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Ralph Milband, 19.. - 1994
The Common Sense of Socialism
For anyone studying or teaching politics in the late 1960s and 1970s, the
publication of Ralph Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society in 1969 was a
watershed. The `pluralist' theories which had dominated the discipline,
especially in North America, somehow never quite recovered from this exposure of
the emperor's vacuous nakedness; and in the debates that ensued, `the state',
with everything it implies about the concentration of social power, re-emerged
from behind the mystifications of `the political system' and `political
behaviour' to become a, if not the, central theme of political studies.
On the left in particular, the `Miliband-Poulantzas debate' became a major
preoccupation. It is still easy to remember the intellectual excitement
generated by a whole new mode of Marxist discourse which had rescued the state
and politics from the epiphenomenal, and to recall the force of Miliband's
personality and conviction (not to speak of his humour) as he spoke, in public
or private. But it is harder to recapture just what specific issues were at
stake in that debate. Important divergences there certainly were between the
main protagonists - not only concerning matters of theory but about the
political practices of Stalinism, Maoism, Eurocommunism, and so on; yet in
historical perspective, their differences seem incommensurate with the intensity
of the debate, or at least the intensity with which post-graduate students then
followed it. The political issues that preoccupied the left `before the fall'
seem very distant, and the differences between Miliband and Poulantzas, both in
their various ways looking for a ground for socialism neither Stalinist nor
social-democratic, may seem less significant in the face of the gulf that now
divides Marxism from a whole range of post- and anti-Marxist trends on the left.
Nonetheless, even now one difference still stands out, and that is the
difference in intellectual style.
To say this is not at all to trivialise the issues. I now think that the
distinctiveness of Ralph Miliband's intellectual style has always been essential
to his substance and to the qualities that have continued to be such a vital
resource for the socialist left, making his death such a serious blow. That
style represented a project. It testified to a specific conception of the task
confronting socialist intellectuals. And it may be no exaggeration to say that
this style and this project distinguish Miliband from all other major socialist
intellectuals of his generation.
`The ultimate purpose of counter-hegemonic struggles,' Miliband wrote in
1990, `is to make socialism "the common sense of the epoch".'1 This involves two
things: `a radical critique of the prevailing social order', and `an affirmation
that an entirely different social order ... is not only desirable ... but
possible'.2 This may seem, on the face of it, no different from what any
socialist intellectual would claim, among other things, to be doing. Yet it
would be very difficult to characterise, say, Althusser or Poulantzas (or
today's post-Marxists and post-modernists) as speaking for the `common sense' of
socialism. It was certainly not their aim to lay out an intelligible and
persuasive argument for socialism which takes little for granted. The issue here
is not simply their scholastic opacity - though the contrast with Miliband's
translucent clarity is striking enough. The point is also that, even when they
were talking about the same things, they clearly saw the substance of their
project very differently from Miliband. Whether their object was to reconstruct
the epistemological foundations of Marxism or to translate the strategic debates
of European Communism into theoretical terms, it was certainly not to argue the
case for socialism, and even less to make it `common sense', in any meaning of
that phrase.
In fact, it is hard to think of anyone else who has taken on this task - a
task perhaps less conducive to theoretical pyrotechnics than are the
intellectual enterprises of other social thinkers on the left, but nonetheless
in many ways more difficult - with anything like Miliband's consistency,
comprehensiveness and breadth, not to mention his commitment and lucidity.
Marxist historians like E. P. Thompson have contributed greatly to the
denaturalisation of capitalism, and to the affirmation of other human
possibilities, by tracing its history back to its contested origins, to the
confrontation of capitalist principles with other, resistant practices and
values. And some Marxist philosophers have laid a foundation for a socialist
epistemology and ethics. But Miliband stands virtually alone in his systematic
effort to map the political terrain of capitalism, to chart a course for
socialist struggle within it, and to delineate the anatomy of class and state
power in capitalist society - the barriers which it erects against a more humane
and democratic social order as well as the resources and agencies available to
overcome them.
This project was carried out in a whole series of books, after Parliamentary
Socialism (1961): not only The State in Capitalist Society, but also Marxism and
Politics (1977), Capitalist Democracy in Britain (1982), Class Power and State
Power (1985), Divided Societies (1989), Socialism for a Sceptical Age
(forthcoming), and many articles, as well as in his co-editorship of the
Socialist Register. While reading his measured yet deeply engaged critique of
capitalism and his sober yet ultimately optimistic assessment of the
possibilities of socialism, it is hard to see how any thinking, reasonable and
realistic person with a modicum of human decency could fail to be a socialist.
Who else writing today - when even the critique of capitalism is out of fashion
- can claim to have the same effect?
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.
The last lines of Ralph Miliband's last book sum up his convictions and his
project: `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.'
Ellen Meiksins Wood
Notes
1. Ralph Miliband, `Counter-Hegemonic Strategies',
Socialist Register, 1990, p. 363.
2. Ibid., p. 348.
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