Ralph Miliband Archive
Please note
The catalogue titles or descriptions in this collection may contain terminology and phrases that would now be considered unacceptable. Where present these original terms continue to be included to preserve historical accuracy and provide social and historical context.See the Access and usage section below for further details.
Details
Type of record: Archive
Title: Ralph Miliband Archive
Classmark: MS 1712
Creator(s): Miliband, Ralph()
Date(s): 1940-2002
Language: English; French; German; Hebrew; Italian; Portuguese; Spanish
Size and medium: 30 boxes on 10 shelves, manuscript, typescript, press-cuttings, and printed material.
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/8180
Description
The archive consists of the following: Original MS and TS papers by Miliband (1940-1994), correspondence (1942-1994), documents held by Miliband (1940-1994), published articles by Miliband (1953-1994), news cuttings on various subjects collected by Miliband (1967-1980s), correspondence of Marion Kozak after Miliband’s death (1994-2000), and documents relating to Miliband collected by Marion Kozak after his death (1948-1997). System of Arrangement The papers were the gift from Professor Miliband's widow, Marion Kozak, on 11 April 2003. They were received in boxes containing files. The original document files (some of which include markings on them about their contents) and the order of the papers within files have been retained. However, since there appeared to be no cohesive order to the files within the boxes, they have been subsequently rearranged by Library staff. The order is thematic and chronological, making up 22 series that reflect either the form of the record (e.g.
correspondence) or the activities to which they relate (e.g. Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize).
The series are:
1. Early years [EY] - material from the 1940s and 1950s relating to Miliband’s school and university years (5 files)
2. Harold J. Laski [LA] - papers, correspondence and other material relating to Miliband’s lecturer and friend, 1940s-1993 (4 files)
3. Navy [NA] - Navy and post-war correspondence, 1942-1950 (5 files)
4. Diaries [DI] - pocket diaries of Miliband, 1944-1994 (7 files)
5. Books [BO] - material relating to books written by Miliband, including original drafts and notes in manuscript and typescript, correspondence, reviews, contracts, and news cuttings, 1960-1994 (41 files)
6. Socialist Register [SR], 1964-1995 (45 files)
7. Published papers [PP] - some of Miliband’s articles, essays, chapters in books, reviews, talks, and conference papers, together with related research material in manuscript and typescript, 1953-1994 (27 files)
8. Correspondence [CO], 1942-1994 (50 files)
9. Publishing correspondence [PC], 1966-1996 (15 files)
10. Council of Academic Freedom and Democracy [AF], 1970-1986 (10 files)
11. Marxism [MA] - material relating to Marxism (incl. Marx House lectures),
Centre for Marxist Education, Little Red School, Red Green Study Group and
the Institute of Radical Studies, 1965-1993 (18 files)
12. Academic Teaching [AT], 1957-1994 (37 files)
13. Tony Benn [TB], 1985-1992 (2 files)
14. Marcel Liebman [ML], 1961-1987 (4 files)
15. The Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize [ID], 1964-1993 (5 files)
16. Socialist Society [SS], 1981-1988 (11 files)
17. Labour Party [LP], 1963-1985 (10 files)
18. Lipman Trust [LT], 1981-1993 (28 files)
19. Conference material [CM], 1968-1997 (8 files)
20. Politics and the United States [US], 1980s (3 files)
21. News cuttings [NC], 1950s-1980s, 5 boxes
22. Ralph Miliband [RM] - material about Ralph Miliband, and Marion Kozak’s
correspondence about him after his death, 1948-2000 (15 files)
The listing of the collection is generally file-level: in all series each file is numbered, and the contents of each file are described (thus e.g. EY/1, SR/5, CO/3 each refer to individual files). However, there is box-level listing only (although this is very detailed in many cases) for series 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22.
Biography or history
Ralph Miliband, a notable political theorist, Marxist and socialist, was born in Brussels of Polish Jewish parents in 1924. By the time he was 15, he was a member of the radical-socialist Jewish youth organisation, Hashomer Hatzair, and he had already read the Communist Manifesto. Yet, in retrospect he thought he had not been particularly politically conscious in his youth. In May 1940, when he was 16, Miliband fled Brussels with his father to England, as Hitler’s army was invading Belgium. In England he changed his name from Adolphe to Ralph. He continued his education in London, and was admitted to the London School of Economics in 1941. Between June 1943 and January 1946 Miliband did war service at the Royal Navy. Then in 1947 he graduated with first-class honours from the Department of Government at the LSE. In 1949 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Political Science at the LSE. He obtained a doctorate for a thesis entitled "Popular thought in the French Revolution,
1789-1794” from the University of London in 1956. Miliband subsequently became a Senior Lecturer at the LSE, and continued teaching there until 1972. During his teaching career he mainly taught modern political thought, social and political theory and a graduate course in political sociology. In 1972 he was appointed Professor of Politics and Head of the Department of Politics at the University of Leeds, a position which he kept until 1978, although for the academic session 1977-1978 he worked as a Visiting Professor at the Brandeis University in Massachusetts. After leaving the University of Leeds, he lectured at Brandeis University during autumn semesters, and continued to do research in London for the rest of the year. He also gave several guest lectures at universities in Europe and North America. During his own studies at the LSE, Miliband had been immensely influenced by Harold Laski, whom he regarded as "a great teacher of politics”. As a teacher Miliband expected serious
work and debate from his students, was known to be "an absolutely brilliant orator” and his lectures were always exceptionally popular.
After 1956, following the publication of The Reasoner within the British Communist Party by Edward Thompson and John Saville, Miliband became directly involved in the British New Left movement. In Thompson and Saville he found true political allies with whom to advance the socialist project. In 1964 Miliband and Saville founded the Socialist Register, an annual collection of important scholarly articles in socialism (an offshoot of the New Left Review). He continued editing the Register with Saville, and for the final ten years with Leo Panitch, for 30 years until his death in 1994. The criterion for articles included in the Register, as he sets out in a letter to John Saville (SR/7), was "interest, excellence of argument, and the degree to which an essay pushes things forward”. His first book Parliamentary Socialism (1961), a strong critique of the Labour Party with a historical account since 1900, proved enormously influential. His other major works include The State in Capitalist
Society (1969), Marxism and Politics (1977), Capitalist Democracy in Britain (1982), Class Power and State Power (1983), Divided Societies: Class Struggle in Contemporary Capitalism (1989) and Socialism for a Sceptical Age (1994). Miliband’s contributions to Marxist scholarship can be summed up as one of the tributes at his death described him as "the leading Marxist political scientist in the English-speaking world”. He incorporated other approaches to his Marxist theorisation to make it accessible to non-Marxist intellectual community. In 1961 Miliband married Marion Kozak, and they had two sons, David and Edward. See the biography by Michael Newman Ralph Miliband and the politics of the New Left and the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Access and usage
Access
This collection has not been listed in detail and access to parts of it may be protected under the Data Protection Act and other relevant legislation. If you would like to request access to any part of this collection, please contact Special Collections. Upon receipt of your request, a member of the team will discuss your requirements with you and review relevant material accordingly
The catalogue titles or descriptions in this collection may contain terminology and phrases that would now be considered unacceptable. Where present these original terms continue to be included to preserve historical accuracy and provide social and historical context.
View the Cultural Collections sensitivity policy