03.09.2026
Beyond the ‘Epstein class’
We need the truth. We need science. Marxists should abjure conspiracy theories about all-powerful cabals, no matter how popular they are on the internet, argues Paul Demarty
With the Jeffrey Epstein scandal now a permanent part of political controversy in the western world, it is perhaps unsurprising that it has become the master key for all historical explanation for a substantial number of politically engaged persons.
Such persons may be found on the far right, on the far left and in the atomised swamp of politically indeterminate ‘low-information voters’. On the far right, this is hardly a surprise: theories of politics based on the malevolent actions of secret cabals have been its stock in trade since at least the French Revolution, blamed by Catholic reactionaries on the continent on Freemasonry - and, of course, the anti-Semitic variants of this story need hardly be mentioned. Epstein’s connections to prominent Democrat politicians - above all Bill Clinton - fuel this fire.
But Epstein also had connections to Republican politicians, and indeed a close friendship at one time with a certain Donald Trump. Trump exploited Epstein-obsessives on the 2024 campaign trail, but always seemed a little standoffish on the question, when pressed directly; the attempts of his second administration to put a lid on things and declare the case closed backfired spectacularly, with Congress imposing document releases on the executive, which proved embarrassing to him (though not as bad as they might have been).
Pushing for further disclosures, congressman Ro Khanna - roughly a left populist with some affiliation with Bernie Sanders and ‘the squad’ - came up with the term ‘Epstein class’ as an image of the all-powerful super-rich, whose world barely meets that of us mere mortals. This is a wonderfully ambiguous phrase; it might mean no more than that, and therefore play the same kind of role that ‘the 1%’ played in the Occupy Wall Street era. Or it might be repurposed as a description of a conscious cabal of secret rulers.
Special interest
In any case, the Epstein affair has long had a special interest for parts of the US left, particularly in the fandoms of political comedy podcasts like Chapo trap house and TrueAnon (which began as an Epstein-specific show in 2019, shortly before Epstein’s suicide). With the bungled retreat of the right on the issue, the way is clear for the left and, more ambiguously, the centre to press the advantage, and overdetermine the name of Epstein to their own advantage.
The comfort of Democrat moderates like senator Jon Ossoff with ‘Epstein class’ rhetoric is notable, and indicates perhaps that the mainstream Democrat obsession with appearing to be the ‘adults in the room’, compared to the crazy Republicans, is losing sway. The replacement, according to the various wonks, is a focus on bread-and-butter issues, combined with centring Trump’s catastrophically obvious corruption, producing a simple populist message that the Trump regime is stealing directly from your family’s dinner table. It is neither exactly true nor exactly false, but it may have some potency on the door-knocker.
Regrettably, this opportunistic and cynical populism has found a home on the traditional far left as well, particularly in the form of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its oil-slick Revolutionary Communist International. “Wipe out the Epstein class” banners have become prominent in their contingents on demonstrations; they have even penned a short defence of their use of the term in reply to unnamed critics (to which we will return). Of course, the RCP/RCI rebranded as ‘communist’ when it seemed popular on the internet, and so it is not terribly surprising that they have gone back to drink again at the same well.
It will already be clear that we object to this framing of the concept of the ruling class. Many objections can be made to it, but the primary one is that it is not true as a characterisation - at least in its ‘strong’ form as a description of a secret manipulative cabal running the world. Marxists are scientific socialists and, while that is a rich phrase that rewards extensive unpacking, there is a fairly unsophisticated, but nonetheless essential, element to highlight here: we care about whether things are true, or whether they are made up.
The secret cabal theory of society is simply untenable as a meaningful description of how modern capitalist society operates. A clear-eyed observer of this society gets no sense of any overall design. A secret cabal would be an improvement: it would presumably not wish to see its homelands ravaged by endless heatwaves, or its great cities sink under rising sea levels. It would not want to die in a nuclear war. It would act to prevent such eventualities. Étienne Davignon, then the chair of the Bilderberg group (another candidate for ‘secret ruling cabal’ status in conspiracy fandom), quipped to the BBC in 2006 that “if we were a secret government of the world, we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves”. It was a well-observed point.
The Marxist method (although, frankly, the most dunderheaded productions of the bourgeois social sciences equally defeat these fantasies in a fair fight) instead identifies the capitalist system as a product of the search for profit, and the contradictory ways in which this is pursued. Differences of interest among the fractions - national, sectoral and otherwise - of the capitalist class find expression in rival state regimes, rival parties within states, and rival interests in avoiding one’s own extinction. The conflict of the capitalist class with subordinate classes like the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie is no less important. Though powerful, the capitalists are oddly unfree, carried along by the insatiable and impersonal desire for profit and the divergence of interests between different classes, and even different capitals, with respect to how that desire is to be fulfilled.
