Nicos Poulantzas

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Nicos Poulantzas (Greek: Νίκος Πουλαντζάς; born September 21, 1936 in Athens ; † October 3, 1979 in Paris ) was a Greek - French political scientist . He taught as a professor at the University of Vincennes . His central contribution to the Marxist theory of the state consists in the statement that the state is neither an independent subject nor the instrument of a social class, but a social relationship. Poulantzas speaks of the state as a "material condensation of social power relations". According to his theory, the state represents a field of social struggle in which the ruling classes and class factions , some of which are competing, are organized as a power bloc .

Life

Nicos Poulantzas grew up in a middle-class family in Athens. His father, Aristides Poulantzas, was a professor of forensic graphology. After visiting a reform school, where he with a focus on French and Philosophy the baccalaureate took off, studied Poulantzas 1953-1957 in Athens law and in addition also the social sciences and philosophy. He was active in the student movement and became a member of the Eniea Dimokratiki Aristera ("Association of the Democratic Left"), which served as a political substitute for the banned Communist Party.

After graduating, he completed a three-year service in the Navy. He then wanted to get his doctorate at the University of Munich in 1960 , but left Germany after just one month because the political mood seemed too reactionary to him. Poulantzas moved to Paris, where he found his second home. In 1961 he was there with a thesis on the renaissance of natural law in Germany doctorate . His habilitation took place in 1964 ( concept of the nature of the matter in contemporary philosophy and sociology of law ). At the time of his habilitation, he was an assistant at the Sorbonne and taught legal philosophy .

Poulantzas' understanding of Marxism was initially shaped by Jean-Paul Sartre and then by Lucien Goldmann and Georg Lukács . He had dealt with their work during the research for his habilitation thesis . Later, I was also occupied with Antonio Gramsci's theory . Poulantzas wrote alongside his academic work for Les Temps Modernes and moved in circles around Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty . Louis Althusser became aware of him through an article in this magazine and a collaboration developed. At this time he began his state-theoretical work.

During his time in the editorial office of Temps Modernes , he met the writer Annie Leclerc . They married in 1966 and their daughter was born four years later.

In 1968, his convictions drove Poulantzas to become politically active in the then existing Eurocommunist split from the Stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE) , which called itself the KKE tou Esoterikoú (CP of the inland) and succeeded Synaspismos , which merged into SYRIZA in 2013 .

His first book that received significant attention was Political Power and Social Classes , published in France in May 1968 . This was followed by a number of other books on the state and the classes, especially on dictatorships ( Fascism and Dictatorship , 1970; Classes in Capitalism Today , 1973; The Crisis of Dictatorships , 1975). At the time of his political and theoretical activity, there were military dictatorships in the southern European countries of Spain, Portugal and, at times, in Greece.

After the May events, Poulantzas was appointed to the newly founded Reform University of Vincennes , where he taught and researched in the field of social sciences. Other well-known personalities such as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze also worked there.

1974/1975 Poulantzas taught as a visiting professor at the University of Athens . Also in 1974 he was offered a professorship at the University of Frankfurt . He only accepted the position for a few weeks and taught there in the summer semester. Due to negotiating difficulties with the responsible ministry, he gave up the position.

In the British magazine New Left Review he conducted a dispute with Ralph Miliband about the capitalist state through some articles , which were also published in individual print. Ernesto Laclau was also involved with an article. Poulantzas began this discussion with a critical review of Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society .

In 1978 his last major work, L'État, le pouvoir, le socialisme (“The State, Power, Socialism”), or “State Theory” for short, was published. At this time Poulantzas also took part in the debate initiated by Althusser about a crisis in Marxism and expressed himself critically about the real workers' parties and called for the Eurocommunist approach, which is different from the Leninist and social democratic, to be theoretically worked out and an opening to the social movements . He emphasized the need for a radical transformation of the state and not just the seizure of state power and, with reference to Rosa Luxemburg, the importance of representative democratic and council democratic elements . In addition, Poulantzas used Foucault's power theory critically in this work. He also worked here a. a. with Foucault's theories on knowledge, discipline and normalization.

In the course of depression Nicos Poulantzas committed in 1979 at the age of 43 years in suicide . There is no evidence for the causes of depression. The introductions to his editions of works in VSA-Verlag point to early conflicts with his parents and to desperation about the unsuccessfulness of his (Eurocommunist) commitment. Poulantza's suicide caused deep consternation in the intellectual landscape of Paris at the time.

theory

Relationship with Althusser and Gramsci

In the years 1964 to 1966, Poulantzas' scientific focus changed, moving away from the singular consideration of the law, the state became more and more the focus of his attention. He approached the structuralist position of Louis Althusser, which was also reflected in the fact that he used a language adapted to Althusser's own idiom. In May 1968 Poulantzas published his first work on state theory with Political Power and Social Classes . It is characterized by a strong anti-empiracy. Here he uses the concept of the structural whole, coined by Althusser, and assigns a specific level to the economy, the political and the ideological.

