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The past few years have witnessed the fallout of one of the biggest scandals of the 21st century: Jeffrey Epstein’s decades of systematic abuse and exploitation of women and children, which ensnared some of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the capitalist class, including President Trump himself.

But with the exception of Epstein himself and Ghislaine Maxwell, no one from the so-called “Epstein Class” has been held accountable, and the political impact has been surprisingly small despite the widespread outrage. Why did this decades-long abuse — aided, abetted, and covered up by the people at the top of society — not led to an enormous reckoning? And how did it happen in the first place?

Epstein’s crimes would not have been possible without the exploitation enabled by capitalism. He and his associates preyed on girls and women who were vulnerable because we live in a highly exploitative system where people must sell their labor to make a living. Members of the capitalist class, like Epstein, can mask their abuse by providing a paycheck or a visa.

In this sense, it wasn’t wealth and power in the abstract that caused these women and girls to be abused, nor was it mere solidarity among the rich. Rather, the abuse was the result of the positions that Epstein and capitalists occupy in society, where they own and control people’s means of survival.

Epstein’s abuse — and the impunity with which his associates could engage in these acts  —was also possible because of the decades-long process of containment and pacification of the liberal feminist movement.

The scandal is never spoken about as a feminist issue, nor have liberal feminists been galvanized to demand accountability. This is by design: The horizon of liberal feminism is women’s greater incorporation into the very system — the capitalist system — that enables this kind of abuse, oppression, and exploitation. Moreover, the liberal feminist movement is entrenched in the institutions of the state and the Democratic Party. These currents will never throw Bill and Hillary Clinton under the bus, for example.

The alternative to liberal feminism is socialist feminism. Instead of taking for granted that we must live in a system where a capitalist class controls our means of survival, socialist feminism says that we need to attack capitalism and patriarchy at the root. In other words, we must eliminate the structural conditions for the kinds of harms that Epstein perpetrated.

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The post #AllThatsLeftPod: The Epstein Files, Capitalism, and Patriarchy appeared first on Left Voice.

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