Is communism applicable for modern scoiety?

[redcat22]

I've been reading the communist Manifesto over again, and noticed that a lot of what Marx had to talk about kinda felt like it was made for a pre-modern world, which is was, but many Marxists I know apply a lot of the pre-modern philosophies in a time where technology essentially rules. what is to become of communism? how would it adapt, and who would agree with a new write up for a new more contemporary Manifesto?

[Q]

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Although the lingo might be a little dated and the demands wouldn't apply to today, I don't think the Manifeso is really outdated in its overall scope: Arming the proletariat politically so that it can take over power.

Of course, since the Manifesto there have been quite a few programmes. The question then becomes "what sort of programme?".

[Anderson]

How modern are we anyway?
Majority of the world population is still no more ahead than 18th or 19th century.
The education system in the rest of the developed world is producing single skilled social retards....

[RedWorker]

We may have the Internet and TV, but what is said in the Manifesto is truer than ever. Every day the gap between rich and poor gets larger (today, the 85 richest people have as much wealth as the 3,500,000,000 poorest (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-half-of-the-world)), and capitalist society screws up more people. 80% of the world live on less than $10 a day, the burgeoise profit without labor yet the majority of these who work live in misery, generated wealth is concentrated on a few people or groups instead of benefiting society.

Now, what is needed in 2014? Less dogmatism, having the same goals but not lacking the ability to see new tools and new means to achieve things, exploring new pathways, being closer to people's concerns in the 21th century and how to fulfil them.

Welcome.

[AnaRchic]

First, the insight of Marx is not that of a static analysis, it is a methodological approach to the study of society and its evolution throughout the course of history.

The materialist conception of history arms us with a means of analyzing the current situation, understanding its historical evolution, and formulating its potential trajectories, whilst we simultaneously learn from past revolutionary experiences, culminating ultimately in a thoroughly modern and practical revolutionary program.

The method of Marx and Engels will never be out of date, at least not until classes have ceased to exist, and class struggle with them.

[tuwix]

I've been reading the communist Manifesto over again, and noticed that a lot of what Marx had to talk about kinda felt like it was made for a pre-modern world, which is was, but many Marxists I know apply a lot of the pre-modern philosophies in a time where technology essentially rules. what is to become of communism? how would it adapt, and who would agree with a new write up for a new more contemporary Manifesto?

The most surprising thing is that the Manifesto is still valid in many points. Certainly, some points have become obsolete, but there is no one so famous ideologist of our times who could write it. There are candidates but they don't have such charisma. For example, Noam Chomsky isn't a type who would release any manifesto, besides he would be disregarded by non-anarchists. Slavoj Žižek could write it but it wouldn't be treated seriously and it would only be a kind of provocations that he loves.

But technology make us closer to communism to its higher phase. The problem is an atomization of working class. Now it is more difficult to organize because industry employs less and less people. But the need to transform a bourgeois property into a collective property of workers is still valid. And each next crisis of capitalism can its last one. So communism is very much applicable now.

[MarcusJuniusBrutus]

I suggest reading Gramsci who wrote either in or just after getting out of a fascist, Italian jail. He was a Marxist who wrote about self-perpetuating cultural hegemony. He argued that oppression is able to continue in part by the unwitting support of the oppressed classes. After that, more on to Foucault--a slog of a read, but still worth it. His main point is that individuals internalize the power structure through self-surveillance. We internalize the norms of the oppressor and act to perpetuate those norms. Start with Discipline and Punish (the English title) and move on to History of Sexuality v.1. Then read Judith Butler's essay on gender identity as performance to see exactly how people conform to (in this case gender) identity by constantly recreating that identity through performance.