Batman Fights Criminals, Not Crime

Quick: who are Batman’s enemies?

I’m certain that many of you reading this can rattle off a long number of names from his rogues gallery. I’m sure that this list includes the Joker, Two Face, Clayface, Bane, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn. I’m not the world’s biggest Batfan and so my Batcollection of Batcomics is fair to middling at best, but I can safely tell you who Batman is fighting: criminals.

via ComicVine

Right? Of course Batman is fighting criminals, super and non-super, from Calendar Man (yes) to Darkseid. My goal here is not to state the obvious but rather what is ignored: Batman does not fight crime. He does things like fight a whole cities’ worth of gangs, but he doesn’t fight the root causes of crime. Batman is obviously not a sworn enemy of income inequality; he does not put on a cape and go toe-to-toe with the misallocation of resources, the troubling legacy of international colonialism, or the profit-driven culture which encourages the building of sweatshops or the abuse of labor rights.