Adolphe
(Ralph) Miliband was born in Brussels on 7th January, 1924. Both his
parents had lived in the Jewish quarter
in Warsaw. His father, Sam Miliband, a former member of the Red
Army, had left Poland after the First
World War and became a leather worker in Belgium.
On
10th May 1940, Adolf Hitler launched his
Western Offensive. Miliband managed
to catch a boat from Ostend and arrived in England on 19th May. He
settled in London and changed his name
from Adolphe to Ralph. During the Blitz
Miliband found work removing furniture from bombed houses.
In
January 1940 Miliband became a student on a course provided by the
International Commission for Refugees in Great Britain at the Acton
Technical College. While studying English History (1066-1914) at college
he became a Marxist. Although he initially
received poor marks his improvement was spectacular and in October
1941 won a place to study at the London School
of Economics (LSE).
Miliband
was active in a variety of left-wing groups and in January 1943 was
elected Vice President of the LSE Students' Union. At the LSE he was
taught by Harold Laski. He later recalled:
"We did not
feel overwhelmed by his knowledge and learning, and we did not feel
so because he did not know the meaning of condescension. We never
felt compelled to agree with him, because it was so obvious
that he loved a good fight
and did not hide behind his years and experience." Miliband was
deeply influenced by Laski but the two men often clashed about politics.
Laski told his father in December, 1942: "Laski... started to
talk to me about the need to judge things for myself and not only
through the eyes of Karl Marx."
In June 1943 Miliband joined
the Royal
Navy.
He served on HMS Royal Arthur and HMD Valorous and saw action in the
Mediterranean. He still remained interest in politics and in 1944
wrote an article about the class nature of the relationship between
officers and men on board ship.
Miliband was demobilized
from the Navy in January, 1946. He returned to the LSE and he obtained
a First Class degree in July 1947. Three months later he was awarded
a Leverhulme research studentship to work full-time on his Ph.D. proposal,
The Radical Movement in the French Revolution.
Harold
Laski arranged
for Miliband to do some teaching at the Roosevelt College in Chicago
where he witnessed the early stages of McCarthyism
in action. In June 1949
he obtained the post as Assistant Lectureship in Political Science
at LSE. This included teaching Problems of Comparative Government,
the History of French Political Thought and the History of English
Socialist Thought.
During this period Miliband
was highly critical of Joseph Stalin and
the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. He
was particularly hostile to Stalin's policy towards Josip
Tito and his
socialist government in Yugoslavia.
His main political friends were left-wing members of the Labour
Party. This included Michael
Foot, Jo
Richardson, Ian
Mikardo,
Russell
Kerr and Konni
Zilliacus.
Miliband joined with other
left-wing historians such as E.
P. Thompson,
Raphael
Samuel,
Raymond Williams, Stuart
Hall and John Saville to launch two radical journals, The
New Reasoner and the New Left
Review. Later he was to play a prominent role in the publication
of the Socialist Register.
In 1961 Miliband
published Parliamentary Socialism: A Study
of the Politics of Labour. In the
introduction he wrote: "Of
political parties claiming socialism to be their aim, the Labour Party
has always been
one of the most dogmatic - not about socialism, but about the parliamentary
system. Empirical and flexible about all else, its leaders have always
made devotion to that system their fixed point of reference and the
conditioning factor of their political behaviour."
Miliband played an active
role in the campaign against the Vietnam
War. In an article in the Socialist
Register (1967) he attacked Harold
Wilson and his
defence of the United States action in Vietnam
and described it as being the "most shameful chapter in the history
of the Labour Party."
Other books by Miliband
include The
State in Capitalist Society (1969), Marxism
and Politics (1977), Capitalist
Democracy in Britain (1982), Class
Power and State Power (1983), Divided
Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism (1989)
and Socialism for a Sceptical Age
(1994).
Ralph
Miliband
died on 21st May 1994.
(1)
Ralph Miliband, extract from an unpublished autobiography.
As a Jewish boy, the son of Polish Jewish parents,
I could not avoid being aware of events
like the coming of Hitler to power in 1933 -1 was nine at the time.
German refugees began to appear in Brussels in the following years;
and the anti-Semitism, which was what was focused on in my family
circle about Fascism, was in any case merged with earlier, Polish,
Russian anti-Semitism, which made this appear as the major phenomenon
in history, with the Jews as its centre. 'Jewish blood' had been spilt
throughout centuries, in many parts of the world; and the world outside
the Jews was therefore more or less hostile, suspect at least, not
to be trusted, or even penetrated.
(2)
Ralph Miliband, diary entry (1940)
The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps
the most nationalist
people in the world ... When you hear the English talk of this war
you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things
are. They have the greatest contempt for the continent in general
and for the French in particular. They didn't like the French before
the defeat: (1) because they don't have order, (2) because they talk
too much, (3) because they change their ministers every month, etc.
