Reviews

THE STATE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY, by Ralph Miliband. New York: Basic Books. 292 pp. $6.95.

RALPH MILIBAND, of the London School of Economics, has prepared a careful defense of a socialist critique of “advanced capitalist society.” The main burden of this defense is to show that the theory of “democratic pluralism,” which Miliband associates variously with Galbraith, Dahl, and Aron, is inadequate as a characterization of modem capitalist society.

Miliband’s efforts to show this are probably convincing on the whole, though they may risk indicting democratic pluralism for something it does not attempt. There is a difference between showing what a society’s structures are and exhibiting how ap...