The decadence and putrefaction of the ruling class

Submitted by ICConline on

Printer-friendly version

Almost seven years after the suicide in prison of the sex predator and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and the discovery of a vast international sex trafficking network, the documents and photographs from a voluminous file – only part of which has been made public – continue to dominate the headlines. This nauseating scandal directly implicates two US presidents, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, but also an impressive number of political figures from all sides, compromised across the globe, ranging from Prince Andrew to ministers from several European powers and celebrities from the worlds of finance and entertainment, not to mention the head of the Davos Forum, the IOC president, property developers, businessmen and lawyers, all involved to the core. The highly sophisticated and methodically organised ramifications of ‘private parties’, the staggering sums of money involved and the complicity of the highest echelons of the ruling class have shocked the entire world.

The exploitation of women, a reflection of the morals of class-based societies

We are supposed to believe that all this horror is only the work of a megalomaniacal, narcissistic pervert. But this situation of depravity and the use of one’s social position to carry out sexual blackmail is by no means an isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, it illustrates a practice that is very widespread within the ruling class. One need only recall a few notorious examples from recent years: the ‘bunga bunga’ parties organised by the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was also the owner of a television channel and a major businessman, and who regularly engaged the services of call girls in the 1990s; the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then managing director of the International Monetary Fund and the clear favourite in the 2012 French presidential elections, who attempted to sexually assault a chambermaid in a New York hotel and was subsequently accused by many other women of similar behaviour [1]; or the former president, Colonel Gaddafi, whom a journalist, Mémona Hintermann, testified had attempted to rape her during a stay in Libya in 1984 in exchange for an interview.

Indeed, from prehistoric times to the present day, women have always been exploited as sexual objects or commodities in class-based societies. Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State and August Bebel in Women and Socialism clearly demonstrated and denounced the exploitation of women by men in all class-based societies characterised by patriarchal domination. However, as successive modes of production and exploitation fell into decline, the ideological superstructures tended to disintegrate further, driving the declining ruling classes towards even more ‘deviant’ and sick behaviour.

This was particularly evident with the decline of the English aristocracy in the 18th century. Its libertinism and depravity are a recurring theme in the work of the painter William Hogarth. In France, during the same period, particularly under the cynical Regency of Philip II of Bourbon between 1715 and 1723, the loosening of morals and the success of the ‘fêtes galantes’ at the Palais-Royal bear witness to the same phenomenon. This phenomenon was to continue under Louis XV and his favourites, former courtesans ennobled, and in a more discreet form with the vogue for ‘literary and artistic salons’.

However, under capitalism, the exploitation of women took on a new dimension with the commodification of the female body - a sort of second ‘historical defeat of the female sex’ [2] - symbolised by the ‘golden age of brothels’ in the 19th century and the widespread practice of prostitution ‘in the service’ of armies on manoeuvres. Even though capitalism has, to some extent, mitigated the gender division of labour by integrating female workers into the production process, it fundamentally maintains the framework of women’s forced submission to men, particularly through marriage and their isolation within the nuclear family, summed up in Flora Tristan’s phrase, taken up by Marx and Engels: “woman is the proletarian of the man”.

Bebel, in particular, vehemently denounced the hypocrisy of bourgeois society during capitalism’s ascendant phase, particularly within the great bourgeois families: “In marriage, a woman is bought and becomes the legal property of her husband. […] If marriage represents one side of the sexual life of the bourgeois world, prostitution represents the other. The former is the front of the coin, the latter its reverse”[3] . In fact, capitalist relations not only perpetuate but accentuate the role of women as sexual objects who effectively become the private property of men to the extent that they are reduced to the function of a tool in the service of male desire and impulses. Working-class women, in particular, and especially in the context of their exploitation at work, are forced, under the constant threat of unemployment and of being reduced to destitution and poverty, to stoop to enduring every humiliation.

