In the course of the class struggle, on the historic scale, certain ideas crop up again and again. This is because ideas are products of people who belong to classes with their own world outlook, and while material conditions evolve over time, the fundamental laws of social development stay the same. The petty bourgeoisie and other vacillating sections of the working population that lack class-consciousness continually give rise to the same revisionist ideas because of their objective position between the imperialist bourgeoisie and the revolutionary proletariat. Economism is one such revisionist idea, and it is so prevalent because it is based in the labor aristocracy, itself the product of concessions granted to the working class by imperialism. In essence, it is the theory of subordinating the struggle for the political demands of the proletariat to the struggle for their economic demands. What this leads to in practice in the US is sections of workers cutting a deal with imperialism for a relative increase in wages or benefits, usually achieved by trading away the right to strike, selling out other sections of the workers, and betraying the struggle for a workers state. In short, Economism leads to a minority of proletarians selling out the majority of workers for their own short term gain, undermining working-class unity, betraying the political goals of the class, and blocking the progress of the labor movement.

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