Talk:Value-form

bias

Statements like "Althusser's suggestions have misled many people" do not indicate a neutral point of view. The article is exhaustive, if a little specialized, and that is fine, but it is arguing for the correctness of "value-form theory" against other interpretations, rather than summarizing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.226.228.62 (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree as author that, although it is true that Althusser misled many people, this is as it stands not a "neutral point of view". Sometimes telling the truth is not neutral. However, this article as a whole does not specifically argue for the correctness of value-form theory. There is no evidence that it does. In fact, a big part of the article is devoted to criticisms made of the value-form idea. It is not clear what my critic means by "value-form theory" - does he mean Marx's value-form theory or does he mean the "value-form school"? It is not clear that my critic has any clue about what he is talking about, so I cannot take his comment very seriously. User:Jurriaan 30 November 2011 1:43 (UTC)

I have adjusted the sentence about Althusser, to make it more neutral. However, I should warn readers that Althusser was a Stalinist nutcase, a weirdo. He had electric shock treatment in his youth; he suffered persistent mental illness; he was hostile to the student and workers' revolt in 1968; in the end, he strangled his own wife to death and then claimed he did not know what he was doing. Althusser was marketed by rich boy Perry Anderson and New Left Books in Britain and the United States, as the latest thing in Marxism, and in the 1970s, Althusser became very influential in the social sciences and humanities worldwide. I suppose the main reason was that Althusserian research was easy, both because he recycled already existing theories with an added leftist flavor, and because you could just read some books, and then philosophize about that as "research". User:Jurriaan 6 December 2011 15:14 (UTC)

Not all scholars agree that, in reality, Althusser was a human-hating nutter and an intellectual fraud. Thus, Alex Callinicos, one of the main ideological leaders of the British neo-Trotskyists, stated that Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno and Louis Althusser were (sic.) "the most outstanding Marxist philosophers of the century" (letter by Alex Callinicos published in the London Review of Books, Vol. 4 No. 7, 15 April 1982). Callinicos's first book, written in the days when he was an Oxford University don, was devoted to Althusser's Marxism. User:Jurriaan 23 May 2012 00:52 (UTC)

Here is one of the famous quotes in Althusser's autobiographical statement:

"In fact my philosophical knowledge of texts was rather limited. I was very familiar with Descartes and Malebranche, knew a little Spinoza, nothing about Aristotle, the Sophists and the Stoics, quite a lot about Plato and Pascal, nothing about Kant, a bit about Hegel, and finally a few passages of Marx which I had studied closely. My way of picking up and then really getting to know philosophy was legendary: I used to enjoy saying it was all done by 'hearsay' (the first confused form of knowledge according to Spinoza). I learnt from Jacques Martin who was cleverer than me by gleaning certain phrases in passing from my friends, and lastly from the seminar papers and essays of my own students. In the end, I naturally made it a point of honour and boasted that 'I learnt by hearsay'. This distinguished me quite markedly from all my university friends who were much better informed than me, and I used to repeat it by way of paradox and provocation, to arouse astonishment, incredulity, and admiration (!) in other people, to my great embarrassment and pride." - Louis Althusser, The future lasts forever: a memoir. New York: The New Press, 1992, pp. 165-166.

In other words, Althusser himself boasted openly that his academic success was based on gossiping and plagiarism, and that in reality he knew very little about Marx at all. This, then, was the "scholar" hailed by the academics as being among "the most outstanding Marxist philosophers of the 20th century". User:Jurriaan 14 Feb 2013 21:55 (UTC)

Here is a relevant quote from Sebastian Timpanaro on Althusserianism:

