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.
Agonism
Agonism is opposed to a strand in the Marxist conception of politics known as "materialism". Marx would have agreed with the agonists that society had always been full of conflict, when he wrote: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". He also thought that the causes of conflict were inescapable features of present—i.e., capitalist—society. But, in his view, history would develop in such a way as to eventually destroy capitalism, and replace it with a harmonious society—which was his conception of communism. Especially during the 1960s and 1970s, many people, academics included, subscribed to a roughly Marxist analysis. Since then, some of those people have come to the view that the "materialist conception of history" does not give sufficient reason for hope about a harmonious society to come. Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau are amongst those who have come to agonism from a background in Marxism and the social movements of the middle part of the last century.