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Editorial: Epstein files - Sexist rot of capitalism
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- 27 February 2026 44 hits
Capitalism is built upon selfishness, inequality, and exploitation. Under the dictatorship of the bosses, workers are treated as objects to be used up and thrown away–with impunity. For years, the parasite Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor faced no consequences for his ties to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Though he was belatedly stripped of his royal titles, he faced no criminal charges for his role in driving Virginia Giuffre, Epstein’s victim and bravest accuser, to suicide. Finally, on February 19, four months after Giuffre’s posthumous memoir told how Mountbatten-Windsor repeatedly raped her when she was 17, he was arrested and briefly detained–not for the sexual abuse of children, but on suspicion of sharing state secrets that Epstein might cash in on.
The Epstein files expose the stark reality of a system where violence against the vulnerable is the norm, where the legal system is a travesty and the courts and cops exist to serve the rulers and crush the working class. Epstein didn’t operate outside the bounds of capitalist society. He was a monstrous product of the profit system, rewarded by it, and for many years protected by it–until he became too dangerous to even bigger fish in the rotten and degraded ruling class.
We now know that hundreds of filthy rich and powerful individuals–people who actually run things for the bosses–cultivated Epstein for access to money, influence, children, or all three. They stood by him and partied with him for decades after victims began reporting his abuse. They looked past the damning events of 2008, when investigators found that Epstein had raped and abused dozens of girls as young as 14 and he went to jail for 13 months–the ultimate sweetheart plea deal, complete with a work-release program (Forbes, 9/19/25). Many of these ruling-class pillars flew on the Epstein’s private jet, infamously dubbed the "Lolita Express," or wangled invitations to his Florida mansion or his New Mexico ranch or his private nightmare island. They were Republicans and Democrats, husbands and grandfathers, politicians and academics and philanthropists–a toxic stew of capitalist power and privilege. The enormous roster of Epstein pals includes Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, one-time Harvard president Larry Summers, ex-Labour peer Peter Mandelson, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former prime ministers of Israel and Norway, Emirati billionaire Ahmed bin Sulayem, arch-Zionist attorney Alan Dershowitz, Bob Kerry, Steve Bannon, Noam Chomsky, and Woody Allen. Predator-in-Chief Donald Trump, a serial abuser in his own right, flew on Epstein's plane at least seven times and rated thousands of mentions in the documents, though we can’t know what’s been redacted or omitted.
And while there’s been a tiny handful of arrests and some forced resignations and lost endorsement deals, not one of these animals has faced real justice. While the bosses may throw a few more of their gang under the bus to keep their broader cover-up intact, they’ll never stop sexist violence against women and children–it’s an organic part of their system. Sexism can be smashed only by overthrowing capitalism with communist revolution. We need a society led by and for the working class, where Virginia Giuffre would have been valued and protected.
Capitalist justice system protects its own
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who ignored Epstein’s crimes as Florida’s attorney general, is now running the same play in Washington: burying evidence, shielding favored names, harassing lawmakers doing any oversight, and turning her back on survivors in open congressional testimony (NPR, 2/12). As Lenin wrote in State and Revolution, the bosses’ state apparatus is a machine for protecting capital and suppressing the working class. The Epstein cover-up isn’t a failure of capitalist democracy. It’s proof that the system is working as it was designed.
The racist character of capitalist injustice could not be clearer. The same court system that let Epstein off easy keeps filling prisons with Black and Brown workers who can't make bail or afford a real defense. The same state that shielded Epstein’s billionaire network is rounding up tens of thousands of migrant workers and throwing them into toxic concentration camps. Meanwhile, Trump, a felon convicted on 34 counts, walks free while his ICE and Border Patrol gestapo commit mayhem and murder. Capitalist society is run not by the laws on the books, but by the brute force of those who hold state power.
