Nicos Poulantzas (1936-1979) was a Greco-French Marxist political sociologist. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading Structural Marxist and while at first a Leninist, he eventually became a proponent of eurocommunism. He is most well-known for his theoretical work on the state. But he also offered Marxist contributions to the analysis of fascism, social class in the contemporary world, and the collapse of the dictatorships in Southern Europe in the 1970s (e.g. Franco's rule in Spain, Salazar's in Portugal, andPapadopoulos's in Greece).
Poulantzas's theory of the state was reacting against what he saw as more simplistic understandings within Marxism. Instrumentalist Marxist accounts held that the state was simply an instrument in the hands of a particular class. Poulantzas disagreed with this, because he saw the capitalist class as too focused on their individual short term profit, rather than on maintaining the class's power as a whole, to simply exercise the whole of state power in its own interest. Poulantzas argued that the state, though relatively autonomous from the capitalist class, nonetheless functions to ensure the smooth operation of capitalist society, and therefore benefits the capitalist class. In particular, he focused on how an inherently divisive system such as capitalism could co-exist with the social stability necessary for it to reproduce itself - looking in particular to nationalism as a means to overcome the class divisions within capitalism. Poulantzas has been particularly influential over the leading contemporary Marxist state theorist, Bob Jessop .
Borrowing from Antonio Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, Poulantzas argued that repressing movements of the oppressed is not the sole function of the state. Rather state power must also obtain the consent of the oppressed. It does this through class alliances, where the dominant group makes an 'alliance' with subordinate groups, as a means to get the consent of the subordinate group. An example of this can be seen in a Poulantzas-influenced analysis of the New Deal in the United States: the American ruling class, by acceding to some of the demands of labour (regarding things like minumum wage, labour laws, etc.), helped cement an alliance between labour and a particular fraction of capital and the state [Levine 1988]. This was necessary for the continued existence of capitalism, for if the ruling class simply repressed the movements and avoided making any concessions, it could have to led to a socialist revolution.
Major works
- Poulantzas, Nicos. Political power and social classes. NLB, 1973 (orig. 1968).
- Poulantzas, Nicos. Fascism and dictatorship: the Third International and the problem of fascism. NLB, 1974 (orig. 1970).
- Poulantzas, Nicos. Classes in contemporary capitalism. NLB, 1975 (orig. 1973).
- Poulantzas, Nicos. The crisis of the dictatorships: Portugal, Greece, Spain. Humanities Press, 1976.
- Poulantzas, Nicos. State, power, socialism. NLB, 1978.
Further reading
- Jessop, Bob. Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist theory and political strategy. Macmillan, 1985.
- Levine, Rhonda. Class struggle and the New Deal: industrial labor, industrial capital, and the state. University Press of Kansas, c1988.
