, and the principles of bourgeois law and order are nothing but a weapon against working and oppressed people and a shield for the political and economic elites. It has shown that the capitalists are willing not only to commit heinous crimes, but have the power and the will to cover them up.
The decadence and depravity of the ruling circles confirm the patriarchal and oppressive core of contemporary capitalist life. For the socialist movement, it is vital we both connect with the mass disillusionment incited by the waves of revelations, offer a framework for parsing their real significance and implications, and organize the outrage into effective resistance.
The state of the coverup
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump promised the speedy release of the Epstein files to throw a bone to his base and indict his Democratic opponents as participants and supporters of Epstein’s pedophilic sex trafficking ring. The Epstein case had already become a core element of the worldview of large swathes of Trump’s committed base, confirming to them how essential Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” of the “deep state” really was.
During Trump’s first term, the popular QAnon conspiracy theory used the Epstein case as the rational kernel of a larger worldview that the world is presided over by a shadowy (Jewish) pedophile cabal, and Trump was on a secret mission to purge the government and society of these evildoers. The unhinged reactionary fantasy of QAnon only brought a minority of the Republican into active participation, yet many of its tenets seeped into the broader zeitgeist among the Trumpian base. Consequently, the deepening of the Epstein crisis and Trump’s undeniable connection to it have been one of the few things that have made Trump’s seemingly unassailable loyalty from his base waver.
Given this contradiction, the administration has fumbled incompetently for over a year trying every quick fix imaginable and failing to stop the legitimacy crisis. The start of Trump’s second term was accompanied by bold declarations by officials like Pam Bondi that all would soon be revealed. Mysteriously, they publicly walked back everything and claimed there was no Epstein list or files to disclose. Shortly thereafter, there was a big press event celebrating the disclosure of the files, when in reality documents that had already been released were just rereleased with more redactions than they had the first time.
Pressure mounted after this failed stunt and ultimately precipitated The Epstein Files Transparency Act. Signed on Nov. 19, 2025, the Act has put the Trump administration in a bind. Trump hoped for a party-line split to stymy the Act’s passage, but a large percentage of Republican representatives turned in favor of the Act. This brought the Act to Trump’s desk to be approved or rejected. If Trump allowed full disclosure, then the depth of his and many other ruling-class peoples’ associations with Epstein would be revealed to the world. If he didn’t disclose, then it would confirm to millions that he has something to hide and is covering for a pedophilic sex trafficking ring. Trump felt forced to sign, but hasn’t followed the letter of the law.
The government’s process of disclosure of the Epstein files has been just as incompetent and bungled as all the other phases of the crisis. Eventually, the administration finally released 3 million documents on Dec. 19, 2025, seemingly finally complying with the Disclosure Act. However, it was clear upon examination that there were excessive redactions, suggesting political reasons for the suppressed information. Even more galling, some survivors’ names were not redacted, opening them up to targeting and harassment. Furthermore, the 3 million documents released were not the full “Epstein files” demanded by the Transparency Act.
The administration had violated the Transparency Act, though there were no formal mechanisms to discipline or punish them. However, pressure continued to mount until the government was forced to release another 3 million documents in the next month.
The bitter struggle by the government to avoid disclosing the Epstein files has tarnished the reputation of the administration both nationally and internationally. It has even led Trump’s notoriously fanatical base to question why the man and the party who had demagogued about the case for so long suddenly had such cold feet.
The most obvious reason for the Trump regime’s vacillations is how implicated Trump is himself with Epstein. In the currently available documents, Trump’s name appears more than 38,000 times. There are many publicly available photos with the two together. Beyond that, it is very clear that Trump and Epstein were close associates, even friends. But there are even deeper considerations here than just for Trump to save his own hide.
What was Epstein’s operation?
Conspiracism has long been a major sideshow in the politics of the United States. For the most part, the conspiracy theories that animate the body politic tell us more about the segments of society that believe in them than reality—like the moon landing, the JFK assassination, or communist infiltration of American institutions. But sometimes the rumblings that the wider society dismisses as overactive imagination are just the early signs of a coming earthquake.
