Marxism and Politics

by Ralph Miliband

From a wide range of disparate material, Miliband has reconstructed the main elements of political theory and actual politics which embody Marxism. Focusing on the problems and tensions of the early Marxists, he discusses the Marxist definition of class, the meaning of "the dictatorship of the proletariat," the differences between reform and revolution, and many other issues of central importance to twentieth-century politics.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Political Science, Theory, Economics

Paperback

First published December 1, 1977

Reviews

[Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ralph Miliband’s main goal in Marxism and Politics is to string together a theory of politics from the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. While the text occasionally reads like a lit review and is not a comprehensive theory, the book is nonetheless impressive in how it compiles the scattered writings of all of these authors in order to produce a number of coherent theses on Marxist politics.

Probably most interesting here is his view of the state. Marxism is notoriously weak at theorizing the state and this still remains a notable gap in Marxist theory. After going through the typical instrumentalist and resource arguments, he offers a structural explanation for why the state must support the capitalism. Because of the state’s position within the capitalist mode of production, it must support the system as a whole. Capitalism creates its own “rationality,” i.e. its own set of rules that determine which decisions will be or not be rational. Because the state’s goal is always to maintain law and order, its actions are greatly limited by this rationality and the logic of capitalism.

This structuralist explanation moves away from the instrumentalist view in which the state simply takes marching orders from the capitalist class. As Miliband concisely states: “While the state does act… on behalf of the ‘ruling class,’ it does not for the most part act at its behest.” It is precisely this autonomy from the capitalist class that gives the state its special function in acting for them, but not by simply carrying out their commands. The state offers reforms that ultimately preserve the system, even when the capitalist class is kicking and screaming about them. While capitalists are trying to win the game, the state makes sure that the rules don’t change. Because capitalists are so narrowly focused on their own profits, they can’t see when the system itself is at risk. Making sure that the capitalist mode of production and the fundamentals of its social relations remain in place is the goal of the state.

Throughout the rest of the text, Miliband goes through some of the big questions in Marxism: What is the relation between class and party? Reform or revolution? Miliband has great insights into all of these questions and largely draws upon the debates occurring within the Second International.

Overall, this book comes highly recommended. It’s marvelously easy to read and is useful for both newcomers to Marxism, as well as those who have torn through Marx’s oeuvre/

[David Selsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. Five stars, no doubt. I learned about Ralph Miliband from reading Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht “Bigger than Bernie.” In the excellent section at the back of their book where they mention texts that have been instructive in their understanding of Marxism and class analysis they mention this book. A few times in the last couple weeks I’ve sat in front of my computer and searched online for the “best introductory book about Marxism.” What I’m really looking for is a book as good as “Marxism and Politics,” or something like a sequel to it. The only complaint I have about this book is it’s pretty short. I wish it were longer.

Like many of these books I wait several months to write reviews of I can’t remember many details of what’s in “Marxism and Politics.” Let me tell you what I have taken from the book:

1) It’s extremely well written. Miliband is an excellent writer. In college and grad school I spent a lot of years reading Fouacualt, Deleuze, Nietzsche, Derrida and other continental philosophers and post-structural philosophers. A lot of it was spectacular and stimulating and changed the way I thought about the world, but a lot of it was also hard to comprehend. Part of that might be due to the fact all the writers I just mentioned I was reading in translation; but I think more than that those authors, with the exception of Foucault, write with such a degree of abstraction that it’s hard to understand what they mean. In other words, it’s hard to understand how their ideas and analyses apply to things or moments “in the real world.” I would often find myself wishing they would give a concrete example of people, places, and things that were acting out or were ensnared in or working through the philosophical ideas and concepts they set forth. I never felt this way about Miliband. He is a wonderful, perhaps the best I’ve encountered, guide to Marx. Throughout the book one feels in good hands with Miliband.

2) The ideas and the way Miliband expresses them feel very current. “Marxism and Politics” was published in 1977. The geo-political scene was obviously much different then. But literally not one sentence in the book feels dated. That’s largely a result of the fact Miliband doesn’t use any cant. He describes things very carefully and the tone he adopts is one of great respect for the reader. I trusted that Miliband was challenging not only those he disagreed with but also challenging himself and those he agreed with--admitting failures, detailing the complexities of each situation, and admitting the challenges to be faced.

What else? Yup, I’ve pretty much forgotten the details of the book but hopefully conveyed the clarity and care with which Miliband presented his arguments. One other sensation I remember while reading the book was the feeling that Marxism/socialism and thinking in terms of class interests is a profound and intuitive way of understanding ourselves in the world and the world around us. This way of thinking about the world has, at least in America, been wiped away from public consciousness for over forty years. I have lived entirely during the neo-liberal order. This has been the era in which it has often felt there is no alternative to capitalism and it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism to quote two popular enunciations of the inevitability and intractability of capitalist existence. This book is a reminder of a different time; of different eras. It reminds the reader that politics hasn’t always been what it’s been during my life: purely performative; wracked by cliches, platitudes, and empty words. For most of my life the majority of Americans don’t even vote when they have the chance. And those who do vote vote for personalities, for people whom they think they’d like to have a beer with, or for someone who says all the right things but never comes close to living up to the promises made, nor should they have been believed anyway if we looked closely at his or her record before the election. It’s been an era where the words from most leaders have meant nothing. Part of the reason they’ve meant nothing is because everyone voting has known to various degrees nothing was going to change. The Republican Party would fight tooth and nail for its suite of cultural issues while exposing Americans to the whims and cruelties of the market (steel first version) while those at the top of the food chain reaped incomprehensible wealth. The Democratic Party would fight tooth and nail for its suite of cultural issues while exposing Americans to the whims and cruelties of the market (lace glove over steel fist version) while those at the top of the food chain reaped incomprehensible wealth. Both parties would bomb the hell out of whomever they felt needed bombing.

