Clinton’s emails show how the system is rigged for the rich

There’s a saying that the eyes are a window into the soul. But if you want to catch a glimpse of Hillary Clinton’s soul, you can just look at her private email server.

A lot of press attention has focused on the antics of sexual predator and all-round scumbag Anthony Weiner, which were the most public revelation from the email hacks. But the most damning indictment of the US establishment isn’t the actions of Weiner.

The Congress, and other institutions of power like the Catholic hierarchy, has always attracted scum like him. And for every Anthony Weiner, there are a dozen more just like him who never get caught.

The true scandal is the picture that Clinton’s emails paint of what business as usual looks like under capitalism, on the days when there isn’t a scandal. This is shown in spades in the emails of Washington-based Democratic Party powerbroker John Podesta, the chair of the Clinton election campaign team.

The emails, obtained by WikiLeaks, contain lots of minor gems, like generous, wealthy Democratic Party donors asking for cushy jobs for their children, or paying to set up private meetings with Democrat luminaries at Martha’s Vineyard, an exclusive resort for the super-rich.

Most significant, however, are the bombshells about the nature of representative democracy itself. In Hillary Clinton’s own words:

“You just have to sort of figure out how to – getting back to that word, ‘balance’ – how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that’s not just a comment about today …

“I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavoury, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

Cut out the extraneous words, and this just says, “Say one thing to the public, and another thing in private to the people you really care about”.

Also among the leaked emails were speeches Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs executives, talking about regulation of banks.

“There’s nothing magic about regulations, too much is bad, too little is bad. How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry.”

In other words Clinton’s “private position” solution to the dodgy lenders and speculators who triggered the global financial crisis is to let corrupt bankers decide what rules and regulations apply to banking.

Mainstream liberal ideology claims that representative democracy gives ordinary people a degree of control over what leaders decide, letting the popular will shape the overall direction in which society is headed.

In practice, capitalist parliaments allow representatives far removed from the working class to be wined and dined by the true power in society, the capitalist class.

Bribes in the form of holidays at luxury retreats, generous campaign donations, speaker’s fees (Clinton charges as much for a speech as my house would sell for) and appointments to corporate boards are some of the methods by which big capitalists keep their pet politicians bought and paid for. Giving these same handouts to both sides ensures that whichever politician wins a given election, big capital is the real winner.

The ruling class, and in particular its political wing, is very aware that most of the working class rejects many central tenets of neoliberalism: lower company taxes, so-called free trade deals that increase the power of business, and gutting welfare.

This is why they need politicians who can be trusted to do the “responsible” thing, not the popular thing.

Most telling of all was a throwaway remark Clinton made to executives at Xerox: “We need two parties … Two sensible, moderate, pragmatic parties”.

That’s Clinton’s dream, and Wall Street’s dream as well: a “democracy” in which the population chooses the leader but none of their policies – which are stitched up in back room deals between friends.