During the 1960s and ’70s, leftist organizers were confident that their organizations were being systematically undermined. This notion appeared as a farce to mainstream America, but the disclosure of COINTELPRO made it clear the problem was even greater than most activists had suspected. The disclosure of MKUltra, the CIA’s mind-control program, made many of the wackier conspiracy theories appear tame by comparison.
Today, with Epstein, a hundred conspiracy theories have bloomed. The three questions these theories tend to revolve around are: what was Epstein’s operation, what were his aims, and who did he serve?
On the first question, despite obfuscation by the U.S. government, it is clear that Jeffrey Epstein was the head of a large-scale sex trafficking ring servicing the ruling class. During the first Trump administration, the government estimated there were 100 victims of Epstein’s rings. After the investigation was expanded during the Biden presidency, that number was expanded to over 1000. Yet, both administrations have carefully avoided identifying whom the trafficking ring was for besides Epstein himself. The current government has repeatedly contended that Epstein created the sex trafficking ring solely to service himself, a notion that’s patently absurd given the scale of the operation and the clear links many elites have had with that side of his activities.
Beyond that, it is clear from the files that Epstein also had his hands in financial speculation and offered advice on these questions to the elites. This aspect has come to a head in England, where the former prince, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and Labour Party politician Peter Mandelson have been charged for exposing state secrets in financial discussion with Epstein. The exact nature of these activities and why Epstein was considered an expert on these questions by the capitalists remain unclear. No prominent politicians or capitalists have yet faced charges anywhere in the world for their participation in sex crimes in relation to Epstein.
This brings us to the question of Epstein’s aims in engaging in large-scale sex trafficking. The most popular theory is that Epstein was the head of a blackmailing operation that gathered compromising information on many of the most powerful actors in contemporary capitalism. Other explanations include that he was just personally an amoral libertine and hedonist or he was providing a service in demand in ruling circles for the money. The U.S. government under both Democratic and Republican administrations has asserted the sex trafficking was for Epstein’s own personal use, which appears patently absurd even with the circumscribed evidence released by the government.
Finally, and most contentiously, there has been wide debate about whom Epstein served. Given how large his trafficking ring was and the many indicators that it was also the basis of a blackmail operation, many have wondered if Epstein was in the service of one government or another. For the most part, the U.S. government has avoided addressing this question, though recently they’ve been pushing the narrative that he was a Russian asset, a notion little evidenced by the available files or the network he cultivated. In popular consciousness, the most common assumptions are that he served the CIA or Mossad. This is a factual question and can only be confirmed by full disclosure of relevant information related to Epstein. Though this is a question of interest, it’s not particularly salient for either our understanding or practical response to the Epstein Affair.
Epstein and the unity of the ruling class
There are many important aspects of the Epstein Affair. To really understand its full implications, though, we have to understand cliques like Epstein’s in the context of international capitalism. It would be easy to fall into the conspiracist logic that the whole ruling class is a pedophile cabal operating behind the scenes of the formal structures of “democratic” capitalism on the basis of the Epstein case. In the opposite direction we can easily downplay just how much cliques like Epstein’s say about the capitalist class and its real mode of operation.
The way we square this circle is by examining the peculiar unity of the ruling class under international capitalism. The capitalists themselves like to make us believe that the ruling class is permanently factionalized along many different lines in the same ways they want the working class majority to be. They promote antagonisms around nationality, political party, race, gender, and economic interest. By maintaining the illusion of irreconcilable differences between different sectors of the ruling class, they dissolve the recognition among the masses that there is any ruling class at all. In this narrative, there are no common ruling-class interests and therefore practice; there is instead sectional differences and antagonism. These differences skew across class lines—a worker and a capitalist can both vote Democrat or identify America’s interest as their own interest.
The apparent sharpness of these intra-ruling class antagonisms leads to head-scratching and cognitive dissonance for those looking at the Epstein Affair. In reality, international capitalism is comprised of a “band of warring brothers,” as Marx described it. On the other hand, there are real conflicts between the ruling class. Capitalists are in competition over profit and seek to use the state for their own personal and sectional interests. This can be a struggle for existence for capitalists—if they lose out to other capitalists, they could lose their positions as capitalists themselves.
