Talk:Law of value

Comment by the author

I wrote this article because there was nothing on it in the wikipedia, and not for the benefit of either Marxist doctrinaires or Friedmanite fanatics, nor for the benefit of an intellectual elite, but for the interested general reader who wants to find out more about the abstract concept of the law of value and what it signifies. A law of value was implied by Ricardo, as Marx himself suggests, but only Marx & Engels referred explicitly to this term by name as a specific concept, and the economics literature correctly attributes the idea to them. I have used a few quotes from Greenspan, Smith, Soros etc. to elucidate what is involved in the concept and show its possible relevance to modern discussions about market forces. This is perfectly acceptable procedure, and done in many wikipedia articles to clarify the intention of an author, and distinguish it from others. I would prefer it if this article was not changed by every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to get in his two-bits worth about the law of value or about Marxian economics, but only by qualified scholars, i.e. people who have really studied this concept thoroughly from the relevant literature. User:Jurriaan 27 February 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.170.247.40 (talk • contribs)

Additional comment

The labour theory of value is not the same thing as the law of value, and any qualified economist knows that. The labour theory of value is not unique to Marx & Engels (e.g. Ricardo subscribed to it), but the concept of the law of value is unique to Marx & Engels. The accusation of bias is not valid since I carefully discuss the pro's and con's of the concept, and different interpretations. At most one could insert "Marx argues/says..." or "Marxists say..." etc. to make it clearer that a partisan view is involved. But most of it is perfectly clear from the context. The references to Austrian economics were inserted by somebody else, not me. I have just tried to indicate how Marx would have responded to them. User:Jurriaan 27 February 2007

This page is in conflict with communist principles

especially at the 'why it doesnt work' section. taxation and subsidies to producers by government- the government controls the labour and they dont need taxation countertrade (forms of barter)- its not required

Author's reply

Whether or not the page conflicts with "communist principles" is not at issue here. The question in this wikipedia reference article is only whether or not it fairly represents the concept, what distinguishes it from other related interpretations, and the criticisms made of it. It is evident that when Marx refers to the law of value that he means a principle of exchange which will hold true "other things being equal". In other words, it is a generalisation about economic exchange he is making. The "counteracting influences" I mention refers to important cases in which relative exchange-values of traded products cannot be proportional to the labour-time expended on producing those products, i.e those counteracting influences distort the proportional relationship between exchange-values traded, and labour-time. There exists an article on countertrade on wikipedia and from this you may learn that countertrade is, according to researchers who have studied it, much more pervasive in the world economy than often supposed. Admittedly, this article is a difficult one to write, because neither Karl Marx nor David Ricardo explicitly formalised their definition of the law of value. Marx evidently took the idea itself as obvious, but sought to ascertain how it applied in a capitalist economy. Ricardo never referred to "the law of value" (only vaguely to "the law of values"), this is Marx's language, but Ricardo did support the thesis that the value of commodities is generally determined by labour-time, except for special cases. Marx's initial criticism of Ricardo is however that Ricardo develops his economic categories in the wrong order, and thus really assumes what has to be proved. Nevertheless Marx's treatment is clearly a further development and critique of Ricardo's theory. Because of the lack of explicit definitions, I have cited a couple of quotes by Marx & Engels in which they discuss what they call "the law of value" in more detail. The article as it stands contains plenty references, but I will endeavour to footnote the article better in future. I do not have all my sources easily available, as I researched the topic in the 1980s and wrote largely from memory. An additional problem is that among Marxian scholars the "law of value" remains a somewhat controversial topic, about which there is no perfect unanimity. All I have tried to do in the article is to convey the basic sense of what it means, how it contrasts with conventional equilibrium economics, and what criticisms are made of it. User:Jurriaan 18:06 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Author comment

I agree that said sentences could be construed as an attack on Austrian economics which is insufficiently neutral. However, this problem could be solved perhaps by simply rephrasing the statement in the form of a question that states what the problem is about: "However, this raises the question of what is the explanatory power of Austrian economics, if all we can say about a realised price that it is a subjective preference, given that there are billions of subjective preferences which are all different. How can we explain in that case why the Austrian economist is not "subjective" at all about his own bank account, since he wants his money to be there, regardless of any subjective preference by anybody else?". A relevant Jewish joke is the following one: "Why does a Jew respond to a question by asking another question? Reply: Why shouldn't a Jew ask a question in response to another question?". The hidden assumption is that somebody has the right, power or means to ask the questions which someone else must answer. But insofar as wikipedia aims to provide useful information about what a concept means, I think it is legitimate to alert readers to what the questions raised by the given concept are. User: Jurriaan 22:19 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I previously adjusted the text somewhat to accommodate the Austrians. I am in the process of identifying every citation of the concept in Marx & Engels. I have taken the POV tag off User: Jurriaan 12:28 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Size split?

