Eric Lawton reviewed The state in capitalist society by Ralph Miliband
Good but outdated
3 stars
The main arguments and conclusions are good but it's very outdated in its examples. Not the fault of the author, just that I took a few decades to get round to finishing it as it needs a lot of focus. It wasn't too bad for me, because I lived through many of the examples, which are drawn from Europe, the US and the UK. There were too many quotations from Marx for me, often accompanied by "things didn't turn out that way but he was almost right", which suggests that some newer marxists might be better to use. He is accurate in describing left-wing parties like the UK Labour Party ― it's interesting that his son, who was active there, was active with the ideology which he describes here as unfortunate but inevitable. The other way it's outdated is that although events since the book was published have not been …
The main arguments and conclusions are good but it's very outdated in its examples. Not the fault of the author, just that I took a few decades to get round to finishing it as it needs a lot of focus. It wasn't too bad for me, because I lived through many of the examples, which are drawn from Europe, the US and the UK. There were too many quotations from Marx for me, often accompanied by "things didn't turn out that way but he was almost right", which suggests that some newer marxists might be better to use. He is accurate in describing left-wing parties like the UK Labour Party ― it's interesting that his son, who was active there, was active with the ideology which he describes here as unfortunate but inevitable. The other way it's outdated is that although events since the book was published have not been far off his predictions, his belief that people would remain too horrified by 1940s fascism that they wouldn't adopt it again has proven sadly wrong.