Trafficking of women and minors: business as usual
In the United States, a country created by genocide and slavery, racist and sexist terror is foundational. Indigenous women were captured and forced to become wives, while Black people were bought and sold on auction blocks. The reproduction of the slave labor force required the rape of enslaved women and the violent discipline of their bodies. Slavery didn’t disappear after the Civil War. It evolved into new atrocities: mass incarceration and human trafficking. While only a small fraction of traffickers are prosecuted, it’s estimated that tens of thousands of women and children in the U.S.--and possibly hundreds of thousands–are forced into sexual slavery each year (deliverfund.org).
Like the capitalist system that spawned it, it’s a global abomination. In 2023, more than 27 million people were trafficked worldwide for either forced labor or coerced or underage sex (dhs.gov). Today, mass sexual violence devastates women in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These are not isolated crises. They reflect a system that renders certain lives disposable and treats their suffering as collateral to the interests of those in power.
The files on Epstein's transnational trafficking revealed the abuse of as many as 1,200 women and girls, some as young as eleven. He targeted those failed most miserably by capitalism: runaways, girls in foster care, survivors of domestic violence. He cast his net in impoverished communities in the U.S., South America, and the former Soviet republics. When survivors resisted or attempted escape, they were threatened, isolated, and stripped of identification and financial security.
Capitalism requires unemployment to discipline labor, racism to divide workers, and sexism to legitimize unpaid and underpaid work. As Engels observed in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, prostitution recruits disproportionately from those with the least property.
Generating billions in profits, it represents the commodification of the working class in its purest and most disgusting form.
Only communism brings justice
Workers cannot look to the bosses’ legal system or mad-dog cops for protection. What makes us safe, time and again, is working-class solidarity.
We’re protected when neighbors organize to defend their communities, when workers resist ICE raids in Minneapolis, when Epstein survivors risk everything to speak publicly, when women in Sudan form grassroots committees against mass sexual violence in wartime. These examples demonstrate a material truth: Working-class people defend one another when the system will not.
For real justice, we’ll need to abolish money and profit, the roots of inequality. Without the profit motive, sexual trafficking would have little purpose. Without sexist inequality, sexual coercion and gendered violence would be collectively confronted and, over time, eliminated. Under communism, people would be kept safe by their shared commitment to an egalitarian world.
In the early Soviet Union, the communists aimed to address prostitution through social welfare and rehabilitation, one of the first state-level attempts to treat sexual exploitation as a capitalist social problem rather than a private moral failing. In China, one year after their communist revolution, the 1950 Marriage Law banned forced marriage and concubinage. The new socialist government moved aggressively against trafficking and other feudal practices. These efforts were uneven, but they pointed in the right direction–to the communist world we’re fighting for today. Join Progressive Labor Party to help make that future a reality.
The Pakistani ruling class has intensified its offensive against the working class under the familiar slogan of “economic reform.” The renewed push to privatize Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), electricity distribution companies, railways, energy assets, steel, ports, hospitals, schools, and public land is not about efficiency or national development. It is a direct attack on the working class. It is a deliberate transfer of wealth created by workers into the hands of capitalists.
In recent months, workers across Pakistan have repeatedly resisted these attacks through strikes, protests, and collective struggle. PIA workers have mobilized against repeated privatization attempts, recognizing that selloffs mean layoffs, wage cuts, and intensified exploitation. Spontaneous resistance alone is not enough. The ruling class is organized politically and economically to defend its power. Workers must also organize politically. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has consistently emphasized that only revolutionary organizations, under the red flag of PLP, rooted in the working class can defeat capitalism.
PLP is actively working to foster unity among workers across different trade unions, professional organizations, peasants, and students. We emphasize that privatization is not reform—it is class war. The state, acting in the interests of capitalist bosses, is dismantling public institutions built through decades of workers’ labor and sacrifice. What generations of workers collectively created is now being handed over to capitalists for profit. This is theft carried out under legal cover.
PLP is exposing the truth to the working class that Pakistan International Airlines was not built by investors. It was built by pilots, engineers, technicians, ground staff, and millions of workers whose labor funded and sustained it. Its planes, routes, infrastructure, and expertise are the accumulated products of social labor. Yet today, the ruling class claims that this collectively created wealth must be sold off to capitalist buyers.
