Ralph Miliband (1924–1994)

It is quite remarkable that a book published over forty years ago and now out of print should be such a perfect description of the conditions that underlay the utter mess that is twenty first century Britain. It is from a Marxist perspective but you can strip that out if you want to enjoy the analysis.

Only today I found another bit of prescience in the Introduction to Noam Chomsky's 'Deterring Democracy' (1991) where, quoting Lawrence Eagleburger, the old anarchist strips bare current show more American foreign policy to its consistent basics with brutal precision.

In other words, no one can say that they were not warned about our current condition by intelligent intellectuals (are there any intelligent intellectuals left nowadays?) well on the other side of the Millennium. The facts were all there. The interpretation available.

Miliband, whose two sons have achieved a weird prominence riding the very system that the father excoriated in a political example of one half of the Oedipus story sustaining its own momentum after no less than 2,500 years, takes no prisoners in his analysis.

A current reader will have to cast themselves back to the story of the British Left of the 1970s and early 1980s forf the right ambience. That context means that some of the specific 'predictive' aspects do not stand up but the core analysis of how Britain was and is (notionally) managed still stands.

Well, except in one respect - the formal analysis is correct but what Miliband cannot have predicted would be that the Left's 'sotto voce' connivance in an essentially conservative structure would go into over-drive in the wake of Thatcher and become almost a parody of itself under Starmer.

The book tells us how the system actually worked in the last century and how the fools in government still think it does work even though it neither works functionally to deliver stability and prosperity nor works as it is supposed to do in keeping the population from asking for their 'share of the action'.

The bulk of the book is a systematic account of the way power has operated (and is intended now to operate) within the United Kingdom - as a liberal capitalist democracy that carefully manages the working class interest through the agency of a supine centre-left party (Labour).

That Party, once with millions of members embedded in the workplace and the community, has degenerated into a sort of nut club of activists managed by an opportunistic and not phenomenally bright self-reinforcing clique of professionals.

Although the liberal constitutionalist forms are different and there is much talk of 'freedom' (which can be quickly abrogated in war or in an 'emergency'), this system is not that much different from Bismarck's social militarism, maintained with the pacifying support of revisionist Marxists.

The system is a total system (persuading us that this is so is the most successful element of the book) structured around all levels of government from national to local, judiciary, state-business relations, trades unions, security apparat and media (not excluding the sinister BBC).

It is also not averse to hiding an iron fist inside its moth-eaten glove. Although of its period, Miliband evidences the contingent attitude of the propertied towards democracy in the age of Allende and the very idea of Left governance by a former chief prosecutor should cause tremors of the soul.

The purpose is to effect only the changes that will sustain the system and to ensure that any emergent social force is integrated into that system in order to protect it and 'capitalist relations' - that is, private property, not excluding land ownership (an inheritance from the eighteenth century).

There is, of course, an alternative conservative opinion on this - that stability requires such a system and that human nature dictates that prosperity is best served by markets protected by such a system - and this should not be dismissed out of hand. If this is so, let it be stated without the lies!

Whichever is the true opinion, it is important to understand the facts of the case much as Trump is forcing us to see the facts of the case of American foreign policy as outlined by Chomsky. It is the unholy guff (like the Crown) that surrounds these systems that insults our intelligence.

So what has happened since the book. Well, self-evidently, the British Left crashed and burned in its attempt to change the system, largely in an excess of narcissism, idiot utopianism and utterly asinine Trotskyist ideology. If 'Jeremy' is the best it could do in its last gasp, well ...

Indeed, what is perhaps most depressing is that the 1970s generation of intellectuals that failed the working class (or rather the 'people') sidled their way into the establishment in perfect confirmation of Miliband pere's analysis. Thus it was and perhaps thus it will always be.

But more fundamental changes were taking place. The trades unions lost their strong position in the corporatist team as Britain de-industralised. Their place was taken by a huge parasitical class of lower level administrators, academics and NGOcrats building identity politics on critical theory.

If once conservatives made efforts to build Labour as manager of the working class through trades unions, now conservatives (from businesses to governance) appropriated reasonable social demands by the marginalised and repurposed them into green and diversity agendas that got out of hand.

Just as the old corporatism smashed by Thatcher was grossly inefficient because of lack of decisive and effective central planning so the new liberal-left communitarianism was even more inefficient through emphasising coalitional baksheesh instead of productive capitalist or public investment.

The state of British public finances has declined (since the cataclysms of 2008-2010, COVID and the absurdities of economic war with Russia) to a point that is quite definitely very scary with everyone making ever greater demands on a shrinking pie. Where Birmingham goes, others will follow.

And, of course, this was compounded by the effects of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution which smashed the economic balance of the old order in which national capital and trades unions maintained a slow but possibly manageable post-imperial decline.

National capital got eviscerated in favour of international capital. This plundered social and public capital (the water utilities and energy pricing being the thin end of a huge wedge). Working class self-organisation (always inadequate protection in any case) as trades unions became NGOs.

In other words, Miliband's system still exists but it is a socio-economic 'Potemkin Village' in which a simulacrum of a morally corrupt but vaguely workable system has become influence without power in the world, a doomed cover for what is a province of international capital with almost no way out.

The book is still very much worth reading for two reasons. The ghost of that system is still what many of its office-holders still think is working. That is worth understanding. Second, the illusions of the honest Left of the early 1980s are a base line for understanding the Left's consequent degradation.

As to the author's two sons, one in global NGO management and once a 'king across the water' in New York for the neo-liberal Blairites and the other lost in the ideology of Net Zero fantasies, they must be given the benefit of some doubt.

If they had read their old man's book with any care, they would have known that there were only two conclusions - an unspoken despair at the solidity of a system that would never let a genuine Left politician a place at the table or an existential 'revolutionary' determination to fight and fight again.

The last serious fighter on the inside was actually an aristocrat - Anthony Wedgewood Benn. Since then, the realistic fighting for the street has been done not on the Left but on the Right by populists They are about as trustworthy as rattle snakes.

A whole generation of the Left watched the sclerotic Soviet Union collapse and never saw the rise of China. They gave up and became American-style left-liberals. In a fit of absence of mind, they gifted their nation to Tony Blair, commodity traders, private equity, bankers and hedge funds.

They may have been unconsciously depressed but perhaps they were not wrong. Perhaps the United Kingdom was doomed once it lost its ability to exploit an empire. Perhaps it will end up like Venice after its empire disappeared - a glorious tourist trap living off its heritage. Game over!? show less

I nearly gave up on this book: the early chapters are an outdated vindication of Soviet style socialism. I appreciate that this might have been an arguable perspective when it was written but, surely is passé now.

Parts three and four are much more interesting to the modern reader. They concern Britain and the effects of the Thatcher/Reagan revolution and Neo Liberalism. It is helpful, sometimes, to go back to the view at the time of this cataclysmic event; from which we are still suffering show more the aftershock. show less

Has some very interesting essays but unfortunately also quite a lot of reviews of things that aren't particularly illuminating - typically they don't run long enough to give enough depth to either his ideas or those of the person he's reviewing and there are some points that he covers again and again. For example, he regularly attacks Stalinism (although it's not his constant target, more a side issue) and tries to separate it cleanly from Leninism in general and Marx. But he doesn't really show more ever provide a good argument why this is a reasonable stance and it seems to me to inhibit analysis of the USSR. There's also a lot of stuff here that's either for a very specific audience (talking about Bettelheim's economic analysis of the USSR for example) or simply dated (although I suppose many current "new new left" stuff is very reminiscent of Eurocommunism) - there's always interesting things to pick out from what he says but it limits the wider appeal of it.

I highly recommend "The Coup in Chile", available online https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1973/10/chile.htm, that explains clearly both the specific situation of Chile and also the problems facing any serious movement of power and wealth from the hands of the current ruling classes in every country. "State Power and Class Interests" is an interesting attempt to work out what the "ruling classes" and bourgeois hegemony actually means and "Constitutionalism and Revolution" is dated because it's targeted at Eurocommunism but much of the attacks on their general principles are still relevant. Don't take my first paragraph as disparaging the book because there's definitely a lot of good stuff it's just sometimes buried and the topics addressed are very variable.

