of reading material from one insomniac to another.

Do we call it a diary? Not sure the right word here.

Once you have the reasoning for income inequality clear then you can think about/discuss the additional negative effects of racism, sexism etc.

I agree. This is one reason I dislike the current fad of "intersectionality", which tends to (or requires) treating all forms of exploitation as "equal". I applaud the egalitarian impulse of the demand; but I think it is misplaced. Like you I see class as more fundamental. But I could be wrong. I don't know how to prove that. I do know how I came to believe it, though, and that was from studying the intersections of race and class in the US in 1960s - and in the 1890s. The 1960s radicals - from Frantz Fanon to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale - taught me to see race as a function of class; my study of Populism and the emergence of Jim Crow confirmed the lesson.

(I did not learn these things "in school" - not even in grad school - admittedly some time ago that was. But I damn sure teach them to my students.)

But as I said, I could be wrong. Radical feminists after 1968 argued that gender was more primordial still, the 'original' and mother of all other forms of exploitation. They seem to have some justification for this argument. Anyone please correct me if I am wrong, but my impression is that gendered division of labor and status are commonplace in primitive ("stone age" equivalent) societies we know of; one assumes these same features were evident 10,000 years ago, even prior to the Neolithic Revolution and before the emergence of 'class'...

And yet, the pursuit of women's rights has not yielded a just society; nor has the pursuit of "civil rights". Rather: though women and black Americans have unprecedented access to power in American society (as women do in European society, too - though perhaps not yet Jamaicans, Algerians, Turks) - yet the society remains exploitive and profoundly inhumane. Certainly that must make class the more pressing issue. It certainly SEEMS like the true mother of all exploitation.

Thanks for the elegant reflection.

"One of the answers to Trump, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğan, Salvini, Duterte, Le Pen, Farage and the politics they represent is to rescue democracy from transnational corporations."
These leaders are nationalist, statist thinkers and in that sense anti globalist at least when they are talking to their people. For that reason they run on national populist platforms and they often have massive support in country.

Is good ends up with misguided thinking. The same was true of his famous or rather infamous nonsense about peak oil not being true. Yes there is enough carbon around to fry us. He was correct in that but no that doesn't mean peak oil is false. Conventional oil peaked in 2006 and were are already in thermodynamic collapse with EROEI. Erroneous framing on his part.
From the Monbiot opinion piece above
"In his book The Globalisation Paradox, the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik describes a political trilemma. Democracy, national sovereignty and hyperglobalisation, he argues, are incompatible. You cannot have all three at once. McDonaldisation crowds out domestic politics. Incoherent and dangerous as it often is, the global backlash against mainstream politicians is at heart an attempt to reassert national sovereignty against the forces of undemocratic globalization." This is true.
The nationalist, populist, Brexit, movement is a democratic movement. How did Erdogan put down the coup. People power.
The leaders of this movement are of course false especially Trump who might put Rex Tillerson CEO of Exxon Mobil one of the largest corporate entities on the planet as SOS. The movement itself is essentially a democratic ANTI movement. Anti globalist, anti corporate, and anti government, anti power over. I do agree with Monbiot that democracy is good...but be careful the democracy you wish for. I don't know how this is going to end up but I do think we are at the beginning of and in the infancy of a major paradigm shift. Blame it on the fourth turning or whatever.

Regardless that they were told that they didn't have the permits.
Who didn't see this coming?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=Sqh5IfT5Q-I
Anyone believe that the Obama administration is going to Make Them Stop Drilling?
Obama told BP to stop spraying corexit and the next day there was BP spraying it over the ocean, the land, waterways and people.
Gee maybe Elizabeth Warren will finally go to the DAPL protests and make sure that the protectors aren't hurting the pipeline workers who are only doing their jobs.
Yes she actually said that after she praised the ACOE from 'stopping' or not giving them the permits.

Warren's shameful exploitation of Standing Rock Victory
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/06/elizabeth-warrens-shameful-exploi...
She also posted that on her FB page and got hammered in the comments.
(Anyone know why some YouTube videos aren't supported here?)

