this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Hello, different person here. It's understandable that you're confused by this tbh, but there are real proposals.
Broadly, there are two basic suggestions:
It's not one or the other and they're often combined.
It isn't fair for a king to control an army and do what he likes with it, that's dangerous. The army has to be controlled by the people of the nation. But, if you and your friends want to privately own guns, that's fine. So long as you aren't organising into a militia, it does little harm.
Critics say, likewise: if your machine is small, who cares. But if it's sufficiently powerful, if it could concentrate wealth and power in your hands, create mass unemployment (maybe even allow you to wield military power): that's harm. A machine like that should be controlled by the people.
Hey, comrade, good comment! I want to offer that in my experience, Principles of Communism is clearer and more concise than the Manifesto, for someone entirely unaware. I also have an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list I keep for easy sharing.
I don't really get it, are you calling me a commie in a deragatory way and downvoting me after you tried to spread Communist theory? I'm confused.
I'm some kinda new-wave radical centrist, can't call myself one after reading your big book. I believe in a lot of the criticisms and measures, but I think LTV & Vanguardism are the literal dumbest shit ever. But good luck with them, and thanks for taking an interest.
What's wrong with Marx's Law of Value, and what's wrong with the concept of a Vanguard? What "big book" are you referring to, Capital, or the Manifesto of the Communist Party?
Big Book → Capital, I've only read vol 1 though (2 & 3 are like a jillion pages 😭)
I started writing my complaints, but it's taking longer than I thought. I'll drop an update if I finish writing it. My issues are mainly about the assumptions Marx makes about the topology of production networks (particularly regarding cycles), and the classification system used to produce nodes (is a node one particular spindle, or all spindles generally: this has implications). I haven't read any newer theory so IDK this has probably been adressed.
There's also the transformation problem. I don't think that's as big of a deal as it's made out, since you wouldn't just be slotting these Labor-Theoretic Values in place of Market Values, but people do often suggest doing this and it's really weird to me.
To be fair, I think my understanding of the theory has some errors in regards to the interaction of Work Intensity, Labor, and Productiveness, so I'll have to do some more thinking. Might change my complaints.
Regarding Vanguardism, I don't have a particularly sophisticated critique as I haven't read the lit. The Vanguard's position would change as a result of joining the Vanguard (now holding state-like power), this changes their relationship to the revolutionary masses and their stated mission, and would inevitably change their actions in much the same way that holding Capital would (i.e, probably they'd go mad with power). But again I don't know if that's been addressed.
If you can be more specific, I can take a crack at explaining, but I can't really go off of what you've provided other than the transformation "problem," which I can address in short and link what I believe to be a more in-depth explanation of common criticisms of Marx's Law of Value.
Essentially, Marx's hypothesis that there existed a formula that he was never able to find that could solve for the difference between Capital Intensity and the notion of profit equalization across industries ended up being wrong, in that such a formula did not exist. However, we can see with empirical evidence that Marx's Law of Value ends up being correct, in that profitability is closely tied to Capital Intensity, and that equalization of profit across industries really just does not come into play outside of noise.
This wasn't because Marx was stupid or anything, but because math itself had not advanced enough to show that such a transformation did not exist, but this does not disprove Marx's Law of Value, rather, it affirms its more important foundations while dismissing a hypothesis of Marx's that he never fully developed, nor could he have.
Here's a link to the article.
As for the Vanguard, you should read about the Mass Line and Democratic Centralism, both address your issues.