Workers are fighting back!
Electricity workers have organized nationwide strikes against the privatization of distribution companies, understanding that privatization will destroy job security and raise costs for millions. Pakistan Steel Mills workers have waged determined struggles against closures and layoffs imposed to prepare privatization. Railway workers have resisted outsourcing and restructuring designed to benefit private capital. Healthcare and education workers have protested privatization and commercialization that deny access to the working class.
As PLP stresses in strikes and political work, workers cannot rely on the capitalist state to protect their interests. Workers must rely on their own strength and organization. Appeals to patriotism, or to parliament or reform cannot stop privatization. Only class struggle for a communist world can. Capitalists do not buy public institutions to serve society. They buy them to extract profit. This inevitably leads to layoffs, wage cuts, speed-ups, and profiteering. It leads to union repression and increased insecurity. It leads to higher prices and reduced access for workers and the poor.
This is not mismanagement — it is the normal functioning of capitalism.
Bosses “solve” self-inflicted problem
The bosses justify privatization by pointing to losses, inefficiency, and debt. But these conditions were not created by workers. They were created by the ruling class itself. For decades, political elites and bureaucrats looted public institutions. They imposed corrupt management, burdened institutions with debt, sabotaged operations, and diverted resources. After deliberately weakening these institutions, they now declare them “failures” and demand privatization.
We can see this clearly in the destruction of Pakistan Steel Mills, which threw thousands of workers into unemployment. Pakistan Railways has been weakened while profitable routes are opened to private operators. Electricity distribution companies are being prepared for privatization through layoffs, tax increases, and to get workers from private contractors. Public hospitals and schools are being commercialized, turning basic human rights into commodities. This proves that privatization is not a response to failure — it is the completion of the looting process.
Much more struggle is needed
Economic struggles must be linked to political struggle. Workers must build unity, class consciousness, and an organization capable of confronting the capitalist system itself. Without a revolutionary organization, resistance can be defeated, diverted, or absorbed. With revolutionary organization, workers can transform class struggle into class power.
The future belongs to the working class. The international communist revolution under the red banners of PLP requires our sharp class struggle against every injustice produced by capitalist bosses. Long live international communist revolution. Long live PLP.
Lucy Parsons (1853—1942)
Labor Organizer, Communist
Texas
"So many able writers have shown that the unjust institutions which cause so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government. We cannot help but believe that if every law, every title deed, every court, and every police
officer or soldier were abolished tomorrow with one sweep, we would be better off than now."
Chicago Police Department description of Lucy Parsons: "More dangerous than a thousand rioters..."
*****
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868—1963)
Journalist, Educator, Communist
Massachusetts
“In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no 'two evils' exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”
*****
Paul Robeson (1898 - 1976)
Singer, Athlete, Actor, Communist
New Jersey
“In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being…This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America.”
*****
Hosea Hudson (1898—1988)
Labor Leader, Communist
Florida
"The Communist Party taught me that the masses of people must be educated politically through struggle -- even the struggle to write a postcard, a letter, sacrificing to buy reading material and struggling to read it. Struggles to achieve people's day-to-day needs are the basis of political education"
*****
A. Phillip Randolph (1889—1979)
Labor Organizer
pro-communist
"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship."
*****
Harry Haywood (1898—1985)
Political Organizer, Communist
Nebraska
"Throughout this whole struggle, we Black students at the school had been ardent supporters of the position of Stalin and the Central Committee. Most certainly we were Stalinists – whose policies we saw as the continuation of Lenin’s. Those today who use the term “Stalinist” as an epithet evade the real question: that is, were Stalin and the Central Committee correct? I believe history has proven that they were correct.”