Last night I returned from a few days visiting a friend in the beautiful Hokianga. The Hokianga is in Northland New Zealand, and is one of the original homes to the first people of NZ. The population there has suffered for a long time from the abuse of colonisers to their home and culture. There is very little work, and much poverty as a result; and youth suicide is a significant issue being addressed currently by many of its people. New Zealand’s PM resigned two days ago. I only hope his successor from the same party will address this issue, as well as others, in a more humanitarian way.

I do believe that it's class or social and economic/income inequalities among people that are the core reasons for conflicts and wars and uprisings, not race, ethnicities and gender inequalities, they come on top of it, but are not the cause.

Simply said watch how siblings get in conflict. The main reasons are the perceived unequal and unjust distribution of wealth their parents might have had and transfer over to them. It's not their gender that causes conflicts between sisters and brothers in a family, it's that one "has more inheritance and access rights" than the other.

Take a multi-ethnic family, in which the children can turn out as if they belong to different races or ethnicities. One child is browner than the other, other children can "pass as" white, black etc.
Conflicts between those children are not based on their racial appearance. They feel betrayed and conflict arises only, because they might not have been treated equally by their parents when it comes to their inheritance or equal access to education. (boys get the chance to education first, girls only if the money allows the parents to educate all of their children the same way - was even true in my mother's generation among Europeans, all born around the 1900eds.)

Where racial or gender issues starts playing a role among that hypothetical multi-ethnic family set-up, is when they realize that one gender or one racial appearance (usually the whiter ones) in our current post-colonial, corporate imperial times, has easier access to opportunities to make a living.

In that sense I see LaFeminista's arguments proven right. People are "angry" when they perceive that one person has more access and opportunities to build their livelihood than the other. The fact that historically those inequalities were related to their race and gender is an add-on to the conflict, but not the core reason.

You can also observe that for the role of women in indigineous societies. Few in the Western democracies would not agree to say that in polygame marriages the women are exploited or oppressed and have different rights than the man. Yet conflicts among those women in those family structures arise only, if they feel being treated unequally by their husbands or their children being treated differently. I guess women accept unequal and gender related separation of labor between them and men, because the unequality is determined by their biological functions.

I remember discussions among tribes, who were traditionally polygam (without it being driven by their religions, ie sub-saharan non-islamic polygamism), who argue that a woman in a polygamic marriage is better protected from sexual and violent exploitation than being left unmarried at all and having to live with their children (which are always born no matter what) alone. Women have accepted that in the past. It's just during the last six to eight decades that this is now questioned by both men and women and they try to rely on human and civil rights laws introduced into their societies by Western influence. It remains to be seen how that will work out.

but they also understand the "not fair" aspect of another member being treated better. Less concern with those being treated worse. At some small point, social customs may either gloss over that (so maintaining class) or attempt to bend individuals to feel and respond as equal, requiring equal treatment.

We are born selfish, our organism first. That can play out in different ways. Many seen from outside are cringeworthy. If empathy does not get instilled, sociopathy emerges. If empathy does, Charity in its worst form can emerge. Where the wealthier look at the poorer as "projects" the class system is maintained. And the wealthier feel good because they are doing so, perhaps inadvertently. I am not sure.

I have a relative by marriage who is a Narcissist. She is in it all for herself; to complain, lie, calculate how to cheat the system, she is all for that. And that makes her feel good, to believe that she one-upped. And won. A battle most of us would see as a equable transaction IS a battle she won or eventually will. I get tired trying to think that way.

we confuse capitalism with democracy. Our society is not democratic it is capitalist. The goal of capitalism is profit. The end point of that logic leads to slavery - which maximizes profit.

We have an economic system that doesn't value people nor the planet and its resources. As long as that is the system I don't think democracy can exist - even (or perhaps especially) a representative democracy because they can be purchased.

Capitalism evolved from feudalism, but maybe feudalism has just morphed into corporate feudalism - except that feudal lords understood the work of the common people benefited them. Global capitalism has no concern for the worker.

What can we do?

I must have missed reading that article: Thanks for bringing it to my/our attention.