kevin314 - you answer your question: yes.
rb1957 - thank you for your interest in the topic. In pressure vessels, there are stresses that, on a pseudo-elastic basis, would be classified as secondary and not primary. They do not lead directly to plastic collapse. Limit Theory uses an EPP model - and once stresses reach or exceed yield, the stiffness becomes identically zero. And hence the load causing the stress redistributes over a larger area. In simple geometries like cylinders or struts, indeed an ethnic analysis will provide the same answer. But not so in more complicated geometries. And Limit Load Analysis is a special type of LRFD, used extensively in structural analyses.
The theory is solid, as is the implementation. The goal is to find where the analysis fails to converge, with the last converged solution being the limit load. Adding a small non-zero slope buggers up that search for convergence failure. What you see as a flaw is actually a feature.