Split - Article is over 100 kB, and should be split, starting with "Criticism". Thoughts? Suggestions?--Jax 0677 (talk) 19:12, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

As the author of the article, I strongly object to the intentions of wiki editors who have no scholarly knowledge or competence about the topic to butcher the article on the ground of their schematic whim that more than 100 kb is too much. Have a look e.g. at the article on the Glass-Steagall Act which is 292 kb long. Nobody has cut up the article into bits. Why? Because even if the wiki editors don't have any legal knowledge, they can nevertheless understand that the Act and subsequent modifications and controversies belong together in one reference article. If editors who have no competence or knowledge start to carve up articles on which I have spent a lot of hours, not only is this very annoying, but the quality of the text also goes downhill. I accept major alterations only from editors who have thorough experience with the subjectmatter, not just any Tom Dick or Harry who just feels like cutting up other people's articles according to their own aesthetic preferences and whims. User:Jurriaan 27 December 2012 01:24 (UTC)

Reply - WP:OWN--Jax 0677 (talk) 08:16, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Your cryptic reply is not only cryptic, but also misplaced. It does not respond to the case presented. I am fully aware that I do not "own" any wikipedia article I write. But that is not the issue here. The issue is whether an editor is competent and knowledgeable to edit an article, or whether the edits performed just reflect the arbitrary whims and fancies of somebody who doesn't really know what they are talking about, or what they are doing. I am likewise fully aware that wikipedia is an encyclopedia which anyone can edit, but that does not mean that anybody SHOULD edit anything. They should edit that which is within their competency to edit. If the article is vandalized, I am just going to reset it. User:Jurriaan 27 December 2012 2:41 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.64.48.162 (talk)

Original research and primary sources concerns

This article has consistently received a high score from readers, and it consistently attracts 3,500-4,000 readers per month, despite its length. The average number of readers is in fact going up somewhat. Why? Because, across eight years, I have done my best to provide, for the first time, a very clear article on what the law of value is really about, what its significance is, and what the controversies about the concept have been, in the history of the Marxist movement. After all, the concept has been of enormous importance for Marxian economic theory and policy, in Western Europe, the Eastern Bloc, China and Cuba. I suppose there must be something "original" about this effort of synthesis, since the Marxist academics have never provided anything like it themselves. Nevertheless, all the arguments, facts and claims made in the article have already been made before in the scholarly literature. I've tried to footnote things as much as possible, so that readers can consult the sources for themselves. Reference to primary sources is not prohibited in wikipedia, and in the area of Marxology it is rather essential, since without this referencing, the Marxists quickly start to whinge that the statements made are not "orthodox" or "politically correct". Moreover, it is essential to distinguish between what Marx himself said, and what the Marxists have made of what Marx said, subsequently. I am happy if people want to improve the article, if indeed it is an improvement. But I am not keen for people who don't even know the literature to butcher the article. It takes a bright person to understand just how good this article is, and just one wiki editor to turn it into jabber-blabber waffle, just like what happened with the commodity fetishism article. I can only hope my work across eight years has not been in vain. User:Jurriaan 25 Feb 2013 15:00 (UTC)

This page is a complete mess.

I don't even know where to start. It looks like it's going to need a major rewrite, as it consistently breaks Wikipedia policy, throughout the entire article. In particular, it violates the Manual of Style (it reads like a rant on someone's personal home page), it's full of original research, and it has very little in the way of legitimate sources. For example:

The basic idea of the law of value was expressed very clearly by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations[27] when he wrote:

The citation provided is merely a link to The Wealth of Nations.

