One of the great mysteries of society is what those who do terrible, unjustifiable things, think about their behaviour. How do they justify the unjustifiable?
When posing the question, we often answer that they are in denial as to what they have really done; or that they admit it, but tell themselves it was the right thing to do, it is for the greater good, etc.
The release of (some of) the Epstein files reveals that not only are the most depraved crimes imaginable being routinely committed by wide layers of the ruling class, but that in many cases those doing so are not in denial.
Nor do they bother with any real justification for their acts beyond: “I can get away with it because I am special. The rules don’t apply to me and my friends”.
Their morals and ours
This is what – within the ruling class – morality is and always has been. As Engels and Trotsky pointed out: “morality more than any other form of ideology has a class character.”
Morality is nothing more than an expression of the real relations of society. In class society, the ruling class, who live by exploiting and crushing everyone else, would never actually live by the morality that is supposed to govern the whole of society.
The Epstein scandal is surely the biggest scandal in the history of capitalism. Not just the American ruling class, but the ruling class of the entire western world is caught up in it. The entire world is waking up to the realisation that they are ruled over by a gang of paedophiles.
Epstein and his fellow ruling class conspirators were not ‘immoral’ from their class standpoint. And this can clearly be seen from their correspondence, and the simple fact that vast sections of the ruling classes of multiple countries participated.
This is simply the real morality of the bourgeoisie in its decay: short-sighted egotism and extreme greed (which for them are good things), combined with conscious class solidarity. “We help each other out [provided the favours are returned] and we close ranks, so that the whole sordid circus can keep going.”
Disturbing depravity
The life and psychology of Epstein and his friends make this clear.
Growing up, Epstein did not exhibit signs of psychological disorders. He was not in trouble at school; was not reported by his friends to have been duplicitous, violent, or anything else. He was, in fact, reportedly well-liked and seen as kind.
As an adult, whilst committing the most depraved acts on a regular basis, he seems to have been popular among his peers.
If you look at his correspondence, he usually seems to be on good terms with his associates – at least as much as can be expected, given he was organising a child trafficking and blackmail operation.
Anyone who observes the ruling class over a period of time notices something highly disturbing. The very same people who make decisions that ruin the lives of countless people, and who lie through their teeth to the public, are frequently not unbalanced lunatics.
Generally, such ladies and gentlemen do not treat everyone around them like trash; nor do they become hated by most of their friends, family, and colleagues – though such types certainly exist.
In fact they often seem, within their social circle and class brethren, relatively well-liked and reasonable.
Power, abuse, and exploitation
Jeffrey Epstein was clearly an absolute monster; almost certainly a psychopath with grandiose delusions of superiority to others.
It does not follow from this that he sought to abuse and exploit anyone and everyone, however. Rather, he took out his narcissism and cruelty on those of another class – the working class.
He was also made into this monster by his position at the top of a decaying capitalist society.
There are no reports of him abusing younger people until he had the power to do so. The first case is that he is alleged to have behaved ‘inappropriately’ to girls he was teaching in his first job, and it is possible this led to him being fired in 1976.
Hence, he may well have been a paedophile from his early twenties onwards. But there is no evidence of him behaving as such until the nineties, by which time he had been a high-powered financier for almost twenty years.
As his wealth and power grew, his own sense of entitlement and superiority no doubt grew. His ability to sexually and physically abuse younger people and get away with it must have grown as well. And he would have learnt, step by step, that he could push boundaries further and further.
He not only developed a taste for this, but also a certain skill: befriending the right people; employing others to intimidate victims or help him cover things up, etc.
He also, at a certain point, hit upon the idea of not just collaborating with like-minded bourgeois individuals, but of using this to blackmail them by secretly recording their depraved activities.
Class contempt
In recent years there has been a glut of cases of extreme abuse perpetrated by powerful men who were able to get away with it in almost plain sight for decades: Harvey Weinstein, Jimmy Saville, Mohamed Al-Fayed, R Kelly, P Diddy – the list is enormous.
What does this tell us? That these men, whilst possibly having a pre-existing tendency to abuse others, had their capacity to do so – without consequence – enhanced to a superhuman degree thanks to the nature of capitalist society.
Epstein and co. were not just members of the ruling class. They were members of a ruling class in its decadent phase – that is to say, a ruling class no longer capable of taking society forwards; that can only survive by destroying means of production, leaving rust belts, alienation, and growing inequality in their wake.
Their psychology and ideology is shaped by this. The ‘Epstein class’ of financial speculators and the like have utter contempt for the working class. They see their task as destroying the gains the working class made in the postwar period, and subjecting them entirely to the power of capital.
Epstein rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s – the exact period in which, thanks to the collapse of Stalinism and the victories of Thatcher and Reagan, Epstein’s class was drunk on success; the era in which the likes of Epstein were crowned financial ‘masters of the universe’.
Wealth and power
That Epstein was at the epicentre of this process is shown by his collusion with Peter Mandelson – then the de facto deputy prime minister of Britain – against Mandelson’s own government, in order to drive down taxes on bankers’ bonuses.