The essay "Military Interventionism and Socialist Internationalism" is notable for having aged extremely poorly. With regards to Afghanistan he says "It is of course convenient to argue that no alternative to Babrak Karmal existed save the blackest kind of reactionary regime, allied to the United States, Pakistan and China." He attacks the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea on the basis that the government they installed was no better than the Pol Pot one, set back the course of socialism through creation of nationalism etc, and disparages the idea that the Kampuchean incursions on Vietnamese territory were of any import. He ridicules the idea that a counter-revolution was possible in Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968 by describing such a thing in terms exactly describing what actually happened in the early 1990s - of course, this doesn't in any way provide a justification for Soviet actions at those times, but with hindsight it's quite awkward to read. To quote, because it's so exact:

"Properly speaking, a counter-revolution may be said to have occurred when a regime of the left, Communist or not, has been overthrown (or for that matter replaced by legal means) and where the successor regime pushes through a series of economic, social and political measures designed to assure or restore the power, property and privileges of landlords, capitalists and other segments of the ruling class who have been threatened with dispossession or who have actually been dispossessed by the regime which the counter-revolution has replaced. This involves the return to landlords and capitalists of their land and factories and banks, and of property in general, where it has been taken from them. It also involves the reaffirmation of their power and preponderance by the suppression of the defence organizations of the subordinate classes—parties, trade unions, cooperatives, clubs and associations. It further involves the suppression or drastic curtailment of civil rights; the physical suppression of opposition leaders, of agitators, subversives and enemies of the state; and the political restructuring of the state in authoritarian directions... Of course, there were, particularly in Hungary, people who had counter-revolutionary intentions: but that is obviously not the same thing... In both countries, there might well have come into being a coalition regime in which the Communist Party would not have been assured of an automatic preponderance; and other such variations can easily be conceived. The point is that, whatever may be thought of these possibilities, they cannot, on any reasonable assessment, be equated with ‘counter-revolution’, or anything like it. It would surely have been exceedingly difficult to unscramble long-nationalized property and to restore factories, mines or land to their former owners..."

Again, this isn't to absolve the Soviets of blame by using something that happened afterwards as justification. Just. Dang.

Ultimately the essay fails for the reason many of the essays that talk about "Stalinism" or generally try to put forward an international socialist viewpoint fail - everything is so hedged about with the necessity for "critical support", acknowledging "the progressive and regressive sides", not allowing yourself to ever for a moment say something is good. There are two bad sides - the capitalist West and the Stalinist USSR - but there's nobody to root for except in very specific situations, and there's no real alternative position because everything has to be hedged with criticality no matter what. By focusing on a certain narrow definition of "civil rights" all the time, it leaves the reader wondering why the author shows any support for the socialist bloc at all. And when he says that there are some extreme situations where interventionism is justified but decides that responding to attempted invasion by a country that borders you and is currently involved in mass murder of its own citizens doesn't count, it makes you wonder what on earth *does* count. Much of this kind of "non aligned communist" writing just gives off an incredible feeling of futility and total pointlessness - it's not advancing any cause, it's not giving material support to anyone, and even as criticism it's confused and aimless.

For the last few essays: Class War Conservatism is short and doesn't say much but is good. Socialist Advance in Britain is OK and relates pretty strongly to Corbyn but is pretty familiar stuff if you have a radical left background I think. Freedom, Democracy and the American Alliance is pretty good about attacking the "USSR expansionism" myth but again not too much new. What Comes After Communist Regimes is pretty prescient about the coming privatisation and its effects and what "democracy" the West imposed would really mean but it's not super relevant today.

Overall it has a few quality essays, some ok but not particularly groundbreaking ones and some dull ones (typically reviews etc). It's worth reading some of the specific essays and there's definitely interesting parts in all the essays, it's just often covered in mundane/tedious stuff. He *is* a relatively easy writer to read though so it's not a slog at all if you have a basic familiarity with political terminology, which is a big advantage. show less

Reflecting on the Labor government of Harold Wilson between 1964 and 1970, this concise analysis chronicles the Labor Party from its early days up to the early 1960s, including a 1972 postscript. Demonstrating how empirical and flexible the Labor Party has been about certain issues, this reference also touches on how it is one of the most dogmatic political parties in regards to the parliamentary system. Commenting on why its leaders have always made devotion to this system their fixed point show more of reference, this political overview proves that this has always been the conditioning factor of their political behavior, as they consistently reject any kind of political action which has fallen outside the framework and conventions of Parliament. Stating that there is no distinction to be made between Labor's political and industrial leaders, this study illustrates the party as it is now and has always been--one of modest social reform in a capitalist system within whose confines it is ever more firmly and by now irrevocably rooted. show less