14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Return of an old classic, June 6, 2001
This review is from: State, Power, Socialism (Paperback)
The premature death of Nicos Poulantzas was, indeed, a great disaster for Marxism, and for all social theorists concerned with the critical evaluation of the State. In this, perhaps his most readable work, Poulanztas rejects the simple instrumentalist interpretation of the State in favour of a complex structuralist approach which views the state not as an instrument, but a CONTESTED FIELD. Poulantzas portrays a state that is rent through with internal contradictions: which is itself a site of struggle. For Poulantzas, the class struggle IMPRINTS itself upon the state. As he argues, "the State bathes in struggles that continually submerge it." Hence Poulantzas's view of the State as a 'strategic field' is radically opposed to the 'fortress State' perspective, where the state is an intsrument firmly in the hands of a ruling class - and must be laid seige to or 'stormed' in order to be 'smashed' and then reconstructed. There are difficulties with Poulantzas's analysis. In a fashion akin to all Structuralists, his structural determinism seems to deny to possibility of agency. From my own perspective, I would argue that class struggle does not ONLY occur structurally, but reaches a higher level with the dawning of class consciousness and the establishment of the working class as a true collective-historical ACTOR. What is more, it is not only the class struggle that imprints itself upon the state, but political struggles of all varieties. Finally, I find the non-Marxist concept of a state contested by competing 'elites' quite convincing also - in the sense that this is at least ONE dimension of the nature of the State. Hence, it is true that I harbour serious differences with the perspective put forward by Poulantzas. Nevertheless, I must conclude by asserting that his account of the State in its true, contradictory form, was one of the greatest contributions to the political theory of the State. This is a must read of Marxists and political science students alike.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Theory of the state, June 5, 2009
This review is from: State, Power, Socialism (Paperback)
The Greco-French social philosopher Nicos Poulantzas wrote five books which were translated in English. I've read and re-read his three theoretical books: Political Power and Social Classes; Classes in Contemporary Capitalism; and State Power Socialism.
I read the first of these three times, taking copious notes the second time through. Eventually I concluded that I had actually begun to understand the material. But then I wondered if I wasn't really just getting accustomed to the stuff, mistaking repetition and remembering for understanding.
With his second theoretical book, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, Poulantzas' work became much more readable. He seemed to be finding his way stylistically, devoid of elegance, but no longer given to hopelessly long and convoluted sentences after the fashion of Althusser.
With his last theoretical book, Poulantzas found his own style, and, while sometimes a bit obscure, it represented a vast rhetorical improvement over his earlier work.
I give Poulantzas credit for disabusing me once and for all of instrumnetalism. This means, of course, that while Obama may be a better president than Bush, we're still enmeshed in the same structure of late capitalism as before. In the first decade of the 2ist century this has become unmistakable, and the cost of our location is much higher and less well hidden.
The same is true of the fact that the capitalist edifice will be rebuilt, much as it was, openly using public money. My expectations would have been higher and my current sense of disappointment a lot keener were it not for Poulantzas' instruction.
Beyound that, though I don't always understand the specific point he's making, Poulantza's insistence that capitalism and the state are mutually but imperfectly structured with respect to each other makes a great deal of sense. It would be impossible to take a capitalist social system and, using it's institutional material, make it a socialist system with a state that was consistent with this transformation.
Poulantzas seemed overly fond of using the terms cracks, fissures, and schisms to characterize the imperfect structure of a capitalist state, the non-monolithic nature of captial, and the inscription of other classes. I must admit that I was at first confused as to whether they were technical concepts or figures of speech. Now that I take them to be just non-technical images, they make a good deal of sense.
In Poulantazs' later work he introduced the concept "power bloc." This consisted of a powerful subset of capitalist enterprises that held the rest of capital in check, preventing destructive over-reaching which put capitalism in danger. When I was in graduate school, I took a course in which the professor, a Poulantzas fan, suggested that the concept of the power bloc was one of Poulantzas' most useful contributions. However, the power bloc, if it exists, seems to have shifted, in largely ineffective form, to the public sector in the U.S., due to the failure of unregulated capitalism in the private sector. Very odd, indeed.
Even after many re-readings, I admit to understanding Poulantzas only very imperfectly. In good part, this is because his theoretical work is so abstract, going page after page without an example, that it is hard to grasp concretely. I also think that Marx foresaw some of the ideas for which Poulantzas is best known, including the hopelessness of instrumentalism. This was abundantly evident in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In spite of my false starts and reservations, however, I benefited from reading Poulantzas' work. I'm sure I'd have benefited more if he had had a talented and aggressive editor.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories, April 7, 2001
This review is from: State, Power, Socialism (Paperback)
In State, Power, Socialism, Nicos Poulantzas (a member of the Greek Communist Party of the Interior from 1968 until his death in 1979 at the age of 43) advances a rigorous critique of contemporary Marxist theories of the state. Poulantzas argues against a general theory of the state, and identifying forms of class power crucial to socialist strategy that goes beyond the apparatus of the state. Long out of print, this new and highly recommended Verso Books edition of State, Power, Socialismis enhanced for students of political science with an informative introduction by Stuart Hall, critically appraising Poulantzas' achievement.
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