Value-form
The Western Left academics are nowadays very happy to talk about "varieties of capitalism", but talking about "varieties of socialism" remains almost an absolute "no-no". Most Marxists continue to believe in "only one" (Marxian) socialism: either that, or nothing at all. "Either" a society or movement conforms to the true concept of socialism, "or" it does not; and if it does not, it "cannot be" socialism. However, precisely "because" there are many different Marxist beliefs about socialism, Marxists cannot agree among themselves whether Soviet-type societies were socialist, capitalist, or something else. Some countries meet with the moral expectations which Marxists have, and others do not.Originally Marx and Engels themselves had heckled the advocates of "true socialism", but later Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky promoted Marxist socialism as the one and true "scientific socialism" within the Socialist International. When he was 43 years old, Lenin stated: "The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true". Lenin's Communist International (a deliberate split with the social democrats) adopted Marxist socialism as its official political doctrine.
Law of value
Marxists often assumed that Marx provided a theoretical system of what they call "the totality" (the whole economy, or the whole of society). In reality, Marx only aimed to portray the essence of capital, by means of a study of the capitalist mode of production in Western Europe (using illustrations from English industry). According to historical materialism, production is the basis of society, and Marx analyzed that basis. Marxists have also often assumed wrongly that Marx's abstract theory can be applied "directly" and "immediately" to observable reality. Yet Marx's historical and logical analysis of economic forms is often an "abstraction from" observable reality. It is an analysis which only aims to define the "essence" of economic phenomena (i.e. what their true or overall significance is), based on a critical inspection of the evidence. Thus, Marx often offers only a "simplified" or "idealized" account of economic phenomena. The largest part of Marx's economic writings was never published in his lifetime, and was never prepared for publication by Marx himself. The ideology of "Marxism" was formed already long before all the facts and all the texts became available, which meant that Marx the man, his life and his work were frequently interpreted in a false way.