“During the twentieth century, each time that a particular intellectual current has taken the upper hand in bourgeois culture - be it empirio-criticism, Bergsonism, Croceanism, phenomenology, neo-positivism or structuralism - certain Marxists have attempted to 'interpret' Marx's thought in such a way as to make it as homogeneous as possible with the predominant philosophy. This did not at all mean that there was not a sincere, and often fruitful, desire for discussion and mutual encounter. But it did mean a wish for the mutual encounter to take place on common ground; a wish that Marxism should appear as the philosophy which had already satisfied in advance the requirements of the most avant-garde elements of bourgeois culture, or which was at least able to incorporate them within itself without distorting itself. Above all else, it was feared that Marxism might appear to be a naive, simplistlic, and out-dated philosophy. This situation has continued into the present; indeed, the rapid pace with which cultural fashions succeed one another in the West forces certain Marxists to undergo ever more rapid metamorphoses. Althusser's structuralist-leaning Marxism represents, for the time being, the latest in these modernizing operations. No sooner have you begun to rejoice at the refutation of the 'humanist' and 'historicist' version of Marxism than you realize that it is bourgeois culture itself, in its advanced technocratic phase, that has repudiated humanism and historicism. Now that one cannot win anyone's ear unless one translates the most commonplace things into structuralist language, the task of Marxists appears to have become one of proving that Marxism is the best of all possible structuralisms." - Sebastian Timpanaro, On Materialism. London: Verso, 1975, p. 73-74. User:Jurriaan 4 March 2013 12:38 (UTC)

This is good as far as it goes but there is one contribution Althusser made, whether intentionally or not which I think he deserves a little bit of credit for. While I'm not much of a fan of the man's work, I (and many others who squandered their youth reading Marx, especially those you would consider living Marx specialists) would say that Althusser's notion of 'relative autonomy' and his call for a serious reading of Marx's mature sort of majestic work (Capital) were somewhat well received and appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 00:23, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

And I think that much of what you have written Jurrian above is ad hominem (in logic this sorting of reasoning is categorised as an informal fallacy) since what you are doing is taking his mental state, murder of his wife, and ruminations about his way of working/thinking as the basis for dismissal. It is the work that one does that has to be the basis of the judgement, this is a basic. Admissions that his reading of Marx was rather lacking can be used, but in the end, it is still the work that has to assessed. I never thought that he was worth studying, and I have not spent much time reading him. But he deserves some credit, I think, for hifting Marxism out of the Stalinist molds. You have to remember that in the 1950s and early 60s, Marxism was as vulgar and as Stalinist as you can imagine, and completely stuck within the confines of the Stalinist CPs. His notions of relative autonomy and overdetermination were key to the de-Stalinization that takes place in Marxist studies in the 60s. More than this, I would not venture an opinion because it was long ago that I read these post-war Marxist works. Neo-Marxism after WWI has a lot going for it but the CP clamped down on this as Stalin put his imprint on the theory. His notion of the 'early' humanist Marx and the later 'scientific' Marx was a load of rubbish. But good to have it articulated so as to address it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 06:26, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

yes, this idea that Althusser "shifted Marxism out of the Stalinist mold" was peddled by Daniel Bensaid, Alex Callinicos and Perry Anderson, and accepted by a large part of the New Left. But if you really believe those intellectuals, you are very stupid - you ought to do your own research. The first question you ought to ask yourself is, why an ex-Catholic like Althusser is still so very popular in Stalinist, Maoist and Marxist-Leninist circles. The fact is, that Althusser never abandoned the essence of the Stalinist world view at all, he merely dressed up the same dreary old 1930s shit with a few new fancy names stolen from the latest bourgeois fads and trends (notions of "relative autonomy" and "overdetermination", by the way, existed in Western thought long before Althusser popularized this terminology among the Left; Althusser said almost nothing that was original and new). You might also ask yourself, why would Trotskyists and neo-Trotskyists support a neo-Stalinist theoretician like Althusser, when they themselves professed to be anti-Stalinist? Well, partly it was just their opportunism - the PCF and similar parties still had a substantial workingclass base, and the middleclass Trotskyists were envious or admirous of that. And the Trotskyists thought that they might be able to convert old Marxist-Leninist codgers to "true Marxism", "win them over", as it were (it never really happened, except in a few isolated cases). But the deeper reason is, that Trotskyism, Maoism and Stalinism have much more in common than you might think, at first sight, because they all have their roots in Leninism, which subordinates theoretical rationality to political expediency and political evangelism: for Marxism-Leninism, Marxism is both a science and an ideology at the same time. So the Trotskyists are actually unable to make a comprehensive and objective critique of Stalinism (both in a positive and a negative sense) because, if they did that, they would be attacking parts of their own belief system. I fully agree that I am partly "ad hominem" in my remarks on Althusser, because, unlike the anti-humanists, I am suspicious of the idea that somebody who is persistently and longterm mentally ill can produce anything like a valid theory of society. If the French, the Yanks or the British want to romantically celebrate nutcases, so be it, but I am not joining them. What is also interesting, is how quickly the lefty academics who swore by Althusser's scientific authority dropped him like a brick, and got rid of his books, after he killed his wife in 1980 (which inaugured the "crisis of Marxism"). The problem of Althusserianism can be summarized in one sentence: "it is theorizing without empirical or historical research, based on the Leninist principle that Marxism is omnipotent because it is true, and therefore already has the answer in advance of the question". Of course, if you regard your own ideological beliefs as "scientific" because you conflate ideology and science, like anti-humanist Marxists do, then you are not going to be able to get any objective view of the history of Marxism. Jurriaan (talk) 12:32, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I think this sentence - "However this textual interpretation is rejected by Althusserian Marxists, because of their strict Marxist-Leninist division between the stage of the "unscientific Young Marx" (1818-1845, from birth to age 27) and the stage of the "scientific Mature Marx" (1846-1883, from age 28 to age 65)" - is marred by the unnecessarily contentious and sweepingly generalising insertion of the qualification "Marxist-Leninist". There have been many "marxist-leninists" (such as the late Roman Rosdolsky and the late Geoffrey Pilling to name but two) who would refute any such Althusserian claim of an epistemological break. See the section "Althusser and the early chapters of Capital" in chapter 4 - "The significance of the opening chapters" - of "Marx's ‘Capital’, Philosophy and Political Economy" by Geoffrey Pilling, Routledge & Keagan Paul, 1980 - available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/ch04.htm#4.4 itihasi (talk) 23:17, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

