The joke almost writes itself. Ralph Miliband, the socialist intellectual, devoted an entire book to cataloging the British Labour Party’s history of tepidity and a good chunk of his career warning leftists that the party was not a vehicle for winning socialism — only to raise two sons who ultimately rose to the party’s highest echelons and proved him correct by continuing its rightward drift.

Ralph died in 1994, sixteen years before David and Ed Miliband faced off for the Labour Party leadership. Ed won, and helmed the party for the next five years; he resigned in May after Labour’s thumping in the general election. His successor, whomever it turns out to be, will almost assuredly confirm Labour’s role as a home for those looking to manage capitalism, not transcend it.

But while another centrist leading the party may be taken as an indication of the Left’s irrelevance, the elder Miliband wouldn’t have conceded as much. Class exploitation and inequality didn’t disappear with the advent of labor laws or the welfare state or the Internet — they are at capitalism’s core. And as long as the system continued — characterized by “the subordination of the many to the few, on the basis of property and privilege” — it would generate opposition.