A fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between economic and social justice.

[struggle4progress]

7. In practice, it is usually difficult to separate economic power from political power:

those who have "economic" power can frequently "buy" themselves political power; and those who have "political" power can typically "engineer" economic power for themselves

The victims of injustice are often those who do not have power: that is, the victims of injustice are usually those who have neither "economic" nor "political" power -- but these forms of power are typically indistinguishable

One common ploy in the grab-bag of tricks for maintaining power is simply to obscure the nature of that power, to prevent opponents from thinking clearly about the strategies needed in power-struggles: "distraction by bright-shiny-things" works because people are thereby kept from the difficult long-term task of effectively analyzing the world-as-it-is and learning from their own mistakes

It is good to work to end the ugliness of racism, sexism, and xenophobia -- but we should remember that racism, sexism, and xenophobia are encouraged because they can be effectively be used to mislead us about the underlying material interests that produce injustice

We ultimately win fights against racism, sexism, and xenophobia for one simple reason: racism, sexism, and xenophobia are based on nonsensical ideas, so the racist, the sexist, and the xenophobe are all lost in unrealistic dream worlds and are unprepared for struggles against more scientific thinkers

But common human greed for the advantages of power will not be extinguished solely by the defeat of racism, sexism, and xenophobia: other idiocies can easily appear to replace our current idiocies. We will make progress only by a continuing struggle based on both moral standards and cold-eyed realism