A symbol of the rottenness of capitalism

Of course, prostitution, rape and paedophilia have ‘always existed’ in class-based societies. But this exploitation takes on an even more extreme, abject and widespread form as the capitalist system sinks deeper into its historic crisis. Prostitution has now taken on unimaginable industrial proportions, as has the exploitation of women and children in pornography. Ultra-violent sex slavery networks have exploded, capitalising on the growing destitution and isolation of young girls. Pornography, increasingly vile and cruel, has become widely normalised, even among the youngest. It is estimated that one in eight women today has been raped or sexually assaulted before the age of 18, the vast majority within the family and in war zones, where the figure soars to one in four! This museum of horrors is endless. Whilst the bourgeoisie has nothing left to offer but war, destitution and widespread chaos, the rottenness of all its social structures is having far-reaching effects, including on a moral level: “All these signs of the social putrefaction which is invading every pore of human society on a scale never seen before, can only express one thing: not only the dislocation of bourgeois society, but the destruction of the very principle of collective life in a society devoid of the slightest project or perspective, even in the short term, and however illusory” [4].

Whilst this phenomenon affects all strata of society, it takes on extreme forms amongst the bourgeoisie, for whom access to such practices is greatly facilitated by the dominant position of its members. Thus, all forms of corruption are growing and flourishing within the bourgeoisie, particularly within the political apparatus, as evidenced by the wave of scandals sweeping most countries, on a scale and to an extent never seen before. Mirroring the growing gangsterisation of political and economic institutions, riddled with corruption and links to mafia circles, Epstein, an utterly unscrupulous individual trained behind the scenes of the Wall Street stock exchange, ceaselessly resorted to power plays, blackmail, threats and intimidation, both against his extremely wealthy ‘clients’ or ‘patrons’ - whom he constantly blackmailed by amassing compromising files - as against his victims, carefully targeted and selected from among the most fragile or vulnerable, coming from socially disadvantaged backgrounds or having experienced difficult family circumstances (drugs, alcoholism, prostitution, sexual abuse, etc.).

It is no coincidence that Trump, the spearhead of populism, himself linked to mafia circles, was an accomplice of Epstein: “Many women have already claimed that Trump raped them at various events or beauty pageants. It is also known that Trump paid to silence the two women who accused him of having illicit relations with him: porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougall. [...] His association with Epstein is also well known; Epstein was accused of rape, abuse and, above all, international child trafficking. He appears with Trump in dozens of photographs. Finally, Trump was also found guilty of thirty-four counts of falsifying business records, which came to light during the investigation into the payments made to Stormy Daniels”[5]

But why is so much media attention being devoted to this case? There is, of course, an ideological exploitation of this media campaign. There is an element of settling scores between rival bourgeois factions: some seeking to discredit Trump’s ‘authoritarian, dictatorial, fascist’ policies and attempt to impeach him; others, in the MAGA camp, seeking to fuel their delusional theories about a vast conspiracy hatched by ‘elites’…

But it is also about fuelling a campaign in defence of ‘democracy under threat’, polarised around the false opposition between populism and anti-populism. On the one hand, this is a dangerous trap set for the working class to divert it from its struggles. At the same time, this campaign serves to divert attention from capitalism’s inexorable descent into barbarism: the horror of the exploitation of women and children is reduced to a single individual, Epstein, and is presented as something that could be resolved through ‘more democracy’, more ‘transparency’, more ‘justice’. By focusing attention on individuals, the bourgeoisie seeks to conceal the fact that behind these despicable figures, the real culprit is decaying capitalist society. It is trying to prevent people from realising that to put an end to all these horrors, we must put an end to this system.

Wim, 28 February 2026

 

[1] See our article in French “Affaire DSK : la bourgeoisie est une classe de pourris”, RI  424, (July/August 2011).

[2] Engels describes the overthrow of matrilineal law in the Neolithic period as the “historic defeat of the female sex”.

[3] Bebel, Women and Socialism, “Women in the Present”.

[4] “Theses on decomposition ” (May 1990).

Rubric: 

Epstein scandal