Book Review: Miliband's State in Capitalist Society.

An academic book review I wrote for college before Christmas.

Given recent discussion of Chavez and Socialism for the 21st Century, Syriza and the Idea of a Left Government (or Worker's Government) and the debate around radical reform or revolution I feel it is important to look at Miliband and the criticisms which have been made of his Marxism.

Book Review: The State in Capitalist Society: The Analysis of the Western System of Power (1969) by Ralph Miliband.

The State in Capitalist Society was considered to be a very important book around the time it was written in the 1960s/70s for anyone who was interested in a sociological examination of the state and its relationship to the capitalist economy and in particular people on the left, especially Marxists.

Miliband was one of the first modern day authors to challenge the ‘common sense’ pluralist view of the state and the notion of the state being an independent democratic body that can bend one way or the other depending on public opinion. Ralph Miliband has notable offspring, his son Ed Miliband is now leader of the British Labour Party and his other son David is a Labour Party MP for South Shields. Ralph Miliband’s works are still considered to be extremely important in left-wing academic circles in the UK today. Miliband played a huge role in defending the works of Marx from both the right and defenders of the Soviet Union. He continued to have a huge influence on academia and the left and the right up until his death in 1994.

Miliband - Chilling out.

Freemanism, Conspiracies and Legal Trickery.

(Freemanism has nothing to do with Morgan Freeman)

There is a spread of new and interesting ideas out there. People are being convinced by enthusiastic individuals that they do not have to pay their TV Licence, clampers have no right to touch your car, you do not legally have to pay your Household Charge, Property Tax or Car Tax, Toll Bridges are illegal and that Bailiffs and County Sheriffs have no legal standing in Irish law. Ultimately these ideas stem from the notion that the law can only be broken if there is an offence committed against another person, if there is a victim. This line of thinking also leads to things such as "The Strawman Theory" and other quack ideas.

These are the things that I would like to explore in this piece.

Ben Gilroy and the Far-Right.

It has been revealed that Meath-East by-election candidate and leader of Direct Democracy Ireland (DDI), Ben Gilroy has links with the far-right.

Ben Gilroy - Secret Right-Winger

I won't go into detail about who DDI are as I have already done that on a previous post on this blog. In that post I made the assertion that DDI is most likely secretly right wing and they claim to be "neither right-wing or left-wing" to appeal to a wider voter base. I also alluded to the how they play on nationalist sentiment in terms of imagery and rhetoric and how this can be dangerous if we do not know what they really stand for beyond direct democracy.