Ralph Miliband

Ralph Miliband
Miliband in 1958
Born	Adolphe Miliband (1924-01-07)7 January 1924 Brussels, Belgium
Died	21 May 1994(1994-05-21) (aged 70) London, England
Citizenship	Polish (until 1948) British (from 1948)
Political party	Labour (1951–1964)
Spouse	Marion Kozak ​ (m. 1961)​
Children	David Miliband Ed Miliband
Academic background
Alma mater	London School of Economics
Thesis	Popular Thought in the French Revolution, 1789–1794 (1957)
Doctoral advisor	Harold Laski
Influences	Karl Marx C. Wright Mills
Academic work
Discipline	Sociology
Sub-discipline	Political sociology
School or tradition	Marxism New Left
Institutions	London School of Economics University of Leeds
Doctoral students	Leo Panitch[1][2]
Notable students	Graham Allen[3] Celso Amorim Chris Harman Ralph Schoenman[4] Allan Segal[5]
Notable works	The State in Capitalist Society (1969)
Influenced	David Coates[6] Bhaskar Sunkara[7]
Military career
Service	Royal Navy
Years of service	1943–1946
Rank	Chief petty officer

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Ralph Miliband (born Adolphe Miliband; 7 January 1924 – 21 May 1994) was a British sociologist. He has been described as "one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation", in this manner being compared with E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and Perry Anderson.^[8]

Miliband was born in Belgium to working-class Polish Jewish immigrants. He fled to Britain in 1940 with his father, to avoid persecution when Nazi Germany invaded Belgium. Learning to speak English and enrolling at the London School of Economics, he became involved in left-wing politics and made a personal commitment to the cause of socialism at the grave of Karl Marx. After serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, he settled in London in 1946 and naturalised as a British subject in 1948.

By the 1960s, he was a prominent member of the New Left movement in Britain, which was critical of established socialist governments in the Soviet Union and Central Europe (the Eastern Bloc). He published several books on Marxist theory and the criticism of capitalism, such as Parliamentary Socialism (1961), The State in Capitalist Society (1969), and Marxism and Politics (1977), and he edited the Writings of the Left series (Jonathan Cape and Grove Press, 1972–1973).^[9][10]

Both of his sons, David and Ed Miliband, went on to become senior members of the Labour Party following their father's death. David was the British Foreign Secretary from 2007 to 2010, with Ed serving as Energy Secretary from 2008 to 2010. Both contested the 2010 Labour Party leadership election (UK), which was narrowly won by Ed who served as Leader of the Opposition from 2010 to 2015. Ed returned to government in 2024, taking on his previous portfolio as Energy Secretary.