I'm going to give this article a very quick run-through and try to fix some of the absolute worst excesses. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:01, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, I ran through it and tried to tag it as best I could, with quick fixes where appropriate. Many of the edits that I did were to bring it into better compliance with the Manual of Style, replacing the dashes (-) with emdashes (–); fixing minor grammatical and syntactic errors (comma splices and missing commas); minor copy editing ("it is true that he said" → "he said"); and removing excessive italicization. I think that I was actually fairly forgiving when tagging original research, though some sections were chock full of it. In those sections, I usually used a template, with some of the worst examples highlighted. The citations for this article are a complete and utter mess. I'm going to try to do another run-through, fixing up the citations a bit. Furthermore, I hope that I can separate the notes from the references. I really want to fix these examples:

• Continually citing the same few sources repeatedly, without using ref names
• Synthesis – or, at least, tag it as such
• Long, unwieldy blocks of references following weasel words (I was relatively forgiving of this in my first run-through, because I wanted to focus on style, rather than citations)
• Vague allusions to references, such as "I read it somewhere in a book" or "An article I read in The Economist". I can't believe anyone actually thought these qualify as citations!

I'll try to tag some of the worst examples of over-reliance on primary sources, because it seems to lead to WP:OR and WP:Syn quite often, as we see here. However, it could take a long while before the references are fixed, given the number of them and the size of the article. It's not something that I really relish starting on. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

NinjaRobotPirate insults

The page is not a "complete mess", and indeed I have been complimented for writing it, by scholars - it is merely that it does not conform fully to wikipedia standards. Since however you are only insulting me for my effort, I will just leave the editing for now, and watch you turn the page into a mess. If people want to refer to the original article, they can consult the version at 31 March 2013 in the archives. User:Jurriaan 6 April 2013 13:09 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.64.48.162 (talk)

Nobody has insulted you, Jurriaan. The problem seems to be that you don't understand how articles on Wikipedia are supposed to be written. You're conducting original research, and that's not what Wikipedia is about. Your research may be brilliant and totally correct, but it's still not allowed on Wikipedia. We only report what others have said. When you say things like, "Marx said this, and he meant this." That needs a citation. You can't just link to what Marx said and interpret it yourself. That's against the rules of Wikipedia. If you want to interpret what Marx meant, then you must cite a respected academic who has interpreted the statement. You can't do it yourself. Otherwise, I could come in here and say, "Marx said this, and meant UFOs were abducting capitalists." You see why this is problematic? For an essay on your personal home page, this is probably quite well-written. For an article on Wikipedia, it's a complete mess, and I think it will probably have to be rewritten. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 13:38, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Nobody has insulted me? Suppose that you worked across several years at an article which a lot of people want to read, and then your effort is called "a complete mess", how would you like that? What you challenge me to do, amongst other things, is to provide an additional 70+ footnotes to reference various claims. I have no problem about doing that in principle, but that way, I would get more complaints that the article is simply too long. At the moment it is 263KB and 40,000 words. I do not know what the maximum length for a wikipedia article is. The only thing I can think of, is to condense the article down to a much shorter length, so that many referencing problems would not arise. User:Jurriaan 6 April 2013 20:50(UTC)

Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and nobody owns the articles (even if you're the primary author, over a span of years). We've all had the experience of having a cherished sentence, paragraph, or article edited to a state we find subjectively worse. I've written a few things that I think were pretty insightful, only to have someone else summarily delete it, for lack of a source. Or they change the grammar around, so that it sounds like a child wrote it. It happens. If you don't want your stuff edited, insulted, or deleted, the best thing to do is to just put it on your own personal home page, so that nobody else can touch it. Unfortunately, Wikipedia does have some rules, and some people take them very seriously. You may not believe me, but I'm actually fairly lax compared to many other hard-liners. I might be a bit abrasive sometimes (and I apologize for that), but I think you'll agree that the edits I made to the page might make it look significantly uglier and less authoritative, but they're really not all that bad. I barely removed anything, and most of the edits that I made were:

• Requesting citations. Personally, I think it's important to let readers know that a statement, while potentially correct, has no citations to back it up.
• Tagging original research. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research, even when it's correct. That means, you're not allowed to interpret what Marx means, even if 9 out 10 scholars privately agree with you. You must find a source where one of them says it, and then you can quote them. It's just the way that Wikipedia works. Instead of deleting what you've written, I've merely tagged it.
• Tagging improper use of primary sources. Secondary sources are preferred. Using primary sources leads to original research, unless you're directly quoting from the primary source. You're not allowed to interpret what Marx wrote in his books, because that would be original research.
• Tagging synthesis. I think there were only one or two cases of this. Synthesis is when you say something like "There was no consensus among the economists", then list three economists who all disagree with each other. Instead, what you need to do is find a source which states that none of the economists agreed with each other.
• Messing around with the citations. I'm hoping that most of these changes won't be contentious. For example, I folded most of the repeated citations into named references. I moved a lot of the direct Marx quotes here, as well, since they can't technically be used as a source. Also, I tried to move all the helpful notes here, so that they don't clutter the References section. Hopefully, I didn't mess up and include something that shouldn't belong there, but it's entirely possible. If you want to move them back out, it should be relatively straightforward to do so. If it looks tricky, then just remove the "group=notes" part, and it should go right back to be a standard reference, instead of a note.

This article is soooo long, I had to break up my edits, making the history look pretty ugly and repetitive. I'm sorry about that, but it wasn't really easy for me to edit the main article. I'm currently using an older laptop, with somewhat limited memory, so editing the main article causes my system to crawl. I didn't even touch the Criticism/Response sections, because it's just too much work, and I think those sections really need to be split. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:09, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I've tried my best to create an accessible article which deals with all aspects of this concept and its history. That article is dated 31 March 2013, and it is there as a reference. But it does not conform to wiki standards. I guess therefore I will have to let the article be wrecked, so that it conforms better to wiki standards. All I can say is, that if you split the references into separate "notes" and "references", it is just going to be more confusing to the readers, not enlightening. It doesn't really add anything that makes the article better. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but the trouble is, that you get people who think they can edit anybody else's article. They can't, and they just leave a big stinking mess. But I have grown weary of correcting all that again. User:Jurriaan 7 April 2013 20:45 (UTC)

WP:OWN. It's not your article. I don't know how many times people have to tell this to you. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

If you knew who you were talking to, you wouldn't talk like that. OF COURSE I know it is not "my article" even although I wrote it. It is just that if somebody re-edits my work, the least that I (who made the effort to create the article for people to use) might expect is: (a) that they are really knowledgeable about the subjectmatter, and (b) that the re-editing actually results in a significant IMPROVEMENT of the article. User:Jurriaan 8 April 2013 16:03 (UTC)

I know exactly to whom I'm talking, and this kind of narcissistic rage – "How dare you edit my article! You're not qualified to change it!" – is specifically against Wikipedia's rules. In fact, if a 13 year old kid came in and deleted all your unsourced statements, replacing them with sourced analysis from a third party scholar, it would be more valuable to Wikipedia, and it would be upheld by any administrator. If this bothers you, then you should simply leave Wikipedia. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

"Narcissistic rage?" You get worse all the time with your insults! How this can be reconciled with wikipedia norms is beyond me. How about some cogent argument, instead of cursing? It would not bother me at all, if a 13 year old kid referenced the text better than I have. If that is actually what happens. But what actually happens is that an editor changes the article without this improving the article, and indeed making the article worse. My concern is not with narcissism, but with article quality. I am just stating my criticism of edits which don't make the article better but make it worse than it was. That is what bothers me, and that is why I hardly work on wikipedia anymore. Let me just note that you describe yourself as someone who boasts on his talk page "I'm here to loot, pillage, kill, and edit Wikipedia articles" to which you are "apathetic." That is exactly the kind of attitude we do not need in wikipedia, if we are concerned to improve articles! User:Jurriaan 8 April 2013 21:21 (UTC).

So, which is it? Do they have to be really knowledgeable about the subject matter or not? You can't have it both ways. Your average 13 year old editor is not really knowledgeable about the subject matter but is quite capable of quoting reliable sources. If you have no problem with uninformed editors editing this page, then cease your complaints about it. It's not conducive toward collaboration, and it intimidates editors who would otherwise contribute. I came to this page because it was listed in WP:Cleanup, as an editor was complaining about your WP:OWN and WP:OR. I barely even changed anything at all in the article. You should be thankful that no hardliners have been attracted to this article. All I've done is tag your WP:OR and move items that were not references out of the References section. I've barely touched your precious writing, and, in fact, I did make it better. I corrected your grammar and spelling mistakes, as well as pushing the article into better compliance with Wikipedia policy. If it bother you so much that this article is now more compliant with Wikipedia policy, I have no idea how to continue any meaningful dialogue with you. I would further request that you sign in and properly sign your posts. Further: please not change your posts, then re-sign them. And, I would finally add, yes, we do need more people who are apathetic about the articles they edit! Avoiding bias is the whole point of one of Wikipedia's core policies, WP:NPOV! NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