OK I have changed the wording.Cambridge Optic (talk) 11:33, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

NPOV issues

After reading through this absolutely byzantine article, it seems to me that there are numerous and multifarious NPOV issues, ranging from such statements as the Marxist response to Neo-Ricardian critique being "extraordinarily weak" to the flagrant Marxist apologia in sections 7 through 11. --Latinikon (talk) 00:07, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Reply on NPOV issues

A large effort has been made in this article, to describe comprehensibly, fairly and concisely, and in a critical-sympathetic way, Marx’s idea plus half a century of Marxian, socialist and critical discussion since the late 1960s about the concept of the value-form of tradeable things, taking into consideration a great variety of positions and conclusions drawn by participants.

This concept has been a very important one in modern Marxian scholarship, and therefore it merits a substantive article. If I type in “value-form” in Google Books, I get 112 million hits. Okay, many of those entries have nothing to do with Marx. If I type in “Marx's theory of the value-form” in Google Books, I get more than half a million hits though. If I type in “value form analysis frankfurt school” in Google Scholar, I get more than 300,000 articles. There you go, a lot of scholars have written about this.

It is not an easy subject to write an article about, and an attempt has been made to describe in a logical way what it is about, what it involves, what the implications are, for the benefit of readers looking for an online introduction to the subject that is understandable, fair and balanced. There have been about 200,000 visits of the value-form article since the pilot in 2009, with very little criticism of its content. Care has been taken to reference claims as much as possible, which the reader can consult for him or herself. It is difficult to see though, how the article could contain “Marxist apologetics”, in particular because it contains a lot of criticism of Marxist positions, and is often hardly favourable to various Marxisms.

Section 7 is merely a reality check, which describes what happens, when monetized trade breaks down. According to many contemporary “value-form theorists”, value does not exist in the absence of money, but the point is made, that this is not very plausible in the light of the facts, that is all. It is not intended as an apology, merely as an empirical observation. Value is apparently not simply a “social projection” as some Marxists argue, which can be wiped out, simply by pulling the plug out of the projector (by destroying the monetary system and “smashing the state”). Section 8 raises the legitimate question of what is the alternative to value, capital and trade as a method for resource allocation, if there is one. If the value-form is the root of the evil, is there something which can replace it? What are the implications? Socialist societies tried to abolish private enterprise, commerce and exploitation, but if that did not succeed, is there something else which you can do? This is a legitimate question, and many people have discussed this, and have tried to find answers to the problem. The reason is, that they are still stuck with the problem, even if there is no solution for it so far.