That’s changing. The future is unwritten but at least space is opening up discursively for a Marxian reading of society. This of course has a lot to do with the Bernie campaigns. It also has to do with the financial disaster of ‘08 and forty-five years of union destruction, austerity, neo-liberal hegemony here and abroad, and a new round of forever wars in the Middle East. If you're new to Marxism/socialism this is a fantastic book to purchase. If you’re not new, it’s still a fantastic book to buy.

[Soph Nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this! Clear, relatively accessible language, a set amount of topics to cover rather than trying to survey the totality of Marxist politics, and a rigorous insistence on being grounded in reality rather than “being led astray by sloganeering”. Highly recommend for anyone grappling with questions of the state and how to build an organization that can represent the working class.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ralph Miliband's Marxism and Politics represents a fairly successful attempt at drawing together Marxist political theory - from Marx and Engels themselves, through to later articulations by foremost Marxist thinkers Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Lenin, and then to the later ideas of Mao and Stalin - in order to produce a general review of the topic.

To Miliband, the end of Stalinism ushered in the opportunity for a radical reassessment of the rich Marxist tradition outside the grip of its strict orthodoxy. He doesn't so much to attempt to present an authoritative take on what Marx and Engels really meant, rather he provides a much more general sketch of how different themes and aspects of Marxist theory have been understood and emphasised by different figures in what was then the past 100 years of Marxism. To be sure, he begins with the qualification that 'Not only are the texts susceptible to different and contradictory interpretations: they also do incorporate tensions, contradictions, and unresolved problems which form an intrinsic part of Marxist political thought' (pp.5-6). And this applies not least of all to Marx and Engels themselves.

The study examines specific aspects of Marxist political theory: the concept and role of classes, the structures and defence of the bourgeois order, the organisational role of socialist parties and their relation to spontaneous class action, and ends with a particularly fruitful discussion of socialist tactics that complicates the binary between "Reform" and "Revolution".

There are some key strengths to Miliband's analysis. In his introduction, he argues against the common charge of economic reductionism and determinism that Marx (and by extension, Marxism - though personally I don't think this can necessarily be stretched to all Marxists) begins 'with an insistence that the separation between the political, economic, social, and cultural parts of the social whole is artificial and arbitrary, so that, for instance, the notion of 'economics' as free from 'politics' is an ideological abstraction and distortion [...] Marx and Engels explicitly rejected any rigid and mechanistic notion of 'determination'; and Engels specifically repudiated the idea that Marx and he had ever intended to suggest that 'the economic element is the only determining one'' (p.6, 8). This is broadly convincing, though Marx's correspondence against Bakunin (in which he accuses the latter of being obsessed with "political" causes over "economic") throws some confusion onto the first proposition particularly.

Another reviewer has stated the book defends structuralist Marxism, but there is in fact a robust critique of the structuralist tendency (best epitomised by Louis Althusser) and its implicit functionalism, for which Miliband is known also through his debates with Poulantzas. Miliband quite successfully argues this perspective confuses class power for state power. From his perspective, the relatively autonomy of the state does not preclude its use by the dominant classes for their domination. And this extends to institutions. But these institutions are (or can be), at the same time, 'arenas of class conflict' (p.55). And the state is nonetheless distinct from the class that uses it for its own benefit - as Miliband shows later on in the book, it is this autonomy that can allow it to challenge elected social democratic governments from within.

The discussion of the ways in which the existent order maintains its hegemony over subordinate classes is also interesting, though weakened by Miliband's own assertion that the notion of hegemony 'may lead to quite inadequate account being taken of the many-sided and permanent challenge which is directed at the ideological predominance of the 'ruling class', and of the fact that this challenge [...] produces a steady erosion of that predominance' (p.53). In actuality, however, the concept of hegemony - particularly its articulation by Gramsci and others - provides a remarkably apt tool for understanding the continued renewal of the bourgeois order against challenge from below. To assert, as he does, a 'steady erosion' of bourgeois predominance does not even begin to answer the question as to why this order has not yet then simply fallen away. And, in any event, for as much as Miliband premises this part of his discussion of the fact that 'with the single exception of Gramsci, [Marxism] did not seriously try to theorize, or even to identify, the many different ways in which the shaping of consciousness contributed to the stablization and legitimiation of capitalism' (p.43), he never even discusses Gramsci's concept of hegemony in any great detail. Stuart Hall's work is more direct on this aspect.

