Father and Son.

It would be ignorant to suggest that Ed and David Miliband have less politically in common than either one with their father. Yet, Ed Miliband's portrayal in the press as 'red' Ed, in the pocket of the unions, provokes an analysis of which it is essential to revisit the arguments that made his father renowned as an Marxist intellectual of the highest quality.

The State in Capitalist Society: The analysis of the Western System of Power is a superb examination of the much contested political concept of power. Although contemporary analyses of power are arguably more epistemologically thorough, Miliband hits on a conception of power that is radical for its time. Miliband Snr argues that there exists in western capitalist states such things as ruling elites, whose power is used to protect the interest of the business, capitalist classes. The sense that this power is so holistic and inpenetrable gives weight to later arguments of power as something less central, unique and tangible but more ubiquitous and subtly coercive.

Ed Miliband was not voted into the Labour leadership by the ruling class - that is, the Labour Party elite of MPs, AMs, MSPs, MEPs. Nor was he voted in by Labour Party members. He was voted in by union members; some Labour Party members, many not. This is the antithesis of being propped up by the ruling elite. The fear portrayed by his nickname, by the plethora of unfortunate photographs used by the press indicates a fear that he will not work in the interests of the ruling classes and thus will work against the interests of the moneyed elite. Of course, the notion that he will represent the ordinary working people rather than business is almost completely impossible - at the very least exaggerated - given the state of the post-financial crisis western world. But any hint at it has the press running scared. The press are central to the ruling elite as so many newspaper proprietors are of the big business world. They have a degree of control over public opinion and do not want to lose that, nor their money and status.

Despite Marxists all round the country criticising the institutionalisation of the Labour Party into the ruling classes (indeed, Miliband Snr's criticism of Harold Wilson's leadership followed this line), Ed's 'red threat', based almost soley on the union link, supports his father's theory. That the ruling, political elite of bureaucrats not landed gentry hate to see power dispersed lest it curbs sectional financial interest.

I would encourage those interested in ruling elites and power to look at Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap.