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.
Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson
For Ryerson, an understanding of social relations was paramount if one was to garner an understanding of history; his encounter with Innis's materialism led Ryerson to the charge that equated Marxism and economic determinism. He wrote "Marxism holds that it is the people who make history-their labor and their struggles and their dreams; and that these are understandable and have meaning when seen in their real setting…." He added, "Labor, production, the real relationships of living society: this is the point of departure for historical materialism….Thought and feelings, ideas and passion and imagination have their being in a material world, are conditioned by it, work upon it." Ryerson's approach to history is that of a man who sees the struggles and ideas of people as the driving force behind history. He did not believe they operate within a vacuum but within a given social system. Ryerson recognised the interplay of freedom and necessity within the development of history "as it is in the best Marxist historical writing."