*****
Langston Hughes (1902—1967)
Poet, Writer, Communist
Illinois
“Put one more s in the U.S.A. / To make it Soviet. / One more in the U.S.A. / Oh, we'll live to see it yet. / When the land belongs to the farmers / And the factories to the working men — The U.S.A. when we take control / Will be the U.S.S.A. then.
Now across the water in Russia / They have a big U.S.S.R. / The fatherland of the Soviets — But that is mighty far / From New York, or Texas, or California, too.
So listen, fellow workers, / This is what we have to do. / Put one more S in the U.S.A.” - One More "S" in the U.S.A
*****
Angelo Herndon (1913—1997)
Labor Organizer, Communist
Ohio
"I wish I could remember the exact date when I first attended a meeting of the Unemployment Council, and met up with a couple of members of the Communist Party. That date means a lot more to me than my birthday, or any other day in my life." - You Cannot Kill The Working Class
*****
Claudia Jones (1915—1964)
Organizer, Communist
Trinidad, Harlem
“It was out of my Jim Crow experiences as a young negro woman, experiences likewise born of working-class poverty that led me to join the Young Communist League and to choose the philosophy of my life, the science of Marxism-Leninism – that philosophy not only rejects racist ideas, but is the antithesis of them.”
*****
Ousmane Sembène (1923—2007)
Director, Producer, Writer, Communist
Senegal
“…To act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are asking for the right to live, to act so that all of this will end, both here and elsewhere; that is what should be in your thoughts. That is what you must explain to others, so that you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also so that no one shall be forced to bow down before you. It was to tell you this that I asked you to come, because hatred must not dwell with you.” ― God's Bits of Wood
*****
Frantz Fanon (1925—1961)
Psychiatrist, Philosopher, Revolutionary
Martinique
“And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization is simply a question of relative strength.” ― The Wretched of the Earth
*****
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (1930—1965)
Playwright, Director, Communist
Illinois
“…[We] must concern ourselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps--and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.... The acceptance of our condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children…”
*****
Over 6,000 educators joined forces and shut down schools in San Francisco. Lasting four days, the strike was settled with some reform victories and lessons about how class consciousness is alive among workers. Teachers, paraeducators, security guards, therapists, social workers, librarians, other school workers and the janitors took part. The strike showed the potential for workers to organize and fight for our class. Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were active in the strike, bringing communist politics to the picket lines.
The Party has been active in the schools fights since the 1970s. In fact, a few of our members were involved in the last teachers’ strike in 1979.
We have party members in the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) union. We are in the union’s delegate assembly, executive board, bargaining team and among retirees. We are also members and leaders in the fights against anti-Palestine genocide and against Zionism in the schools and against ICE terror.
UESF focused on five demands: two for the “common good” (demands which affect our communities) about sanctuary schools and housing, and demands around special education, fully-funded health care and wages.
Workers are united in demanding better conditions
Over 97 percent of the members of UESF voted to go on strike, and because the strike was so strong, the District had to shut the schools down on Day One, and they stayed shut for the duration.
Related to this, 30-40 rank-and-file members of the Oakland Education Association (OEA) had a wildcat walkout from their training in solidarity with UESF. Members of OEA voted to strike and may go out very soon.
On day one of the strike at a big rally of around 5,000-10,000 people, several members of PLP passed out 800 leaflets, and over the course of the strike, we passed out all of our CHALLENGEs and made contacts.
Strikers and their supporters picketed for two hours in the morning at schools and then, every afternoon, had city-wide actions for two to three hours. One day we even had an action at noon and a massive one at 5:00 p.m. where bargaining took place.
The working class was united in supporting the strike
Before and during the strike, there was tremendous solidarity from students, families, community members, and retirees at a town hall forum and at all other actions. We had a hundred plus people doing nonstop picketing and chanting. Many chants reflected our demands for housing and sanctuary schools.
At the big community rallies, over 10,000-20,000 people participated, made a pro-strike human art piece on the beach, marched in a working-class community and in front of the District offices and City Hall. We then marched around the block where negotiations were taking place–IN THE RAIN!!!