But the structural level of capitalism cuts against these antagonisms. The capitalist state brings together all the competing capitalists into an organization that mediates their internal squabbles and provides them the ability to unite to oppress the working masses. Without this unity, they could not organize society under their collective control and society would either be dominated by constant strife or transformed through a revolution bringing the masses to power.
But there are a thousand other smaller ways that the ruling class achieves its unity. Beyond the immediate and obvious reasons for the ruling class to participate in Epstein’s crimes, the whole affair is an exercise in building the unity the ruling class requires.
Epstein and Maxwell were experts at bringing together capitalists, politicians, and intellectuals and strengthening their bonds. The sex trafficking was not just a quirk. By participating in despicable acts together with impunity and simultaneously creating the potential to compromise themselves as individuals, these ruling-class elements are bound together. We see this same phenomenon on a smaller scale with the ubiquity of hazing in college fraternities or rituals in secret societies and elite organizations. Common participation and knowledge of each other’s crimes gives them a deep investment in each other despite their differences. We can see the evidence of this in how Trump has talked softly about another close Epstein associate, Bill Clinton, during the latest flare up of the Epstein crisis despite his previously apparently implacable struggle against the Clintons on the political terrain.
The maturing of the crisis has revealed the solidarity between the whole ruling class, which in normal times is obscured by the daily conflict over everyday political issues. Whether the Epstein crisis will pass by with little effect or end in real accountability will depend on whether the working class can exploit the current fractures the ruling class is working to smooth over.
Socialism against the Epstein class
The whole course of the Epstein saga has been a dark example of world capitalism at work. Impunity, exploitation, sexual coercion, and coverups are daily realities of life within class society. That there are Epsteins, Maxwells, and their elite clients is sadly nothing new. What is new is the knowledge of the real workings of the ruling class and the mass outrage of millions across the world. For socialists, it is our duty to connect with this righteous anger and channel it towards the struggle for justice.
Our immediate demands are for full transparency and for justice for the multitude of survivors of Epstein’s crimes. It is thanks to the advocacy of these survivors at great risk to themselves that Epstein’s apparatus and the ruling class’s support for it have been revealed in all their brutality. All the capitalists and politicians who sexually abused women and girls must face the legal consequences that the bourgeois justice system promises but rarely delivers on. Getting justice will depend on continued exposure of the already publicly known crimes and pressuring the system to reveal all the information they have hidden to protect the ruling class.
The method to secure justice is through organized struggle. It is clear that public knowledge of the crimes and mass outrage are insufficient to win justice. We are seeing movement in this direction, particularly in Ohio, where Les Wexner, one of Epstein’s primary backers resides. Concerted organization has begun to put the heat on Wexner. Local leftist organizations and students have called rallies demanding justice and the removal of Wexner’s name from the many buildings that are adorned with it. Most notably, the Ohio Nurses Association and the AFL-CIO called a rally outside Wexner Medical Center to expose Wexner. Bringing unions into the movement and organizing workers and the community to strengthen the calls for justice will be essential to get trials or any other measures implemented.
Beyond the immediate demands of the moment, the Epstein Affair calls on us to wage a systematic struggle against world capitalism as a whole. The patriarchy and impunity of the ruling class are endemic features of capitalism and can only be mitigated as long as capitalism itself hasn’t been eliminated. The complicity and coverups of Epstein’s ring extends through all wings of bourgeois politics from the right to the left—from the Republican Party, through the Democratic Party, to the UK Labour Party. We need an independent and radical working-class party, which is committed to exposing every crime perpetrated by the ruling class and which seeks to encourage mass struggle by the working class to wrest power from our oppressors and exploiters.
Today, the unbridled decadence of the ruling class is recognized by the masses. We must turn this knowledge into action to win justice for the survivors and achieve a world where a Jeffrey Epstein is an impossibility. That world is socialism.
First published here by Workers’ Voice
(Photo) Trump and Epstein. (Netflix)
