The Identity Myth: Why We Need to Embrace Our Differences to Beat Inequality

We are in crisis. As a society we have never been less connected. The internet and globalisation fuel ignorance and anger, while the disconnect between people's reality and perceived identities has never been greater. Karl Marx outlined the idea of a material 'base' and politico-cultural 'superstructure'.According to this formula, a material reality - wealth, income, occupation - determined your politics, leisure habits, tastes, and how you made sense of the world.Today, the importance of material deprivation, in terms of threats to life, health and prosperity, are as acute as ever.But the identities apparently generated by these realities are increasingly detached from material circumstances.At the same time, different identities are needlessly conflated through a process of reeling off a list of -isms and -phobias, and are lumped together, as though these groups all somehow have something in common with one another.Th is process is not just inappropriate but obscures the specific nat