The popular British newspaper, the Daily Mail, published an article last Saturday on the Marxist academic Ralph Miliband and what it takes to be his political influence on his son, Ed Miliband -- the leader of the British Labour Party. Predictably, Ed Miliband has responded in strong terms to this piece.

The actual Daily Mail headline was: 'The man who hated Britain.' Edward Miliband has said that it was a 'character assassination'. That's no surprise. If his dad had been Vlad the Impaler he would have probably said something similar. In fact most sons would do the same -- it's only natural.

Yes, a son shouldn't be held responsible for his father's actions or views. So the question is whether or not Edward Miliband is indeed carrying on the political tradition of his father.

The Daily Mail itself wrote:

"We do not maintain... that the iniquity of the fathers should be visited on the sons. But when a son with prime ministerial ambitions swallows his father's teachings, as the younger Miliband appears to have done, the case is different."

The writer of the article, Geoffrey Levy, questioned whether or not Ralph Miliband's Marxist views have influenced Ed Miliband. It's a justifiable question considering the fact that for a long time Edward's father was one of the most important Marxist academics and intellectuals in the UK. (He was perhaps slightly less influential -- or at least less popular -- than the British Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm.) Ralph Miliband also had close links to the Labour Party and wrote about it in often critical terms (as well as saying many dismissive things about 'capitalist' or parliamentary politics).

The Daily Mail writer, Geoffrey Levy, went into detail when he wrote:

"[H]ow passionately [Ralph Miliband] would have approved today of his son's sinister warning about some of the policies he plans to follow if he ever becomes prime minister."

As you'd expect, Edward Miliband has distanced himself from his father -- or at least from his father's Marxist beliefs. He said:

"My father's strongly left-wing views are well known, as is the fact that I have pursued a different path and I have a different vision..."

Indeed 'Red Ed' has 'pursued a different path'. Even if one doesn't accuse Ed Miliband of being a Marxist, he must know that Marxists have followed all sorts of different 'paths' throughout the 20th century and beyond. There's been Trotskyism, Leninism, and Stalinism. There have also been many Marxist political strategies: such as entryism; the state-and party-based politics of the Communists; the violence- and activism-based politics of the Trotskyists (e.g., the SWP); the infiltration-of-the-Labour-Party route of Militant Tendency and many other such groups and individuals; and now we have the patronize-and-tap-into-the-'revolutionary-potential'-of-Muslims route of contemporary 'Progressives'; such as George Galloway's Respect Party, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Hope Not Hate. However, the most effective 'path', I would argue, is the Gramscian or Frankfurt School one of 'taking over the institutions' and carrying out the revolution from within. And what bigger institution is there than the British Labour Party?

So when Miliband laughs at the idea of him being part of a 'sinister Marxist plot', he must realize that politics has always been full of such plots. He should also know that the history of the British Labour Party -- especially in the 1980s and before -- has been ridden with specifically Marxist plots. In fact if you look into all these political plots, they aren't at all sinister. They are obvious; if only you care to look.

Not surprisingly (because most what it said is true), the Daily Mail has refused to apologize for the story and stands by it (it did so in an editorial). The bone of contention, at least in Ed Miliband's eyes, is a single passage which the Daily Mail cited. It is a quote from Ralph Miliband in which he wrote that the English were
"perhaps the most nationalist people in the world... you sometimes want them almost to lose [the war] to show them how things are".

This quote is apparently from diary written when he was 17. In response to its use by the Daily Mail, Edward Miliband said that to 'build an entire case about him hating our country on an adolescent diary entry is, of course, absurd'. No, Ed, what's absurd is that you think the Daily Mail -- or anyone else -- would base all it charges against Ralph Miliband on a single diary entry. If, say, Margaret Thatcher's -- or even Tony Blair's -- father had written that, no one would have made such a big deal about it. Only a famous Marxist theorist wrote it -- the father of the shadow prime minister; who, some would argue, may well have similar views.

(The full quote is even more telling: "The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world...When you hear the English talk of this war you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are. ... This slogan is taken for granted by the English people as a whole. To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.")

In defense of his father, Ed Miliband said that he 'loved' Britain and 'served in the Navy'. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there conscription in Britain at that time? (And what, exactly, does 'love' mean in this context?) If there was outright conscription for all adult males, then there was a moral and political imperative for such people to fight the Nazis. Indeed, as a victim of the Nazis himself, Ralph Miliband would have fought them no matter what outfit he belonged to. It just so happened that he ended up in Britain -- so he fought in the British Navy. Nonetheless, as a Marxist, he would have been fundamentally against all forms of patriotism. Therefore Ralph Miliband didn't fight for Britain. He fought against the Nazis and on behalf of the international working class.

Edward Miliband also said the article was a 'smear'. Yet Marxists -- until very recently -- wouldn't have thought twice of voicing such categorical slag-offs of Britain and the British people. Nonetheless, Ralph Miliband (just as with Leftists/Marxists today) would of course have felt it necessary to exclude all socialist and Communist Brits from such criticisms. But they would have only constituted a small number of British people. And the situation is even worse today. Contemporary Leftists (including the pseudo-patriots) still hate most Brits and what they believe; even if they too, like Ralph Miliband, exclude the tiny number of Brits who've escaped from 'false consciousness' (or from 'internalizing the values of the elite', as Noam Chomsky puts it).

Indeed, considering that Marxists and Leftists still think this about most Brits and all patriots, it's perhaps even more likely that they did so in Ralph Miliband's day. In fact the contemporary Labour Party is still firmly attached to all sorts of groups -- from Hope Not Hate to UAF and to unions such as UNISON, NUT and the NUJ -- that still think precisely in these terms.

Even internally the Labour Party has had many elements which were Communist/Trotskyist and which therefore hated all forms of British patriotism. This was most certainly true up until the Neil Kinnock's day (when he had a lot of bother from Militant Tendency) and perhaps up until Tony Blair. But many would now argue that the Trotskyists and Communists in the Labour Party are far more subtle and wise than they used to be. They know that mouthing off about the sins of patriotism -- or 'chauvinism', 'xenophobia', or 'racism' as they often put it -- will be politically counterproductive. Indeed because these Leftist elements in the Labour Party -- and beyond --have already 'taken over the institutions', as suggested by Antonio Gramsci, they have no need to mouth off or demonstrate on the streets about the evils of patriotism. Instead of mouthing off or activism on the streets, they can do something about it in the Labour Party itself, or in the Rights and race industries, or in the Law, or in the councils, or in the local and national newspapers, or in the universities, or in the BBC, or even in the churches. In fact that's precisely what Leftists or 'priogressives' have been doing since at least the 1960s; the time when Ralph Miliband, Ed Miliband's father, was most active.

Note: Some Nazis and other Jew-haters may have fixated on the 'Jewish blood' of Ralph and Ed Miliband. So it's interesting to note that the author of the Daily Mail article (which criticized these fellows), Geoffrey Levy, is himself Jewish. This only goes to show that when it comes to Jewish people, the only safe generalization you can make is that it's very hard to generalize about them.