Poulantzas is also strongly oriented towards Althusser in his rejection of Marxist humanism and anti-economic positions. This initially also applies to Poulantza's assessment of Antonio Gramsci. First of all, as with Althusser, it is praised and then subjected to severe criticism. In the end, this is followed by an explicit rejection. Gramsci is referred to by Poulantzas, following Althusser, as a representative of historicism and rated as a volunteer.

In addition, Poulantzas follows Althusser's view that the work of Karl Marx shows a break in content. This is to be perceived in full in capital . Accordingly, in this work Marx breaks with the concepts of reification and alienation . In addition, Marxism is justified here as anti-humanism.

In the debate with the British Marxist Ralph Miliband, Poulantzas refers positively and approvingly to Althusser's concept of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). Althusser developed this concept in his essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses . In accordance with this publication, Poulantzas takes the view that the state consists of a plurality of apparatuses and institutions. A reduction to the repressive apparatus alone is insufficient. Poulantzas largely followed Althusser's arguments in his continuing argument.

In the work Fascism and Dictatorship , published in the German version in 1973, Poulantzas begins to criticize Althusser's conception clearly. He is of the opinion that Althusser only presented the ISA's relationship to the class struggle in a very abstract and formal manner. The class struggle would not have the position it deserves. In addition, Althusser either greatly underestimated the role of the state apparatus in the economy or did not take note of it. For Althusser, the state apparatus would only have a certain influence on the economy through the reproduction of the relations of production. In its deliberations, the state is composed only of repression and ideology. Only the school apparatus is an exception, because it is responsible for the reproduction of labor.

This criticism is followed by the expansion of the conception of the ISA and the RSA to include an economic apparatus. Poulantzas rejects its designation as the state apparatus, because its main goal is to exploit the masses of people. However, this is not the task of the ISA and the RSA. According to Poulantzas, the economic apparatus comprises the factories.

Althusser is also criticized in the theory of the state . Poulantzas thinks that Althusser's distinction between ISA and RSA has stopped at a pure description of the existing order. Althusser limits the state to the use of either ideology or repression. In this way, the state can only act in a negative way at Althusser and is not in a position to act positively in relation to the economic. For Poulantzas, this view prevents an understanding of the role the state actually plays in the constitution of the relations of production. Logically, the aforementioned economic apparatus at Althusser is completely out of the focus of attention. In contrast to Althusser, Poulantzas developed the view that the state also unfolds its effect in a positive way, “it creates, changes, produces something real”.

State as a material compression of the balance of power

Poulantzas criticized popular Marxist notions of (1) the state as a thing or object, a mere functionalist instrument or tool in the hands of the ruling class, and (2) the state as an independent, neutral subject above the classes , which a class can at most through successful class struggle could use. (3) Poulantzas regards the state as a specific material compression of the power relations between classes and class factions. Like Althusser, Poulantzas also assumes a primacy of the class struggle over the state; he forms the specific materiality of the state apparatus and works through it.

Relative autonomy of the state

According to Poulantzas' theory, the state has a “relative autonomy” from the economic sphere in capitalism, just as the individual state apparatuses are in relative autonomy from one another. Similar to Althusser, he starts from different levels or instances in the production of social life, the economic, political and ideological, which all have a relative autonomy, but are necessarily connected with one another and form an overdetermined whole.

Division of labor and relations of production

Marxist approaches to understanding the capitalist state in terms of the capitalist mode of production did not go far enough for Poulantzas or, for him, missed the central point. The capitalist state cannot be derived exclusively from the specific requirements of the sphere of circulation of goods, hence its specificity to be limited to the guarantee of formal equality, freedom of contract, security of private property, the exchange of equivalents, etc., as happened in the debate on the derivation of the state , which connected to Yevgeny Paschukanis ' work from the 1920s. Instead, the state must be understood through the reproduction of the conditions of production, in particular the reproduction of the qualifications of the labor force and the capitalist relations of production. The state is understood from the standpoint of production, the social division of labor and the production relation (exploitation relation) between the classes, therefore class relations and the class struggles that constitute them are ultimately the central factor. In particular, the separation between mental / instructive and physical / executive work and the separation of the power of disposal over the means of production from the direct producers and competition are continued in the specific material compression of the capitalist state apparatus, its functioning and relative autonomy from the economic sphere.