Sections 9 and 10 describe documented attempts to apply the concept of the value-form to ecology and the situation of women. Section 11 describes what a so-called “erosion of the value-form” might refer to, if there is such a thing. Section 12 describes different conclusions that are drawn from the malfunctioning of value relations. The fact that the Marxist response to the neo-Ricardian was reportedly “weak”, is best shown by the fact that more and more economists since the 1980s abandoned Marx’s theory, in favour of heterodox economics. The concluding section notes briefly that there is currently also an argument on the table, that all the main theories of value mooted by economists are deficient, because none of them take into account the laws of thermodynamics. Whether you agree or disagree with that, that argument is there.

No doubt the article could be improved, but one hopes that if editors change it, they do this based on thorough knowledge of, and competence with the subject-matter and the literature, rather than simply running roughshod over a carefully prepared text on a whim, or out of a disgruntled feeling. Otherwise the article will not get better, but will get worse.

Many wiki articles have been ruined by editors who were simply not competent to edit them, out of a personal dislike for what was written. The result is a lot of wrecked articles, which continue to exist but which simply don’t make sense anymore, and don’t meet any standard of quality anymore. Which is an important reason why the number of people editing wikipedia has dwindled.

If you do a lot of work for free, and spend many days writing, to inform other people about a subject, while others just jump in and delete your work at a stroke of a pen, or introduce all kinds of faulty text, without even a proper discussion on the talk page, there is obviously no fruitful purpose anymore in editing wikipedia. Even so, if this article is wrecked, instead of improved, a copy of what was written remains on file, and people can still refer to it if they want. Nobody can say that a tremendous effort wasn’t made, to provide a truly informative article. Cambridge Optic (talk) 21:17, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

The arguments need to be condensed for a general readership and they should come from secondary sources that summarize the subject, not from primary texts. (not watching, please {{ping}} as needed) czar 13:17, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

See also Talk:Tendency of the rate of profit to fall#Non-Neutral Point of View czar 21:48, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

There exists no rule anywhere in wikipedia protocol which prohibits long articles, or the use of primary sources. It is just recommended that articles should not be overly long, and that they should not mainly rely on original sources. What is to be counted as an original source and a secondary source is often not very clear though. Articles should not be cut because of their length, but because information is unsourced, inaccurate, irrelevant, or inappropriate. If articles are cut substantially, it should be explained why they are cut, on the talk page. In this article I have gone far beyond vague academic ostentation, to provide, for the first time, a clear and precise overview of the Marxian discourse about the value-form concept. I am not likely to work anymore on this article (or any other) though, because of the harassment I have received from bogus editors and biased administrators. Unfortunately, many wiki administrators often don't adhere to wiki protocols themselves, and do all kinds of arbitrary surgery in articles - based only on their own whims and biases (for example, Bob Rayner and NikkiMaria specialized in cutting out large slabs of text without explanation, in hundreds or thousands of articles). For the rest, I will leave it to others to shrink the article. A copy of what I wrote is retained in the archive, and people can consult it there, if they want. Cambridge Optic (talk) 16:02, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

"A large effort has been made in this article, to describe comprehensibly, fairly and concisely, and in a critical-sympathetic way, Marx’s idea plus half a century of Marxian, socialist and critical discussion"

Perhaps this end-goal would be more appropriately achieved on a site like marxists.org rather than Wikipedia. For the sake of "the benefit of readers looking for an online introduction to the subject," it seems to fail on this account by establishing a stanced narrative in making such "empirical observation" with regards to current trends in Marxian economics. The model of the dispassionate observer is eschewed, and thus swathes of the article fail NPOV. The article needs to be rewritten in such a way that explanations of prevailing discussion surrounding this topic are done from a viewpoint removed from the topic itself in order to match the tone and tenor of other Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is not a site for Marxist "self-critique," but rather one in which the "self-critique" of others may be described (hence an emphasis on secondary sources). I'd also like to add that when you write the article in this way, it loses focus. As someone who has been a longtime reader and observer of articles discussing economic theory, I see this same issue in other edits of yours, especially in the TRPF article. The final section of that article is especially flawed, and should be held up as the poster child for what I am trying to illustrate here. The issue is not length per se, but focus. While I would never hold your knowledge of Marxian economics in question, I strongly doubt your ability to write in such a way that avoids the dialogical and exegetical arguments in which most Marxian and Marx-adjacent scholars find themselves entrapped.Latinikon (talk) 11:07, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, but regrettably I cannot do much with it. I’ll try to clarify a few things in ten points (I am not a young student anymore with plenty time on his hands, work and travel take up 60 hours of my time per week; I wrote this stuff for the benefit of readers around the world, in spare moments I had available).