Since the defeat,
they have the greatest contempt for the French Army ... England first.
This slogan is taken
for granted by the English people as a whole. To lose their empire
would be the worst
possible humiliation.
(3)
Ralph
Miliband, diary entry (24th September, 1940)
In every district that you passed, there was either
a closed road or destroyed houses,
unexploded bombs, roofs without tiles, etc. London is really badly
hit. Everywhere it's the same thing to a greater or lesser extent.
In Whitechapel, in the Jewish area, and the slums, the devastation
is really terrible. Rows of people are waiting ... to be evacuated.
New wretched refugees, like the others, with a bundle on their shoulder,
mainly Jews... But life goes on; the butcher is trying to rob his
customers and the customers haggle. People want beigals but there
aren't any now. Everywhere ... you see misfortune and devastation
weighing people down. When you see them you almost feel ashamed to
live in a relatively quiet area. Shame and indignation and fury ...
You ask yourself: how can they live like this and how could they have
lived like this until now. It is the East End ... the shame of their
civilisation, the permanent condemnation of their system ... But a
twenty minute bus ride away, there is the parliament, rich, flanked
by its church, near Buckingham Palace.
(4)
Ralph
Miliband, Harold Laski, Clare Market
Review (1950)
His lectures taught more, much more than political
science. They taught a faith that
ideas mattered, that knowledge was important and its pursuit exciting.
I like to remember him in the early days of the war, when the School
was in Cambridge. He would arrive every week from London and come
straight to School from the station. The winter was bitter and train
carriages unheated. He would appear in his blue overcoat and grotesquely
shaped black hat, his cheeks blue with cold, teeth chattering, and
queue up with the rest of us for a cup of foul but hot coffee, go
up to the seminar room, crack a joke at the gathering of students
who were waiting for him, sit down, light a cigarette and plunge into
controversy and argument; and a dreary stuffy room would come to life
and there would only be a group of people bent on the elucidation
of ideas: We did not feel overwhelmed by his knowledge and learning,
and we did not feel so because he did not know the meaning of condescension.
We never felt compelled to agree with him, because it was so obvious
that he loved a good fight
and did not hide behind his years and experience. He was not impatient
or bored or superciliously amused... His seminars taught tolerance,
the willingness to listen although one disagreed, the values of ideas
being confronted.
And it was all immense fun, an exciting game that had meaning, and
it was also a sieve
of ideas, a gymnastics of the mind carried on with vigour and directed
unobtrusively with superb craftsmanship.
I think I know now why
he gave himself so freely. Partly it was because he was human
and warm and that he was so interested in people. But mainly it was
because he loved
students, and he loved students because they were young. Because he
had a glowing faith that youth was generous and alive, eager and enthusiastic
and fresh. That by
helping young people he was helping the future and bringing nearer
that brave world in which he so passionately believed.
(5)
Ralph
Miliband, The Political Ideas of Harold Laski,
Stanford Law Review (December, 1955)
He did not underestimate how heavily the legacy of
the past must affect any
attempt to reach understanding with the Soviet Union. Nor did he fail
to see how much Russian policies increased the difficulties of such
an understanding. But he also believed that, when all possible emphasis
had been laid on Russia's share of responsibility for the tragic climate
of the post-war era, it remained true that one of
the essential causes of the postwar tensions was the determination
of the West to pursue
its ancient and futile crusade against the idea which Russia had come
to embody. And it
was one of his most bitter disappointments that a Labour Government
should have been willing to pursue foreign policies which only had
meaning in terms
of an acceptance of the values implicit in such a crusade. The first
duty of a Labour
Government, he insisted, was to come to terms, despite all difficulties,
with the Communist
world. Nothing that has happened since he died suggests that duty
to be less imperative or less urgent.
(6)
Ralph
Miliband,
Parliamentary Socialism (1961)
Of political
parties claiming socialism to be their aim, the Labour Party has always
been one of the most dogmatic
- not about socialism, but about the parliamentary system. Empirical
and flexible about all else, its leaders have always made devotion
to that system their fixed point of reference and the conditioning
factor of their political behaviour.
(7)
Ralph
Miliband,
letter to John Saville (29th May, 1965)
Vietnam
illustrates better than any other event in this century the fundamental
elements of the world as we know it: i.e. American determination to
crush social revolution; the existence and endurance of such movements;
i.e. the real nature of present day imperialism; the decrepitude of
social-democracy, its bankruptcy and moral collapse; ditto for liberalism;
the paralysing nature of the Sino-Soviet conflicts;. .. the bankruptcy
of liberalism, particularly liberal intellectuals; the paralysis of
(Communist Parties) as agencies of protest and action; the nature
of the still inchoate forces which are struggling to protest, students,
ex-liberals like Russell, etc.; and one could go on like this. This
is what the world is about, and which Vietnam pinpoints in the sharpest,
most dramatic and bloody way.
