Filling the Void: Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and Others on Identity

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It is common knowledge that in the past religion and myths were just ways for societies to explain events and occurrences that citizens of ancient societies did not have enough advanced knowledge to understand. It was also used as a way to oppress others, as seen in the explanation of class order and royalty as God placing a person where they were meant to be and that there was nothing one could do about it, because who can go against God himself? Religion played an even bigger part than that though, being a large part of every person’s identity and something for a country and its people to unit over. But as society slowly aged, and governments were reorganized and re-structured, one can see a reduction in religion being a part of someone’s identity. It is hard to imagine being without an identity so it came as no surprise when, as the void left by religion was opened, people began to create an identity that had to do with different ideas and ideologies. More specifically, new political movements, ideas of nationalism, and change of social norms brought on by many writers and theorists such as Karl Marx, John Mill, and many others. The spread of such ideas was also helped by the spread of public education and rising literacy rates in western society.
The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is a short publication that contains Marx’s and Engel’s theories on the nature of society and politics, as well as class struggle, problems with capitalism, and how to slowly change the government from capitalist to socialist and finally communist. The start of the first chapter in the essay, "Bourgeois and Proletarians", states ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ (...

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... by trying to use nationalism to convince them, is also very convincing for nationalism in the way that it speaks about family by calling the Irish the children of female Ireland. Often one will do anything for family, so speaking of a nation as a family can help create an identity around it.
Identity is defined as the collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known. There is personal identity and even national identity and, even though everyone in society’s identities can change very quickly, it can convince one of doing almost anything. Without religion as a source of identity, it became fundamentally easy for ideas and ideology such as communism, social norms, and communism to became a person’s identity instead. After all, society’s citizens are always looking to unite through each of their identities.

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