Here, two men from different countries conspired over email to subvert a very moderately progressive policy of an elected government.
It is obvious that this sort of behaviour is constant amongst members of the ruling class, especially in the past few decades in which the super-rich have concentrated more wealth and power than ever before.
In the eyes of Epstein and many of his inner circle, they were not simply ignoring moral norms because they could. For them, it was right for them to do this, because they were special, enlightened, liberated supermen.
From their email exchanges, it is clear that they revelled in depraved behaviour; in transgressing the moral norms of the little people, the herd.
“Devoid of shame”
The same psychology was literally on display in his properties, which featured all manner of bizarre and disgusting trinkets, paintings, and even buildings (such as an occult-looking temple on one of his islands), which celebrated in an almost satanic manner the perverted hedonism he practiced.
In one email, a member of his staff reports that he has requested a painting of the eating of babies to be installed. His plane’s nickname was the ‘Lolita Express’. He embraced the identity of being a sexual pervert and abuser.
As Joscha Bach, an academic who met and maintained correspondence with Epstein, has written of him:
“Epstein had an unusual psychology. He was high strung, intensely curious, and utterly devoid of fear, guilt or shame. In the absence of these basic human traits, he was a high functioning sociopath, bound only by rules and loyalties he discovered for himself.
“From time to time, Epstein would invite a circle of top tier scientists and high ranking politicians into an office at Harvard, discussing science and politics, with radical openness and disregard for ideological camps and public taboos.
“During some of my time in Cambridge, Epstein sent frequently short, dyslexic emails with random thoughts in my direction. I tried to probe and understand his world view, which was highly unusual and often darker and more radical than anyone else I’ve ever talked to.”
This description contains another telling insight into this psychology.
Integral to Epstein’s view of himself as a superman was that the moral inhibitions he cast off were little more than taboos and primitive superstitions.
He ‘proved’ this by constantly associating himself with intellectuals of all stripes. And he may have seen his social circle as something of a ‘libertine’ salon, a place where geniuses and the powerful could meet without the judgment of the ‘herd’.
Malthusianism and eugenics
An example of his ‘transgressive’ psychology can be found in an email in which he discusses Bill Gates’ philanthropy in Africa. In this, he says that:
“I don’t want him to ask me to support his African causes…He is brilliant and so is Warren [Buffett], can’t they come up with a better foundation structure and goal, then [sic] to make the ludicrous statement that every life is equal.”
He also criticised welfare for the poor along Malthusian lines, because he thought it would lead to overpopulation.
Another example was his frequent dabbling in the idea of eugenics – especially racial eugenics, and the racist idea that different races have different intellectual capabilities (with his own race at the top, naturally).
Indeed, he often enquired into the possibility of using one of his ranches as a breeding ground, in which he could somehow seed a superior human race using his own, superior, genetics.
Nietzschean delusion
Over a hundred years ago, when the capitalist class was first hitting a dead-end and was seriously threatened by the increasingly powerful working class, the ideas of Nietzsche gained enormous popularity amongst bourgeois intellectuals.
What his ideas gave these layers was a way to cloak deeply reactionary interests in dramatic, even ‘revolutionary’ sounding ideas.
The most repugnant programme of crushing the working class, which is what Nietzsche really stood for, was twisted into something that sounded liberatory.
He flamboyantly advocated that ‘supermen’, artistic geniuses, and would-be powerful rulers, must be free from the narrow-minded, jealous, and inhibiting ‘slave morality’ of the herd, to really work their wonders and transform the world.
This is the sort of psychology Epstein and his circle had. All their most disgusting and cruel acts were, for them, evidence of their heroic brilliance, their specialness.
Apparently, Epstein wanted his head and penis to be frozen so he could be brought back to life, as well as his above-mentioned desire to seed a higher version of the human race.
Capitalist parasites
Far from having the psychology of a bona fide ‘superman’, Epstein had the psychology of what he really was: a parasite.
As capitalism entered its senile decay, its body became overgrown with cancerous tumors; that is to say, gigantic financial monopolies leeching off all productive activity.
Of this species of parasite, the most parasitical of all must be the wealth managers, professional tax avoiders, and fixers who grease the wheels of dodgy deals.
That is exactly what Epstein did. He managed the wealth of the super-rich, and extracted an exorbitant share for himself by means of blackmail and connections.
There is no one in capitalism who contributes less, takes from, and generally harms society more than those of his profession. Their delusions about their own brilliance are necessary to make up for the fact of their own parasitism.
The diseased nature of his position and wider class was crystalised in their obscene behaviour that is now fully coming to light.
Stinking hypocrisy
Now we see the extreme hypocrisy of the western ruling class.
We see that those who preach about human rights, who hand out Nobel Prizes, who patronise charities and NGOs, participate in the most depraved acts humans can do.
This is the morality and psychology of the ruling class: sheer, stinking hypocrisy.
The revelation of all this stands like a commandment to the masses of all the world: never believe them ever again. Let their authority be shattered utterly.
Do not let all the suffering his victims had to endure go in vain. Kick the ruling class out!