(1) I have already published a text on Marxists.org, but this value-form article is not suitable material for that site (you can verify that yourself, with the site owner, if you like). I know that very well anyway, as academic editor, bookshop manager, scholar, and translator with 40 years international experience with this type of literature. This article is specifically written for, and aimed at, a general audience (because of the nature of the subject, it will probably not appeal to every Tom, Dick and Harry though - no wiki will appeal to every Tom Dick and Harry). As you can verify, I cite both Marxist and non-Marxist (or anti-Marxist) sources. (2) I have no idea what you mean by a “stanced narrative”. I provide an overview sketch of a discourse within Marxian and socialist circles, through half a century of discussion, stating a series of arguments and counterarguments, pro and con. It is fairly sober, and to the point, concentrating on the essentials of what is involved. The idea is just to get across what issues are involved in the subject. I could write a 400 page book on the topic, but that’s not wanted here. (3) The tone and tenor of the article is fairly neutral and evenhanded actually, though some things probably could be better stated, that’s always the case, and if people have suggestions in that regard they are welcome to state them on this talk page. There are hundreds of thousands of wikipedia articles, and the tone and tenor of the articles varies a great deal, depending on the subjectmatter. Have a detailed look, for example, at the article on the Russian civil war. (4) The article is not about “self-critique” at all, but about the meaning of the concept of the value-form, its implications, and different interpretations of it. I had a lot of positive feedback for my voluntary effort, actually, and in part it inspired new articles. (5) The article does not lose focus, but brings issues in focus, and what position readers take on those issues is up to them. I do not expect people to agree with all of it, but I do provide sources for further research and discussion. It is just a “way in” to the topic. More than that a wiki cannot do. There is still another subsection to do on the price form which deals with the relationship of supply and demand vis-a-vis prices and values, but `i haven't had the opportunity yet to write it. (6) I have written all sorts of texts for all kinds of commercial and non-commercial clients in the past, but this article is specifically pitched to people who read this type of stuff, in an introductory sort of way. It provides plenty sources that readers can follow up. (7) I am not sure what you mean by “dialogical and exegetical arguments in which most Marxian and Marx-adjacent scholars find themselves entrapped.” Certainly, this article does involve exegesis, and it should. After all, it is about the meaning, implications and controversy about a concept. Marxian discourse IS a critical and self-critical discourse, yes. It does involve dialogue, and tries to get to the essence of the matter. If I have not achieved this, then let’s discuss that, and how to get there. As Imre Lakatos emphasized, criticism is a vital ingredient for the growth of knowledge. (8) You are not a wikipedian with a registered account, but a hacker who has gate-crashed into this talk page, to publish your displeasure and disgruntlement with the article to the world. The problem is, that while you make all sorts of gross accusations, insinuations and allegations, you provide not even one piece of evidence, no specifics, and no constructive suggestions to improve the article. This is all contrary to protocols. To improve the article, what we need is constructive, specific feedback that we can act on to improve things. (9) If you also have gripes about the TRPF article, you should report those on the TRPF talk page, and not here. This talk page is intended, according to wiki protocol, only for discussion about the improvement of this article. (10) While you complain vaguely about the tone and tenor of the article, you forget all about the tone and tenor of your own message. It is hardly friendly or appreciative of the effort of the writer, who has provided a lot of insight and information free of charge. Your approach actually violates wikipedia protocols for talk page discussion. The way it comes across is, that you have an anti-Marxist bias, you didn’t like the way the text was written, you want to voice your displeasure with the failure to provide the right flavour that you wanted in your milkshake, and now you would like to purge the article, or expel it to another site. Well everybody wants to rule the world, I suppose, but readers might well ask: who do you think you are? I may not be perfect, but at least I took the trouble to meet and/or discuss with many of the authors mentioned, and read the relevant texts over the years. I am happy to adjust the text, if there is a good reason for doing so, but I cannot act on vague and general accusations without specifics, and without acceptable reasons and evidence.Cambridge Optic (talk) 19:39, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

