The Cold War ended before some of us were even born, so Karl Marx doesn’t carry the same stigma for birthing the ideology that one of our greatest foes adopted, as he used to.

Marx’s writings on man’s relation to technology and some of his economic writings have become increasingly popular around the world, especially due to the current economic climate. In a recent poll conducted in England, Marx was voted the most important philosopher in history. People are still analyzing his works from a fresh perspective.

“Marx’s reputation because of the current economic situation is less of ‘the bad beast’. Marx’s books are selling better in Germany, and people are more curious of his teachings,” said Amy Wendling, assistant professor of philosophy.

Wendling has just published a book that offers a new perspective on Karl Marx and his theories on the political connotations of technology. The book is titled “Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation.”

Wendling has been working on the book for five years, spending time researching Marx’s drawings and notebooks at the Karl Marx archives in Amsterdam.

“Amy Wendling is one of the scholars whose work benefits from having access to previously unavailable texts – in particular, notes. And Marx was a great note-taker,” said philosophy professor and Marxist scholar Patrick Murray.

Wendling said that one of her reasons for writing the book is that Marx’s views on technology have been routinely misinterpreted as too negative.

“Normally, his theory of alienation is machines can render our work dull and negative and repetitive, but if you read his whole work, it’s only capitalism that causes machines being agents of oppression,” Wendling said.

Wendling cites German philosopher Martin Heidegger as the philosopher most people associate with technology.

Wendling said that Marx makes many of the same points as Heidegger’s, only better and more nuanced.

“Marx is thought of more as a government philosopher when he really is good with technology. He understands that technology is not politically neutral but shaped by capitalist forces,” Wendling said.

Wendling said that capitalism pushes technology to become more isolating, and it de-emphasizes community.

She said the goal of capitalist technologies is to isolate people and control their attention like a big screen TV in a room full of people. The Apple iPod is another example Wendling gave that shows capitalism’s influence on technology.

“One of its functions is to isolate us from the social situations around us that we could be enjoying,” Wendling said. “It turns music into a solitary thing. It takes away the social aspects.”

As a counter to capitalist technologies that emphasize isolation, Wendling gave examples such as public transportation as more communist technologies or technologies that bring people together or emphasize the community.

Capitalism also causes society to devalue certain essentials and place too much emphasis on pointless or superficial technologies.

“There are these absurdities to how capitalism devalues resources like water while high-pricing diamonds,” Wendling said. “Or tortillas, which are a necessary part of life in some parts of the world, are valued very low, and nano-machines are valued very high.”

Wendling also pointed out Marx’s relevancy to modern society in his definitions of labor.

“We tend to imagine more and more of our activities as labor,” Wendling said.

“It becomes a black hole of a concept. We also tend not to regard our labor as fulfilling. So any time we’re laboring we tend to be miserable.”

Murray and much of the academic community has had nothing but high praise for Wendling’s book so far.

“To publish a book on Marx with Palgrave Macmillan, one of the leading English-language academic presses, at this early point in her career is a stunning accomplishment,” Murray said.

Sean Sayers, philosophy professor at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, said the book is a well-argued treatment of some fundamental and central issues of Marxist theory, which will be of great interest to readers in a wide range of disciplines.

The 272-page book will be available for $75 and comes out on April 28.