In this respect, the Epstein clique represents a certain wing of the capitalist class: roughly American high finance and more specifically wealth management - hedge funds and friends - deeply integrated into the state. This is not even the hegemonic wing of finance capital, which would instead be institutional investors like sovereign wealth and pension funds. No doubt many at the top end of such institutional firms spend their spare cash on teenage prostitutes as well, and no doubt they have powerful friends; but nobody would seriously argue that this is how Blackrock works, never mind the sector as a whole.
The ‘weaker’ version of the Epstein class conception deserves mention here, since it is rather more defensible. That there is an enormous gulf in almost every area of practical concern for daily life between the very rich and the poor - indeed, the merely decently well-off members of the professions, for that matter - cannot be denied. A crucial part of this division consists in impunity. The Epstein case illustrates this very sharply: there is no taboo more fiercely enforced in social life, at least in the Anglo-American world, than that against sex with minors, and Epstein extremely publicly got away with it (until, at last, he no longer did).
The revelations in the Epstein files are so damaging, in part because they show that, for those within his clique, this taboo was essentially moot. Grandees from Peter Mandelson to Noam Chomsky lined up to absolve good old Jeff of any wrongdoing, when he was convicted in 2009. A wholly different permission structure seemed to exist for him and his friends, and a bottomless pit of money made a legal tarpit of any attempts to hold him to account.
In this form, the Epstein class draws a moral line: justice has been denied. It is quite correct to draw this moral line. But imposing justice on the rich and powerful is no simple thing. Therefore, as well as normative categories, we need descriptive categories that aid us in doing something about it. The 99%-1% framing of Occupy failed because 1% was too large a number - divide it by 10, at least, to find the real movers and shakers - and also paradoxically that 99% was too large. It implied a class amalgam of the working class, the petty proprietors, and even much of the capitalist class. The ‘people vs the Epstein class’ framing is worse - the 1% gets smaller, at least, but the 99% gets larger.
Gross opportunism
The RCP’s defence of its use of this framing is notably impoverished. In their regular Q&A column, ‘Ask The Communist’, Jack Tye Wilson responds to the question: “Isn’t the term ‘Epstein class’ unscientific? Shouldn’t we be using the term ‘bourgeoisie’ instead?” This question is attributed to “critics online” and to “sectarian groups and individuals”, none of whom get the courtesy of being named or quoted. There is already a strange contradiction - well, we “critics” are mere “sectarians” who are not worth naming, but we are worth responding to? Pick a lane, comrade!
But, anyway, on to the substance: “For Marxists, a concept is scientific to the extent that it enables us to explain the real, objective relations in the world, and thereby raise the consciousness of the working class.” That is good enough. So why is ‘Epstein class’ scientific? “The term ‘Epstein class’ has a rich content and meaning to ordinary, radicalised people”, its rich meaning being presumably Wilson’s earlier statement that this is “a notion that has taken root in the minds of millions, spontaneously and organically, allowing them to connect the dots between exploitation, corruption, and oppression”.
We then get bromides about consciousness being “distorted and contradictory”, and - since no piece of gross opportunism is really complete without it - a citation of Marx’s quip in his Critique of the Gotha Programme that “every step of the real movement is more important than a dozen programmes”.1 (Marx, as we never tire of reminding people, was talking about the Paris Commune as his step of the real movement, not an especially fruity Joe Rogan episode that got a lot of views.)
What we do not get is any reason, even on the comrade’s own definition of ‘scientific’, why the ‘Epstein class’ conception specifically is scientific. The distorted and contradictory stirrings of consciousness among the masses deserve real attention and respect, but they are not properly called scientific. That this conception allows people to “connect the dots” is neither here nor there. After all, some people “connect the dots” by reference to charismatic Christianity’s doctrine of spiritual warfare, or the actions of godlike alien lizards, or indeed by stories of global Jewish conspiracies. What makes something scientific is at least - to return to my crude characterisation above - that it allows us to discriminate true from false hypotheses.
We take comrade Wilson’s account, in fact, to be an admission of defeat on the narrow question he sets himself: no, this is not scientific, but who cares? It is popular. It is an opportunity. Leave me alone with all your pedantry about the difference between reality and fantasy! He finds the reticence of unnamed other organisations to make use of the notion “truly mind-boggling”. If his mind is boggled, however, it is not our fault (or whoever else he shadowboxes here). He has simply failed to notice that Marxism is an ascetic doctrine - a doctrine of conscious self-denial of the base pleasures of wild denunciation, for whose faithful adherents popular excitement has never been a substitute for hard thinking and rigorous self-criticism.
Occupy failed, comrade. So did Podemos, with its campaign against la casta, as did all other left-populist attempts to replace such hard thinking with titillating images of floridly evil enemies. Scientific socialism synthesises these failures, so as to learn from them; internet-poisoned ‘communism’ merely slaps a vulgar hammer-and-sickle logo on their latest incarnation.