Due to our militancy and energy, the strike quickly won some demands, but showed the limits of reform demands. For the first time ever, in our settlement, we have token statements for shelter for our unhoused families and for making our kids safe from ICE raids at the schools.
Reform struggles can lead to opportunities to raise revolutionary politics
We got significant raises for the classified staff (paras), in fact more of a percentage than the certificated staff. This was a conscientious demand since most of the paras are women of color. A stand against racism and sexism!
We did not get fully funded dependent care right away, but a partial discount the first year and the next year, 100 percent.
For the first time ever, paras will meet with the special education teachers that they work with away from the classroom to talk about how to help their students with special needs.
We are a way from revolution, but as Lenin wrote, strikes are schools of war. They can help workers learn how to organize for revolution. This was a momentous strike, one which showed the potential for the working class to fight and win against the ruling class and its sell-out politicians. It also was a great attempt to put the Party forward in a short amount of time. We realize that workers need to run the schools, not just work in them. Under capitalism, the schools are owned and run by the ruling class, preparing our students for jobs doing menial labor and as cannon fodder for war. Only after we destroy this system will we have schools that work for us!
In Mexico, following the February 22nd assassination of the drug trafficker Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed 'El Mencho,' a wave of violence erupted. Chaotic images of the destruction have circulated across news sites and social media, with residents and travelers being instructed to shelter in place. The most reported violence is in Jalisco. But there are roadblocks, fires, bombs in public places, and violence throughout the country.
El Mencho was born in the state of Michoacán, where we have supporters of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). This group was key in organizing the demonstration in the center of Morelia, the capital of the state of Michoacán, to protest the disappearance of a teacher named Abril (see CHALLENGE, October 4, 2025). Shortly afterward, the mayor of Uruapan, Carlos Manzo, was murdered during a public holiday. Many participants in the demonstration for Abril went to Mexico City to protest the assassination of the reformer Manzo, which seemed to represent a new level of impunity and was linked to the demonstration against Abril's disappearance (see CHALLENGE, December 10, 2025).
Now we see that the government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum charged three local government officials and members of the same MORENA party are being accused of being the original perpetrators of the murder (El País, 2/17). The same article suggests that the Mexican state maintains there is a connection between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Manzo's murder. This is the same cartel attributed to being led by El Mencho.
The provocative title of the book, "Cartels Don't Exist," promotes a thesis well-known to the working class worldwide: that criminal organizations are symbols. These organizations are the outward form, the appearance, of capitalism. There is a relationship between businesspeople and politicians who take advantage of these organizations to implement the violence that maintains the social system and blame it on something external to themselves. These critics of the cartel concept are liberals and will not name the essence, which is capitalism.
The capitalist media meanwhile are experts in sensationalizing the violence in a country like Mexico, painting a caricature of workers across the greater region as having some kind of general connection to crime and drug trafficking. This racist characterization helps the capitalist state rationalize and launch the brutal attacks we are seeing in real time as ICE and Border Patrol shoot, kidnap, and deport our class sisters and brothers. The bosses and their media rarely if ever discuss the role of imperialism in destabilizing entire countries’ economies and displacing millions of workers, such as the effects of NAFTA signed into law by liberal racist President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
The reactionary and sexist forces were local, and the liberal government of Sheinbaum and Morena had nothing for the working class except to send money and soldiers to serve the bosses. The question of class is fundamental and scientific. We must analyze the balance of class forces, as Mao Zedong and communists in China did nearly a century ago, and organize the workers to combat racism and sexism, organizing as a class in struggle—not to demand restitution or appeal to the bosses' class.
The challenge is great because death and life are the two sides of the scale. But this is the condition of the working class until the revolution. The counterattack of struggle is the only pressure our class has on the side of life, and all the pressure of weapons and money is on the side of death. We must get the soldiers and workers alike to take up arms under the leadership of the mass international PLP and confront the bosses to escape this ruthless capitalist hell and build a new communist world.
