Ralph Milliband

Ralph Miliband (born Adolphe Miliband; 7 January 1924 – 21 May 1994) was a Belgian sociologist who was known as a prominent Marxist author. 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. Miliband was born in Belgium to working-class Polish Jewish immigrants. He fled to the United Kingdom 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 influential books on Marxist theory and the criticism of capitalism, such as Parliamentary Socialism (1961) and Marxism and Politics (1977). 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 to become the British Foreign Secretary, and Ed was elected party leader in 2010. Continue Reading »

The above description is from the Wikipedia article on Ralph Milliband, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0. A full list of contributors can be found here.