(8)
Ralph
Miliband,
letter to Marcel Liebmann (1st September, 1968)
The invasion
of Czechoslovakia show very well that this oppressive and authoritarian
Russian socialism has nothing
in common with the socialism that we demand,and we must state this
very loudly, even at the risk of seeming to be anti-soviet and to
echo bourgeois propaganda ... And then, there is also this question
of 'bourgeois liberties' ... which, I am persuaded, we must put at
the top of our programme. Or rather, denounce them as insufficient
and to be extended by socialism. Nothing will work if it is possible
and plausible to suggest that we want to abolish them. And that is
one of the reasons why the democratization of 'revolutionary' parties
is essential... The internal life of a revolutionary party must prefigure
the society which it wants to establish - by its mode of existence,
and its way of being and acting. While this is not the case, I don't
see any reason to want to see the current parties take power: they
are quite simply not morally ready to assume the construction of a
socialist society.
(9)
Ralph
Miliband,
The State in Capitalist Society (1968)
More than ever before men now live in the
shadow of the state. What they want to achieve, individually or in
groups, now mainly depends on the state's sanction and support. But
since that sanction and support are not bestowed indiscriminately
they must, ever more directly, seek to influence and shape the state's
power and purpose, or try and appropriate it altogether. It is for
the state's attention, or for its control, that men compete; and it
is against the state that beat the waves of social conflict It is
to an ever greater degree the state which men encounter as they confront
other men. This is why, as social beings, they are also political
beings, whether they know it or not. It is possible not to be interested
in what the state does, but it is not possible to be unaffected by
it The point has acquired a new and ultimate dimension in the present
epoch if large parts of the planet should one day be laid waste in
a nuclear war, it is because men, acting in the name of their state
and invested with its power, will have so decided, or miscalculated.
(10)
Ralph
Miliband,
Socialism for a Sceptical Age (1994)
The struggle to make the world safe for capitalism
will long continue, and will assume
economic, political, cultural and, where necessary, military forms.
So too will the struggle against governments which, whatever their
ideological dispositions, might seek to disturb a status quo which
the United States and other capitalist powers are concerned to maintain.
The Gulf War with Iraq is the latest instance of this struggle. The
murderous dictatorship over which Saddam Hussein presided was perfectly
acceptable to Western governments, so long as it served their purposes,
as was the case in Iraq's war with Iran. The invasion of Kuwait was
a different matter; and any means other than war to bring the invasion
to an end were quickly brushed aside by the United States. The point
had to be made that leaders of countries in the 'third world' which
gravely offended against what the United States and its allies considered
to be their legitimate interests in a particularly important part
of the world would expose themselves to fearsome retribution. The
Gulf War is very unlikely to be the last such episode.
(11)
Ralph
Miliband,
Socialism for a Sceptical Age (1994)
In all countries, there are people, in numbers large
or small, who are moved by the vision of a new social order in which
democracy, egalitarianism and cooperation - the essential values of
socialism - would be the prevailing principles of social organisation.
It is in the growth of their numbers and in the success of their struggles
that lies the best hope for humankind.
(12)
Ellen
Meiksins Wood, Ralph Miliband, Radical
Philosophy (1994)
Miliband
clearly believed, and even more so in recent years, that socialism
is an objective that cannot be achieved in a single life-time. It
should perhaps be seen, he wrote in his last book, Socialism for
a Sceptical Age (the proofs of which he lived to see but not to
correct), as a striving toward a goal rather than the goal itself.
But against the background of recent history and mass defections from
the socialist project, what is remarkable about this testament is
not its hint of pessimism but its steady conviction that the goal
is worth striving for and is finally attainable.
The steadiness of Miliband's
commitment owed much to the unflinching clarity of his intellectual
vision and the independence of his political judgment, which saved
him from both mindless enthusiasm and abject despair, from both blind
attachment to a party and a loss of faith in socialism with declining
party fortunes, from both the certainties and the inevitable disappointments
of socialist determinism. Welcoming every sign of advance toward democracy
in the Communist world, he nevertheless showed a prescient scepticism
about the direction of reform. Unambiguously committed to a truly
democratic socialism, he freely conceded the inadequacies of traditional
socialism in confronting the questions of gender, race and nation
and accepted the lessons of the 'new social movements'; but he never
lost sight of capitalism as an over-arching totality or of class as
its constitutive principle.
|
Based on exclusive
access to Miliband's extensive personal papers and supplemented
by interviews, this book analyses the ideas and contribution of
a key political figure whose lifelong aim was to help build a
form of socialism which would avoid the dictatorship of the Soviet
bloc and the timidity of social democracy. Miliband's life and
work form the central focus, but the book also provides an interpretative
history of the evolution, debates and dilemmas of socialists throughout
the period, and of the problems they faced both at work defending
academic freedom and in society at large. (Michael Newman, Merlin
Press, £15.95) |
Michael
Newman, Ralph Miliband (Merlin Press)
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
