Nicos Poulantzas

Nicos Poulantzas (

Theory of the state

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Poulantzas's theory of the state reacted to what he saw as 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 its 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 coexist 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 Marxist state theorist, Bob Jessop.

Borrowing from

revolution.

Legacy

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Nicos Poulantzas" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Poulantzas provides a nuanced analysis of class structure in an era when the internationalisation of production systems (today "globalisation") was shifting power from labour to capitalist classes. In many areas, he foresaw the current debate on the critical Marxian language of class, bourgeoisie, and hegemony finds little echo in contemporary political science, where its positivism requires researchers to focus on putative measurable and objective entities. However, by placing class analysis at the center of political analysis, Poulantzas reminds us that theorists are political agents themselves and that accounts of the political world are suffused with the ambient ideology that they suppose themselves to bracket.^[citation needed]

The official

Formulated by Poulantzas, the "

• Poulantzas, Nicos. Fascism and Dictatorship: The Third International and the Problem of Fascism. NLB, 1974 (orig. 1970).
  ISBN 0902308858
• Poulantzas, Nicos. Classes in Contemporary Capitalism. NLB, 1975 (orig. 1973).
  ISBN 0902308068
• Poulantzas, Nicos. The Crisis of the Dictatorships: Portugal, Greece, Spain. Humanities Press, 1976.
  ISBN 0902308777
• Poulantzas, Nicos. Political Power and Social Classes.
  ISBN 0-86091-705-3
• Poulantzas, Nicos. State, Power, Socialism. NLB, 1978.
  ISBN 086091013X
• Poulantzas, Nicos. The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law and the State, ed. J. Martin. Verso, 2008.
  ISBN 9781844672004

• Aronowitz, Stanley and Peter Bratsis eds. Paradigm Lost: State Theory Reconsidered. University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
• Gallas, Alexander, Bretthauer, Lars, Kannankulam, John and Ingo Stützle eds. Reading Poulantzas. Merlin Press, 2011.
• Gallas, Alexander The Thatcherite Offensive: A Neo-Poulantzasian Analysis. Brill, 2015.
• 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, 1988.

External links

• Nicos Poulantzas Institute (in Greek and English)
• "A Trotskyist critique of Poulantzas's theory of the state" by Colin Barker, International Socialism
• Website on Poulantzas' work and to the book "Reading Poulantzas" (in German)