Marxism and politics - Ralph Miliband

Ralph Miliband in this classic text raises pertinent questions like: How and why does capitalism limit democracy and the meaning of citizenship? What is class and class conflict? What is the relationship between the capitalist system and the state apparatus? What is the interconnection between classes and their agencies or parties? What are the instruments through which the dominant class exercises hegemony? Why did post-revolutionary regimes, like the Soviet Union, fail to establish a system of socialist democracy?

Ralph Miliband (1924-1994) was one of the key intellectual figures of the British New Left. He was the founder of the Socialist Register and author of Marxism and Politics, Parliamentary Socialism (reprinted 2009) and Socialism for a Sceptical Age. He held the Chair of Politics at the University of Leeds; he also taught at the London School of Economics, Brandeis in Boston, York University in Toronto and the City University of New York.