In September, Eric Adams became the first New York City mayor in history to be formally indicted on bribery charges. He is accused of receiving luxury travel from the Turkish government in exchange for political favors, such as fast tracking the construction of a new $291 million Turkish consulate building. The police commissioner and Adams’ chief lawyer have since resigned, and two fire department chiefs were arrested.
Adams is trying to hang on to his political career and has hired an expensive celebrity lawyer. Instead of the usual $3,000 per hour rate, Adams is getting a significant discount—as if this isn’t also a form of bribery! It’s outrageous that, for each hour of legal representation, Adams will pay an amount equivalent to what many New Yorkers spend each month on rent.
Nationwide Democratic sleaze
New York is far from alone when it comes to sleazy scheming. According to the New York Times,
Over the last ten years, 576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges … exceeding the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.
The entire Los Angeles City Council has been roiled by bribery scandals. Earlier this year, former City Councillor Jose Huizar was sentenced to 14 years for taking $1.8 million from a Chinese real-estate billionaire. Fifty more LA city officials have been charged in relation to the case.
Elsewhere, a New Orleans construction boss was indicted in September for bribing the mayor. And Democratic corruption extends to the federal level. This summer, Senator Bob Menendez was convicted of accepting bribes from the Egyptian government—some of it in the form of gold bars!
Massive corruption is not an anomaly caused by one bad actor or policy. “Pay to play” is the golden rule of bourgeois politics. / Image: SWinxy, Wikimedia Commons
Liberal hypocrisy
Many of these disgraceful cases have flown under the media radar. In the lead up to the election, the liberals’ focus was on Donald Trump, Donald Trump, and Donald Trump. While Trump is certainly a criminal, the liberal media have spent nearly a decade calling anyone who refuses to fawn over the Democrats an “agent of Russia”—all while top Democrats have acted as the agents of Turkish, Egyptian, and Chinese capitalists.
Even worse, liberals have lined up in defense of Mayor Adams. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, MSNBC host Al Sharpton, and influential labor leaders have all said that Adams should finish his term—despite polls showing that 69% of New Yorkers think he should resign.
Capitalist “democracy” is a sham
This is precisely what capitalist “democracy” amounts to: one set of rules for the rich and another for the rest of us. No wonder Marx called it a “pigsty.” Massive corruption is not an anomaly caused by one bad actor or policy. “Pay to play” is the golden rule of bourgeois politics. As Engels explained:
In a democratic republic, wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely, first, by means of the direct corruption of officials (America); secondly, by means of an alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange (France and America).
For every court prosecution of illegal bribery, there are hundreds of instances of perfectly legal bribery. In the spring, when thousands of students set up encampments to protest Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians, a dozen billionaires had a Zoom call with Eric Adams urging him to send police to crush them. Could any dozen workers ever hope to hop on a Zoom with the mayor to complain about their boss stealing wages?
This explains why 65% of 18-to-30-year-olds tell pollsters, “Nearly all politicians are corrupt, and make money from their political power.” They’re right! Corruption contributes to the widespread anger and dissatisfaction that propelled Trump to the White House. He tapped into this mood with well-known slogans like “Drain the Swamp!” It speaks volumes that Democratic Party is so corrupt as to allow Donald Trump—a criminally crooked real-estate tycoon—to appear to millions like an anti-corruption savior.
Only the working class can end the plague of corruption. This is why communists fight for a workers’ democracy as outlined by Lenin—with all elected officials paid the same wage as the average skilled worker, the right of immediate recall, and regular rotation of duties to prevent the emergence of corrupt bureaucracies.