Ralph Miliband

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Ralph Miliband (born January 7, 1924 in Brussels as Adolphe Miliband , † May 21, 1994 in Westminster , London ) was a Belgian - British Marxist political scientist . He was the father of former British Minister David Miliband and temporary Labor Party leader Ed Miliband . The Soviet - Russian bibliographer Sofja Dawidowna Miliband was his cousin.

Life and family

He was born as Adolphe Miliband in Brussels as the son of Polish-Jewish emigrants . His parents used to live in Warsaw's Jewish quarter before his father, Samuel Miliband, joined the Red Army in the Polish-Soviet War . After the end of the war, the family moved to Belgium.

Miliband lived in Belgium between the wars, and he describes the time as follows.

"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 center. "

- Ralph Miliband

With the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Belgium in 1940, the family decided to leave the country. On May 19, 1940, they reached the UK as refugees and settled in London. During the time of the German Air Force attacks on London , Miliband found work clearing rubble. During these months he changed his name from Adolphe to Ralph Miliband. From 1942 to 1945 he served as a volunteer in the Royal Navy .

Ralph Miliband is buried in Highgate Cemetery , London.

Scientific career

Miliband received a place at Acton Technical College , now Brunel University , through the International Commission for Refugees . In the course of studying British history, he developed into a Marxist . In October 1941 he was awarded the distinction to study at the renowned London School of Economics (LSE). In this phase he studied under Harold Laski , at the same time the London School of Economics was evacuated to the University of Cambridge .

After three years of service in the Royal Navy , he continued his studies at the LSE after the war. In 1947 he graduated and got a Leverhulme research scholarship ( Leverhulme Research Fellowship ), with whom he continued his studies at the LSE. Harold Laski arranged a teaching position for Miliband at Roosevelt College in Chicago. From 1949 he got a post as an assistant lecturer in political science at the LSE, where he later became a senior lecturer. In 1961 he married Marion Kozak, one of his former students. In 1972 he left the LSE and accepted a professorship in political science at the University of Leeds . He was now one of the most influential British Marxists. Unhappy in Leeds, he took on teaching positions in the USA and Canada .

In the 1970s, Miliband had a dispute with Nicos Poulantzas on the question of the capitalist state. The starting point was the 1969 book The State in Capitalist Society . The controversy was fought over a number of articles in the New Left Review . Ernesto Laclau intervened in 1975 with an article of his own.

In addition to dealing with questions of state and political theory, Miliband also dealt with the science of history and made important contributions to the history of the British labor movement, for example.

Political work

During the 1950s, Miliband was one of the protagonists of the British New Left along with Edward P. Thompson and John Saville . With these he founded the magazines New Reasoner and New Left Review . With Saville he introduced the Socialist Register , which was strongly influenced by his American friend, the sociologist Charles Wright Mills .

The US war against Vietnam led him into opposition to the US policy and the policy of the Labor Party . In the Socialist Register in 1967 he wrote:

"[...] the United States has over what is now a period of years been engaged [in Vietnam] in the wholesale slaughter of men, women and children, the maiming of many more, the obliteration of numberless villages and the forcible transplantation of whole populations into virtual concentration camps […] and much, much else which forms part of a catalog of horrors […] the United States has done all this in the name of an enormous lie "

- Ralph Miliband

Fonts

  • Parliamentary Socialism: A Study of the Politics of Labor (1961)
  • The State in Capitalist Society (1969) ( German: Der Staat in der kapitalistische Gesellschaft (1972) )
  • Controversy over the capitalist state (1976), with Nicos Poulantzas
  • Marxism and Politics (1977)
  • Capitalist Democracy in Britain (1982)
  • Class Power and State Power (1983)
  • Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism (1989)
  • Socialism for a Skeptical Age (1994)

Secondary literature

  • Clyde W. Barrow: Toward a Critical Theory of States. The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate after Globalization. State University of New York Press, Albany 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brief CV and diary excerpts (accessed on July 16, 2008)
  2. ^ (1) Ralph Miliband, extract from an unpublished autobiography. (Accessed July 16, 2008)
  3. ↑ Vita on marxists.org (accessed on July 16, 2008)
  4. ↑ Biography on lipman-miliband.org.uk (accessed October 5, 2012)
  5. ↑ Eva Kreisky: Seminiarmaterialien (accessed on July 23, 2008) ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 33 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / evakreisky.at
  6. ^ Miliband in Socialist Register 1967
personal data
SURNAME Miliband, Ralph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miliband, Adolphe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Marxist political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Brussels
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1994
Place of death Westminster (London)