Opening Pandora's Box

Socialists have long argued that capitalism is, by its very nature, theft. From the Robber Barons of the late 19^th century to the 1% today, the very wealthy have exploited the labor of the ordinary people, the working class, to amass great wealth and, on the flip side of the coin, create poverty for much of the rest of humanity.

The capitalist class defends their system with an ideology that claims that their wealth derives from hard work and innovation and that society as a whole, benefits from what they do. But, as the recently released Pandora Papers reveal (once again), the capitalist class is well aware that the wealth they accumulated is the product of society and should belong to all of us and as a result, they will go to great lengths to hide their ill-gotten gains. As the lyrics from CCRs “Fortunate Son" explain

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves, yeah
But when the taxman comes to the door
The house lookin’ like a rummage sale

The Pandora Papers consist of nearly 12 million documents, detailing the hidden wealth, secret dealings, and corruption of hundreds of world leaders, billionaires, public officials, celebrities, and others. Their activities in using offshore tax havens to hide their tax dodging make the Mafia’s money laundering look amateurish, only they can do it without the cement shoes. Let me qualify that: “without the cement shoes in their home countries”. Let me qualify that further: “without the cement shoes in their home countries, most of the time”.

You probably get my point. The capitalists will defend their wealth and their system of exploitation “by any means necessary”. They have proven this again and again.

One of the telling facts revealed in this sordid tale of real criminality, is that there are very few American billionaires included in the documents. Why? Well, it turns out in the US, the uber-rich tend to pay such low tax rates that they have less incentive to seek offshore havens. Their tax havens are right here at home. They are called Delaware, South Dakota and the US Congress.

All of this is perfectly legal, because they write the laws. Rob a bank with a gun and you’ll be hunted down, put in chains and sent to a maximum-security prison. But, when the bank robs millions of us (the 2008 financial crisis), well that’s a different story. “Lord, don’t they help themselves, yeah”, and at the public trough.

Defend yourself against an alleged rapist by shooting and killing him (the Maddesyn George case), and you end up in jail, particularly if you are a woman of color; murder 14 Iraqi civilians and you get off free (Blackwater security guards). Well at least the Justice Department said it was disappointed in that decision.

Sell a few ounces of pot on the street corner and you land in jail; own a huge pharmaceutical company that pushes OxyContin (the Sacklers) and kills countless numbers of your fellow citizens, and you get filthy rich and never have to worry about being charged, much less convicted, of a crime.

And now for the other bit of news that set me off. The lawyer who more than 20 years ago took on Texaco on behalf of indigenous people in the Amazon who had been poisoned by the “deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing waste into the Amazon” and won a huge settlement in a court in Ecuador, has been sent to jail for 6 months (after being under house arrest for almost 2 years) for refusing to provide Chevron (which took over Texaco) with privileged information about his clients.

We do not have a system of justice in this country. We have a system of laws designed to protect and defend capital, with police and prisons to maintain the “law and order” of the privileged class. As they indicate at the end of a proof in geometry, Q.E.D or Quod Erat Demonstrandum.