A distinction is normally drawn between copyediting and content editing. For copyediting purposes, in-depth knowledge of the subject "may" not be required, since it consists basically only of a linguistic tidying and attention to notation, punctuation, typography and style (the purely formal aspects of a text). In content editing, the concern is with the actual meaning, format and message of what is said. However, these two types of editing are often not so easily separable, since, by e.g. changing formal aspects of the text, you also change the meaning. For instance, one previous editor deleted the word "currently" from the definition of "socially necessary labour", regarding it as a linguistic redundancy, even although it is a crucial component of the definition, which has featured in important debates about Marx's value theory. Wiki editing is additionally a special kind of editing, since it seeks conformity to a specific model of what a text should look like. But it frequently happens that in the desire to make an article conform to wiki rules, the quality of the article is actually destroyed - because in truth the editors do not know how to say what the article previously said in a better way. It is quite possible nowadays for a child of 13 to reference a wiki article, I don't doubt that. Marx himself already claimed that "any child" could understand the necessity to work for human survival. But even if a kid succeeds in this, it doesn't necessarily result in a better article, beyond mimickry. I do have a problem with uninformed editors editing this article (or any other), if it means that the quality of the article goes downhill. That is quite a legitimate concern to have, and it has nothing to do with psychopathology. Except for some copyedits, you haven't really improved this article, all you have done in your "editing" is to insert a lot of tags to the effect that the text is, according to you, not compliant with Wikipedia policy in all kinds of ways. Well thanks very much. Of course you are biased, it is merely that you don't make your biases explicit beyond what you say on your talk page. The idea is not to just ram into an article somebody wrote on a whim, but to edit articles for which you have to competency to edit. You don't have a comprehensive knowledge of the literature about the law of value, you just thought you would jump in to sort out the text. But actually you make it even more difficult for the reader. User:Jurriaan 9 april 2013 21:02 (UTC)

Do not confuse stewardship with ownership. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that "anyone can edit", but not all edits bring improvement. In many cases, a core group of editors will have worked to build the article up to its present state, and will revert edits that they find unconstructive in order, they believe, to preserve the quality of the encyclopedia. Such reversion does not necessarily constitute ownership, and will normally be supported by an explanatory edit summary referring to Wikipedia policies and guidelines, previous reviews and discussions, or specific grammar or prose problems introduced by the edit. Where disagreement persists after such a reversion, the editor proposing the change should first take the matter to the talk page, without personal comments or accusations of ownership. In this way, the specifics of any change can be discussed with the editors who are familiar with the article, who are likewise expected to discuss the content civilly.

Reverted edits

Are you serious, Jurriaan? You just reverted the page, because you think the [citation needed] tags are ugly? I don't even know where to begin. Let's just start with the most outrageous aspects:

1. You tagged this as a minor edit. I don't think you understand what a minor edit is.
2. You removed markup demanding citations, without providing citations.
3. You are engaging in rather extreme WP:OWN behavior.
4. You are not making any effort toward building consensus and have unilaterally reverted good-faith edits, simply because you think the resulting markup is ugly.
5. You are reverting to a version of the page that looks more authoritative, when the authoritative prose is full of original research, despite the template on the top of the page clearly requesting the original research to be replaced with sourced statements.

I don't want to get into an edit war. To the best of my recollection, I've never once engaged in an edit war, partly because I try to stick to editing articles about which I am apathetic. If you push me, however, I will fight you on these edits. I'm going to give you the opportunity to explain your reversion, using better arguments than your edit reason, which I interpret as "I think [citation needed] is ugly". I would like to believe that you have better reasons than that, and that your humor is going above my head. If, however, that is your reason, then I request that you either revert your contentious edit or assure me that you will not engage in a pointless edit war with me, if/when I revert it back to my latest edit.