FYI, Cambridge Optic has been blocked as a sock puppet of user:Jurriaan. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:09, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Page size

This article has 423,016 bytes of markup - it is far too big. What is the best way to split it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:01, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

in a way, this is good, cause it is sort of the ur marxism wiki article - excessively long and incomprehensible I say let it stand to show students that nothing marxists ever say is clear, which tells you a lot about marxists — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:192:4700:1F70:AD27:A0EF:5981:62F4 (talk) 02:36, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Having seen the socking, sourcing and NPOV issues, perhaps it would be best to reduce the article to a stub, and start again? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:10, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing That would be a rationale to propose it for AfD. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:59, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

I make no apology for writing a long wiki text on Marx’s concept of value-form and the controversies about it. There is a demand for a plain language article on this subject, which is ordinarily shrouded in academic esotericism or obscurantism. And there has been a lot of debate and writing about it, in the last half century, pro and con. There are plenty long articles on hot topics in Wikipedia. The Wikipedia protocol about the length of articles is stated quite clearly at Wikipedia:Content removal and at Wikipedia:Article size and there is also an article about that issue at Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read . Note well: the principle is that ‘“Content should not be removed from articles simply to reduce length.” Instead, valid reasons for cuts are: inaccurate, unsourced, irrelevant or false information and inappropriate content (provably original research, propaganda or advertising, derogatory writing etc.). If significant cuts are made, they should be discussed on the talk page first, and the cuts should be executed in the spirit if not the letter of wiki protocols. Simply wiping out large chunks of text without giving a good reason, or with a vague, spurious reason is not acceptable. At the point at which my account was blocked, I was not finished with the referencing and improvement of this article (and some other articles I piloted). But as I explain below, I have withdrawn from Wikipedia work now – my work is simply stolen and I get nothing back for my effort. The administrator User: NinjaRobotPirate blocked my User:Cambridge Optic account totally, on the “suspicion” of Sockpuppetry (use of multiple accounts by the same editor). Normally, one is not guilty, until proven guilty, but in this case I was considered guilty on a whim, and in advance of any proof and any hearing. Basically, User: NinjaRobotPirate wanted to block my part in the discussion we were having about the lengthy Tendency of the rate of profit to fall page I wrote (part of my text was erased), and block me from working on that page, and also block my work on the (lengthy) value-form page. This operation by User: NinjaRobotPirate had nothing to do with wiki protocols, or with an objective assessment of what is going on, or with reasonable discussion, but with the subjective hates and likes of User: NinjaRobotPirate, who exercised his preference. No sockpuppetry occurred, and no sockpuppetry was proved. The real story is as follows. My original account User: Jurriaan was totally blocked on two counts: I objected to another editor removing large chunks of my text without proper explanation and discussion, and without acceptable reasons, and because my account was hacked. The administrators were sympathetic, but said that under the circumstances there was nothing I could do in this case, except set up a new account sometime later. Quite some time later, I discovered accidentally that I could edit again, assumed that this was OK, and I set up a new account called User:Jurriaan2 to finish just a few articles I had piloted. I never hid or misrepresented anything I did at any time. That second account was eventually blocked, for the same reasons. Quite some time after that, I found I could set up the User:Cambridge Optic account for the same purpose. That account is now also blocked, and the administrator User: NinjaRobotPirate has actually tried to erase my identity in Wikipedia altogether, by deleting my personal page and archive at User: Jurriaan which identified exactly all the articles I piloted (about 50), and that I modified (about 75) as well as listing old IP addresses that I had used sometimes (without logging in under my username). Sometime after I protested against NinjaRobotPirate’s archival erasure, a criminal hacker also attacked my computer at home, and stole months of research off my computer that was not yet stored elsewhere. Even if it was true, that I had engaged in sockpuppetry, this does not even necessarily give cause for a block under wiki rules (do read them yourself), and some non-malicious sockpuppetry is in fact tolerated. In my view, User:NinjaRobotPirate was way out of line in his blocking action, and simply abused his power to wipe me out, and steal my work at the same time for wikipedia – a bit like Jews bulldozering and wiping out Palestinian villages in Israel, and then planting forest over the top of them, also erasing the villages from the maps, so that people will think the villages never existed, and that the land had always been Jewish land (see https://www.zochrot.org/en/article/55963). User: NinjaRobotPirate boasts of writing certain articles, but I found no record for that, and one logical explanation for that is simply, that this administrator himself operates multiple accounts! There are a number of complaints available online about User: NinjaRobotPirate’s arbitrary behavior, I am not the only victim. Many times when other editors attacked and vandalized my texts, for no reason or a spurious reason, I lodged an arbitration request. I cannot lodge any request now, because the arbitration request has to be submitted via my user page, while my user page (at this - third - stage, User: Cambridge Optic is completely blocked, so that I cannot submit an arbitration request. I now have suspended my work in Wikipedia indefinitely, because of the terrible experiences I have had, (1) from interference by editors who demonstrably have no real knowledge of the subject-matter but nevertheless want to cut or change large parts of text according to their own whims, without any proper discussion on the talk page or coherent justification in the archive; (2) from wiki administrators who are plainly arbitrary, and who transgress Wikipedia protocols themselves, and (3) from plagiarists and pirate publishers who claim they were the writers of texts that I wrote for wikipedia. In reality, my wiki articles proved so good, that they not only inspired many journalists and academic people, but were also provably plagiarized by academics for their own publications. In addition, a number of my articles as a whole were published by bogus editors who claimed authorship for the purpose of copyright and an ISBN number. I documented clear cases of all that, on the talk page of the relevant articles, and on my personal page (but my personal page was erased by User: NinjaRobotPirate). In some cases of publication frauds, I think the Wikimedia Foundation lodged a legal objection, and stopped sales of the publications. To illustrate the absurdity of User: NinjaRobotPirate)’s behaviour, take a good look at the plagiarism accusation recorded in the talk page and archive of the Surplus product article that I wrote. An academic from Florida used text from that article (that I wrote circa 2011) almost verbatim, in his own 2018 book, without acknowledgement to the wiki article. Yet, when a stupid wiki editor (who did not investigate this properly) claimed that I had plagiarized my 2011 text for the article from the 2018 academic book, User: NinjaRobotPirate ENDORSED this false claim, wiped out my “undo” edit, and blocked my IP address for a month! So now, Wikipedia is officially accusing me of plagiarizing my own 2011 text from a 2018 book by some Florida academic, while in reality the writer of the book plagiarized text from an article I wrote long ago in Wikipedia! This is not only totally ridiculous in my opinion, but also an assault against me as an honest writer. I do not want to be involved anymore in Wikipedia under those conditions. This is my final comment, except if I encounter more serious libel about my contributions to wikipedia or serious damage of my reputation, in which case I will defend myself, in a court of law if necessary. User: Cambridge Optic 10:30, 5 September 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.173.128.20 (talk)