There is also a very weak discussion of nationalism later on, in which Miliband argues against the usefulness of 'nationalism' as an analytical category because of the way it 'suggests a specific ideological commitment common to an enormously varied scatter of groups and classes' (p.101). To be sure, he was writing in 1977 generally before the explosion of critical nationalism scholarship (Gellner and Anderson's groundbreaking works were, for instance, still a few years away). But this comment is superficial nonetheless. He appears completely unaware that nationalism itself is, as Rosa Luxemburg was arguing back in 1918, bourgeois vocabulary employed as a hegemonic strategy. In discussing Luxemburg and Lenin's contrasting views on "national independence", he argues apologetically 'The point is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed that Marxists could not deny the right of subject peoples to independence' (p.103). But - as Michael Mann has shown in relation to the Chartists - nationalism is an historically contingent ideology, invented by bourgeois philosophers, and was utilised by the ruling classes to pacify the revolutionary stirrings of working class social movements in the mid-19th century. Since then, its hegemony has globalised. Miliband's remarks also too closely conflate the state (which on p.105 he affirms the perpetuance of the state in the abstract) with the territorial nation-state, without due recognition of the highly conditional nature of the latter.

This also speaks to another problem of Miliband's analysis. While he complicates one dimensional readings of Leninism through a comparison of Lenin's earlier and later writings, and is by no means a Leninist himself, his attempt to distinguish Leninism from Stalinism on the basis the excesses of Stalin's repression far exceeded that of Lenin smacks of apologia. Though, of course, true on the facts (and Stalin did of course draw the ire and opposition of most leading Bolsheviks, including most significantly Trotsky) - are we really then saying there is no continuity between the two? Did Lenin simply not kill enough opponents?

In the discussion of Vanguard parties, he also creates confusing incoherence - at one point arguing Marx and Engels talked of a 'definite vanguard; and the notion of more than one vanguard is absurd' (p.128), yet on the next page argues ''The party' as the single legitimate expression of the labour movement is an invention that postdates the Bolshevik Revolution. There is nothing in classical Marxism which stipulates such singularity (p.129). Unless I'm completely misgrasping his point, that appears a compete contradiction. Is not the definition of a vanguard party the single representative of the labour movement? This is, of course, not to say it is the labour movement. And there is a good discussion of the notion of substitution (that is, how far a political party can or should go towards representing the working class indirectly) to this end, which adequately sets out the tensions of this debate.

A helpful and useful book in examining key strands of Marxist political theory, meticulously cited, and challenging. But, despite its place in a series known as "Marxist Introductions", not the most fluid or straightforward text, and lacking in elucidation in places that could really require it - such as in clearing up the apparent incoherence above. One final nitpick might be that Miliband never really definitively falls down on one side - though he is steadfast in his assertion that Marx and Engels certainly believed in a reformist (distinct from "gradualist") road to revolution, there is little substantiation or speculation about the kind of party system or political programme could go someway to resolving the tensions he presents.

[Suryashekhar Biswas · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I read in a long time. Miliband claims that due to various reasons (which he elaborates on), there has been a lack of comprehensive works explaining the 'politics of Marxism', or what a Marxist approach to politics would look like. Some of the advances in this regard were buried under the polemics and debates contemporary to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and others, and other questions have been historically omitted.
Miliband makes a case for a nuanced reconsideration and examination for some of the core tenets of Leninism, along with a deeper understanding of the state in a capitalist society (which is also his major area of interest.) The concluding chapter on reformism and revolution, has important points to make to the existing dichotomy. All in all, there are various things that Miliband pointed out, albeit in the 60s when this was written, and in the context of the British Left, it still carries much relevance to Marxist politics today.

[laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and engaging read. It flows naturally, more so than other books similar that I have read. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of a conclusion, but as I prefer to be presented with arguments and think about them critically on my own anyway this suited me. ANOTHER POINT TO THE MILIFANDOM TBH

[Steve Lawless · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best introduction to Marxism that I've read. In a non sectarian way Miliband lays out the central issues of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. He looks at the problem of Stalin and also of the way that social democratic parties will undermine the interests of the working class. He also lays out the tensions between reform and revolution. The chapters on the state are excellent. Highly relevant to today.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read on leftist politics. Really enjoyable.

[Cian Ireland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book which covers massive amount of ground in a very concise way. Must read for anyone interested in understanding the Marxist approach to politics.

[Jake Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good stuff.

[David Besser · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very difficult read which says more about my own lack of prior knowledge than the book itself.Rewarding

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best books on this topic I've ever read. So clear, so reasonable, so undogmatic; and, as it turned out, so prescient.

[Rob Trump · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very little here to disagree with and some great concepts and tools. A little repetitive, and too much on the USSR for me, though that is understandably a function of the time.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book Professor Miliband, shame about your sons!

[Alek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A popular book among DSA cadre of various stripes, for good reason. Attempts to lay out the actual limits of parlimentary socialist politics, beyond dogmatism or opportunism. It at least puts the questions before us really well. Basically lays the basis for a lot of subsequent marxist thinking.