State apparatus

Only through its function in reproducing the conditions of production does the state ensure the maintenance of the capital relation. As with Althusser, the state reproduces with the conditions of reproduction at the same time the submission of individuals to the ruling order. Not only with the help of repression and coercion, but also with ideology and economic intervention. A distinction is made between repressive, economic and ideological state apparatus. The power and function of the individual state apparatuses can change both through changes in production and through the balance of forces in the individual state apparatuses determined by the class struggle. For example, profound structural upheavals in capital accumulation require changed demands on the state apparatus in order to guarantee the reproduction of the conditions of production; in successful class struggles, e.g. B. In elections by left-wing governments, the ruling bloc can shift state power from the government apparatus to other apparatuses such as bureaucracy, justice, the military, the media, etc.

Block in power

For Poulantzas, neither the state nor the state power is uniformly structured. In the state there is no simple struggle between capitalists and the working class, but rather different class factions and class alliances are in conflict of interests with one another. On the one hand, there is a dispute over hegemony between the bloc in power and the ruled classes in the state ; on the other hand, hegemony must also be established within the ruling bloc between the individual classes and class factions so that the conflicting interests do not weaken or dissolve the bloc lead in power. In both cases, work is not only done with coercion but also with conviction and consensus. Individual factions in the bloc in power can enter into different strategic alliances with parts of the ruled class and parts of the bloc in power in different apparatuses in order to gain hegemony for certain projects.

Authoritarian statism and exceptional state

In the late 1970s, Poulantzas identified the emergence of a new form of government, which he called authoritarian statism . Central elements of this form of government are:

  • Shifting power from the legislative to the executive , where power is concentrated.
  • Increasing amalgamation of the legislative, executive and judicial branches , with a simultaneous decline in the legal function.
  • Loss of function of political parties as the most important organs for establishing social hegemony and as mediators between administration, government and the electorate
  • Gaining influence from more and more power networks operating in parallel that bypass the official channels and channels.

The authoritarian statism borders Poulantzas expressly from the from what he exception State called and what he fascism , military dictatorship and Bonapartism says. The new form of government can neither be equated with fascism, nor is it a transitional form. It is the new "democratic" form of the bourgeois republic in the current phase and maintains a certain democratic reality.

Popular struggles

In the state, not only is the ruling class represented with its ruling ideology, the struggles of the ruled classes are also inscribed in the material compression of the state's balance of power. The bloc in power does not try to exercise power exclusively according to its interests, it must also include parts of the ruled class in the ruling consensus in order to secure its hegemony. Interests of the working class are integrated into the state especially when they contribute to the safeguarding of and submission to the ruling order, therefore the interests or demands arise from the dominated ideology of the working class or are compatible with it. Poulantzas names, for example, the ideology of the welfare state , which relies on national economic prosperity, hence capital accumulation, as well as on welfare state measures to secure the supposed common good of the people.

Separation and totalization

In its function, the bourgeois state has both totalizing and isolating effects on its citizens, through which the proletarian class struggle is inhibited and the class character of the ruling order is veiled. On the one hand, he forms the entire population that he has at his disposal into a people with a nation and a common national interest (or he tries to do so), on the other hand, he isolates individuals as equal, autonomous, atomized in civil and political society, in mutual Free subjects standing in competition with one another.

Conquest of political power / democratic socialism

Poulantzas advocated the concept of a radical transformation of the state aimed at increasing the intervention of the popular masses in the state. The assumption of state power presupposes a long process of changing the social balance of power and the simultaneous transformation of the state. For him all socialism is or is not democratic. Based on historical experience, the two cliffs of social democracy and Stalinism must be avoided in order to avoid both authoritarian and reformist approaches. Both types would have a statism and a fear of the masses in common. In contrast, self-government and grassroots democracy must be emphasized. Sharing Luxemburg's criticism of Lenin (based on solidarity), he emphasizes the creation and expansion of direct and grassroots democratic structures as well as the importance and expansion of representative democratic elements and political freedoms.

Poulantzas criticizes the idea, found from Lenin to the Third International and at Gramsci, of a dual rule of organized masses alongside the state, which forms an opposing fortress with protective trenches, etc., which must be taken from outside. The struggles are inscribed in the state as a condensation of a balance of power, whether they take place directly in the state apparatus or outside it.