Putting the legal threats and block evasion aside, which are both serious offences for Wikipedia, I will address concerns regarding the split. Articles about criticisms of a particular topic are very common on Wikipedia, see {{Criticism navbox}}. I agree that there should be improvement on both articles, including with how they relate to each other, but as Wikipedia is a work in progress these issues can be resolved continuously. When it comes to long articles, this was clearly an article that was too long and deserved to be split. This is very much a good thing, as there is now more room to expand on the topic of value-form, and the criticism of value-form. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:49, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

• I just came across Criticism of value-form (the split), which is unreadable in its current form. It would be better to clearcut the subsection and cover within the parent article than to try to preserve this essay as written. And it isn't just this one section—the whole base article similarly needs substantial trimming. WP:TNT sounds appropriate and we don't need to go to AfD to mutually agree to that. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 01:55, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree, I think Criticism of value-form should be completely scrapped/partially re-integrated back into this article, with NPOV modifications. This split, along with lots of this article, is written like a personal essay, or a series of blog posts, and really aren't appropriate for Wikipedia. They also seem to give credence to particular criticisms more than others. I've already removed the Alternatives to value section on this article, since its description of various criticisms of communism as a movement is not at all relevant to the value-form, and was again written like an essay by a certain editor with certain political views. Thoughts on this proposal, @Czar:? Acalycine (talk) 03:58, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like we're in alignment. czar 01:12, 24 May 2023 (UTC)