This is thoroughly unacceptable behavior. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:33, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I haven't got time right now to go into everything about this article in depth. I emphasize again that I have never suggested that I "own" this article, and I welcome alterations IF THEY RESULT IN A BETTER ARTICLE. It is legitimate to protect this article with stewardship on this basis, against alterations which do not improve the article but merely cause more trouble. I agree, that the article developed over the last eight years does not fully conform to wiki standards, although it was well-liked and was read by a very large number of people who said they found it useful. The main objection has been that the article is too long, and also that there are original research concerns. This raises the question of what would be an acceptable length, and I do not yet know what the answer to that is, I aim to find that out. If the article was shortened, many concerns about original research would not even arise. Of course, the subject of the "law of value" has been very important in the history of the Marxist movement and has affected hundreds of millions of people worldwide; hence, a substantive article is worth doing, and I provided a pilot article accordingly. No doubt it is not entirely satsifactory, okay, but it is there at least as a reference for a better article in the future. But if you simply insert heaps of tags in the article requesting additional sources, you are not "improving" the article thereby. You just make it harder to read. You are simply stating, on your "apathetic" editing whim, that there are many things wrong with the format of the article. Of course, I could place an additional hundred references, but this doesn't solve the problem of length, and makes things worse, not better! Presumably, the point is to make the article more concise, and then we have to discuss the best way to do that. If however you seriously want to work on the content of this article, then (1) it requires that you are scientifically, scholarly and technically knowledgeable about the subject, and (2) that you discuss your proposed surgery first on the talk page. As regards (1), I have no evidence so far that you as ninja with your "apathetic" attitude are knowledgable about the subjectmatter at all, and therefore prima facie you are not wellpositioned to make major changes to the article, beyond such things as spelling, typography and the like (a copy edit). As regards (2), you are required to discuss major proposed alterations of the article on this talk page first, not simply slash and burn according to fancy. On your own talk page, you declare your intention to "kill and loot" articles etc., but this kind of crude and uncivil attitude is not wanted in wikipedia. It makes me very wary about your editing operations. Let's get clear first of all about what your true motive is in running roughshod over this article - is it to improve the article and make it a better article, or is it simply to dot the i's on other people work, and state in great detail your displeasure about somebody else's text? If you want to be a wikipedia editor, you have to do things with the right motivation: to create good articles which conform to wiki standards. If you don't, all your alterations will be wiped out again, until the article is locked, and agreement is reached on what would be the best format. Let me note, additionally, that citing original sources is explicitly not prohibited in wikipedia. It is merely that it should be done fairly sparingly and judiciously, and the sources should not be made to say more or different things than they do say. In the case of Marx, since the texts are perpetually contested, it is sometimes necessary to refer to original sources, and that has been accepted in many other articles about Marx's works. Most of all, bear in mind that the main aim is to create articles which genuinely, usefully and accurately inform the reader about the subjectmatter, and not to pander to pedantic-bureaucratic whims about formalities without honorable motives. User:Jurriaan 12 April 2013 19:41 (UTC)

You are wrong on almost every count, Jurriaan. WP:V is one of the most important policies on Wikipedia. WP:NOR is another. Your article is in direct violation of these policies, and my edits brought it into better compliance. I resent your WP:OWN behavior, and I am reverting the article back; if you insist on an edit war, I will request WP:arbitration. I have attempted to reason with you, and I have sought intervention from an uninvolved admin, but it looks like neither is proving productive. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 17:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

It is a waste of time discussing with you because you ignore everything I say and make false accusations. I will continue to reset the article, until there is an arbitration ruling by the administrators which takes into account different views. I do not wish this article to be defaced and wrecked by some kind of teenage mutant ninja turtle who doesn't even know about the subject. That is not why I wrote the article in the first place. User:Jurriaan 13 April 2013 23:13 (UTC)

OK, fine. Have it your way. I was hoping that it wouldn't come to this. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:22, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I see essentially two components to NinjaRobotPirate's edit, tagging and copyedits both very good things. I don't see any major content changes, so I'm not understanding the objection. I've reverted to NinjaRobotPirate's version, since I can't imagine anyone but Jurriaan will object. TippyGoomba (talk) 03:11, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I made a mistake. When I referred to "original sources" I meant PRIMARY sources, in other words reference to what Marx himself said rather than what somebody said about Marx. Primary sources are not prohibited in wikipedia. User:Jurriaan 16 april 2013 21:49 (UTC)