The greatest danger to democratic socialism comes from the bourgeoisie and the means (political, ideological, economic, violent) that are available to them by guaranteeing extensive political and liberal rights. The only security against it is the active mass of the people who actively support the transformation process of the state and the introduction of direct democracy and self-administration. Furthermore, there is a great difficulty between the transformation of the state and its representative elements and the simultaneous introduction of direct democracy and self-government.

Poulantzas attaches particular importance to the economic state apparatus. On the one hand, this must be radically transformed; on the other hand, it cannot be smashed from one day to the next without risking an economic crisis. Many other state apparatuses would also be necessary to reproduce the relations of production. The hard core of the capitalist production relations would have to be retained in a first phase, the transformation of production would have to take place gradually. He also emphasizes the importance of the economic state apparatus for the political and economic safeguarding of self-managed production.

Criticism of Poulantzas

Poulantza's theories have been criticized in part as abstract and formalistic, as if written in a peculiar language. The accusation of class reductionism was also partly raised.

Proponents of the form-analytical derivation of the state hold Poulantzas' theory up against considering simple circulation as an ideological mechanism or a fraudulent appearance of the material basis of the relations of production. Instead, circulation belongs to the real principles of material reproduction and is therefore an essential part of the relations of production.

By deriving the peculiarities of modern law and statute not from the circulation, but directly from the social division of labor in industrial production, Poulantzas only achieves an analogy between Taylorism and state bureaucracy as ideological forms. On the other hand, in contrast to Paschukanis, he could not explain the form of law from the form of value, and could neither come to a conceptual distinction between law and law, nor to an explanation for the relative autonomy of law.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • Pouvoir politique et classes sociales de l'état capitaliste . F. Maspero, Paris 1968.
    • Political power and social classes. Athenäum-Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 978-3-8072-4040-4 .
  • Fascisme et dictature. La IIIe Internationale face au fascisme . F. Maspéro, Paris 1970.
    • Fascism and dictatorship. The Communist International and Fascism . Trikont-Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 978-3-920385-06-8 .
  • The classes sociales dans le capitalisme aujourd'hui . Seuil, Paris 1974.
  • La crise des dictatures: Portugal, Grèce, Espagne . F. Maspero, Paris 1975.
    • The dictatorship crisis: Portugal, Greece, Spain . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 978-3-518-10888-8
  • L'État, le pouvoir, le socialisme . PUF, Paris 1978.

Article (selection)

  • Marxist Political Theory in Britain. In: New Left Review . I / 43, 1967, pp. 57-74.
  • Theory and history. Brief remarks on the subject of "capital". Critique of Political Economy Today. 100 years of capital. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1967, pp. 58-69.
  • Co-lecture by Nicos Poulantzas on Roman Rosdolsky. Critique of Political Economy Today. 100 years of capital. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1967, pp. 21-30.
  • The Problem of the Capitalist State. In: New Left Review. I / 58, 1969, pp. 67-78.
  • On social classes. In: New Left Review. I / 78, 1973, pp. 27-54.
  • The Capitalist State: A Reply to Miliband and Laclau. In: New Left Review. I / 95, 1976, pp. 63-83.
  • Towards a Democratic Socialism. In: New Left Review I / 109, 1978, pp. 75-87.
  • Les théoriciens doivent retorner sur terre. In: Les Nouvelles litteraires. June 26, 1978.
  • 'It's about breaking with the Stalinist tradition!' Interview with N. Poulantzas on authoritarian statism in Western Europe and the strategies of the labor movement, conducted by Rodrigo Vaques-Prada. In: Prokla . 37, 1979, H. 4, pp. 127-140.
  • L'Etat, les mouvements sociaux, les partis. In: Dialectics. No. 28, 1979.
  • La crise des partis. In: Le Monde Diplomatique . September 26, 1979
  • Interview with Nicos Poulantzas. Conducted by Stuart Hall and Alan Hunt. (PDF; 178 kB) In: Marxism Today . July 1979.
  • Is there a Crisis in Marxism? In: Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora. 6 (3), 1979.

Anthology

Secondary literature

  • Stanley Aronowitz, Peter Bratsis (Eds.): Paradigm Lost: State Theory Reconsidered. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2002.
  • Clyde W. Barrow: Toward a Critical Theory of States. The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate after Globalization. State University of New York Press, Albany 2016.
  • Tobias Boos / Hanna Lichtenberger / Armin Puller (eds.): Working with Poulantzas ... to understand current relationships of power and domination. VSA, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-89965-653-4 .
  • Lars Bretthauer, Alexander Gallas , John Kannankulam , Ingo Stützle (eds.): Poulantzas read. On the topicality of Marxist state theory. VSA, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-89965-177-4 ( introduction )
  • Alex Demirović , Stephan Adolphs, Serhat Karakayali (ed.): The understanding of the state by Nicos Poulantzas. The state as a social relationship. Nomos, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8329-3887-1 . (Series of understanding of the state)
  • Alex Demirović: Nicos Poulantzas. Topicality and Problems of Materialistic State Theory. 2. revised and exp. New edition. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-89691-622-8 .
  • Alexander Gallas: The Thatcherite Offensive: A Neo-Poulantzasian Analysis Brill, Leiden 2015, ISBN 9789004231610
  • Alexander Gallas, Lars Bretthauer, John Kannankulam, Ingo Stützle (eds.): Reading Poulantzas . Merlin Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-85036-647-1
  • Bob Jessop : Nicos Poulantzas. Marxist Theory and Political Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London 1985, ISBN 0-312-57266-2 .
  • John Kannankulam: Authoritarian Statism in Neoliberalism. On the theory of the state by Nicos Poulantzas. VSA, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 3-89965-280-0 .
  • Jens Christian Müller, Sebastian Reinfeldt , Richard Schwarz, Manon Tuckfeld: The state in people's heads. Connections to Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas . Mainz 1994.
  • Jens Wissel : The transnationalization of power relations. On the topicality of Nicos Poulantza's theory of the state . Baden-Baden 2007, ISBN 3-8329-2689-5 .
items

Web links

items

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, biographical information is based on: Bob Jessop , Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist Theory and Political Strategy , London 1985, p. 6 ff .; and: Alex Demirović , Nicos Poulantzas. Topicality and Problems of Materialistic State Theory . Münster 2007, p. 10 ff.
  2. ↑ He also perfected his knowledge of French through private lessons.
  3. ↑ He wrote to his father from Munich that the influence of Nazi ideas was so strong that he could not stay in Germany. Bob Jessop, Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist Theory and Political Strategy , London 1985, p. 9.
  4. ↑ See controversy about the capitalist state. Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1976.
  5. ↑ See: Bob Jessop: Power and Strategy in Poulantzas and Foucault . Supplement to the journal Socialism, p. 10f.
  6. ↑ See: James Martin: Introduction, in: The Poulantzas Reader. Marxism, Law and the State, London 2008, pp. 2f.
  7. ↑ See: Alex Demirovic / Joachim Hirsch / Bob Jessop: Introduction by the editors, in: State theory. Political superstructure, ideology, authoritarian statism, Hamburg 2002, p. 10.
  8. ↑ See: Bob Jessop: Nicos Poulantzas, p. 14.
  9. ↑ See: Peter Thomas: The economy of the integral state? Poulantza's Gramsci reading, in: Lars Bretthauer et al. (Ed.): Read Poulantzas. On the topicality of Marxist state theory, Hamburg 2006, p. 308.
  10. ↑ See: Nicos Poulantzas: Theory and History. Brief remarks on the subject of capital, in: Critique of Political Economy Today. 100 years of capital, Frankfurt / Main 1968, p. 64.
  11. ↑ See: Nicos Poulantzas: Theory and History, p. 64.
  12. ^ Poulantzas, Nicos: The problem of the capitalist state, in: Poulantzas, Nicos / Miliband, Ralph: Controversy over the capitalist state, Berlin 1976, pp. 19-22.
  13. ^ Poulantzas, Nicos: Fascism and dictatorship. The Communist International and Fascism, Munich 1973, p. 322 and footnote 416.
  14. ^ Poulantzas, Nicos: Faschismus und Diktatur, p. 325, footnote 419.
  15. ^ Poulantzas, Nicos: Faschismus und Diktatur, p. 326 and footnote 420.
  16. ↑ See: Poulantzas, Nicos: Staatstheorie. Political superstructure, ideology, authoritarian Etatismu, Hamburg 2002, p. 59.
  17. ↑ See: Poulantzas, Nicos: Staatstheorie, p. 63.
  18. ↑ See: Poulantzas, Nicos: Staatstheorie, p. 60.
  19. ↑ John Kannankulam : Authoritarian Statism in Neoliberalism. On the theory of the state by Nicos Poulantzas. Hamburg 2008, p. 20.
  20. ^ Nicos Poulantzas: State theory. Political superstructure, ideology, authoritarian statism. Hamburg 1978, p. 237.
  21. ↑ See: Ingo Elbe: Legal Form and Production Relationships, pp. 230–233.
personal data
SURNAME Poulantzas, Nicos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Πουλαντζάς, Νίκος (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Athens , Greece
DATE OF DEATH 3rd October 1979
Place of death Paris , France