poulantzas lesen

Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 143

Poulantzas lesen. Zur Aktualität marxistischer Staatstheorie, Edited by Lars Bretthauer, Alexander Gallas, John Kannankulam and Ingo Stützle, Hamburg: VSA Verlag, 2006.

AbstractTh is review discusses a collection of papers on Nicos Poulantzas’s contribution to Marxist state-theory and socialist strategy. Chapters are grouped into three subject-areas: theory and method; globalisation; political strategy. Particular attention is paid to Poulantzas’s defi nition of the state and methodology for investigating concrete state-forms. Poulantzas gives primacy to the balance of forces between classes, which raises two questions: Should his approach be integrated with theories which emphasise the formal aspects of the capitalist state? Can power-relations other than those between classes be integrated into a Poulantzian framework?

Poulantzas’s work is also relevant to the study of globalisation and supranational actors. First, his investigations of the internationalisation of capital and diff erent fractions of the bourgeoisie help us analyse developments since the 1970s. Second, his theory of the state and its functions provide a benchmark for assessing to which degree national states have been superseded by inter-/supranational institutions such as the EU.

Regarding political strategy, the focus is on the path towards democratic socialism. Questions raised concern primarily the right mixture of struggles inside and outside the institutions of parliamentary democracy.

Keywordsstate-theory, form-analysis, class-struggles, Marxism and feminism, globalisation, European integration, democratic socialism

Every social force or movement that stands in opposition to the capitalist status quo and that cannot be put down violently will, at some point, have to refl ect on its relationship to the institutions of the capitalist state. Th is may not have been much of an issue in the decade or so following the global rupture of 1989. Since then, however, left-wing and socialist projects have made a comeback, be it the left-wing governments in Latin America or the resurgence of oppositional movements and organisations in many other countries, such as ATTAC or, in Germany, the new ‘Left Party’. Especially the latter’s frequently statist orientations and occasional naïveté have brought the question of the state fi rmly back on to the table and thus renewed interest in Poulantzas’s contributions to Marxist state-theory and socialist strategy. His work seems particularly pertinent in the German context, where oppositional movements have not only been confronted with the repressive power of the state, but also with its power to integrate opposition. Th e Green Party, which went from posing fundamental alternatives to partnership in a coalition-government, is a case in point and a warning to activists. It is these discussions that the editors of the volume under review here want to draw together.

Moreover, because Poulantzas described the beginning of the end of Fordism, his work can be useful in analysing the neoliberal restructuring of the capitalist state and economy – and, one might argue, the restructuring that is likely to happen as a result of the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/146544609X12537556703476

144 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

Th ese strongly political motivations notwithstanding, the focus of this volume1 is on more academic and theoretically oriented contributions that try to encourage reading and discussion of the primary texts by demonstrating the many fi elds of study in which Poulantzas’s concepts and analyses might be fruitfully applied.

In this regard, the editors and contributors have done a good job. In what follows, I will take up the main topics in the volume and discuss the various papers that deal with them. I will also point to what I consider a crucial omission.

Questions of method and theory

Th e strongly theory-oriented contributions that form the bulk of this volume deal with a fairly broad range of topics, from the core issues of Marxist state-theory to Poulantzas’s relation to Foucault and his early theories of the legal system. Th is section discusses the main ones.

Th e form, function, and materiality of the state and law

It is striking that, among the contributors to this volume, there seems to exist a virtual consensus that the central claim of Poulantzas’s State, Power, Socialism – namely, that the state is ‘a relationship of forces, or more precisely the material condensation of such a relationship among classes and class fractions’2 – is his most inspiring theoretical thought and the one that can and should be most strongly developed and transferred to other areas of critical social science. Th is defi nition makes two key points: fi rstly, that the state is neither a more or less rational subject standing above society and representing its general interest, nor an instrument to be wielded by the bourgeoisie or any other social power, but a social relationship between classes; secondly, that, at the same time, the state

is not reducible to the relationship of forces; it exhibits an opacity and resistance of its own. To be sure, change in the class relationship of forces always aff ects the State; but it does not fi nd expression in the State in a direct and immediate fashion. It adapts itself exactly to the materiality of the various state apparatuses, only becoming crystallized in the State in a refracted form that varies according to the apparatus. A change in power is never enough to transform the materiality of the state apparatus.3

A case in point, and a good place to start, is Sonja Buckel’s paper on ‘Th e Juridical Condensation of the Relations of Forces’, in which she argues that the idea may be fruitfully applied to the theory of law, albeit with certain revisions and extensions. Th ese would include broadening one’s view so as also to take, among others, gender relations into account, for ‘[g]ender relations are also constituted and reproduced by the state and law’

1. An English-language edition of the book is due to be published in winter 2009/10 by Merlin Press, London.

2. Poulantzas 2000, p. 128.3. Poulantzas 2000, pp. 130–1.


(p. 178).4 Poulantzas’s class-based analysis should also be more rigorously combined with the so-called form-analytical approach of Evgeny Pashukanis and the German ‘state-derivationists’ (p. 180). Th is, she claims, would yield a stronger theoretical account of the capitalist state’s relative autonomy vis-à-vis social classes and the economy. In fact, the potential of such a combination for an account of the crucial dimension of state-materiality and -autonomy is discussed or hinted at in several chapters.

Th e state-derivation school originated in West Germany in the 1970s. Whereas Poulantzas based his analysis of the capitalist type of state mostly on the specifi c nature of class-relations in the capitalist mode of production, the former tried to ‘derive’ the state from the logic of capital as an ‘automatic subject’;5 that is, by trying to extend Marx’s analysis of the value-form towards a theory of the political sphere/the state. One of their main concerns was to ‘logically’ demonstrate why the capitalist mode of production necessitates the existence of an institutionally separate state that fulfi ls a number of necessary functions for maintaining accumulation, such as ensuring contracts between legally free subjects. Th e determinations thus derived were called the ‘state-forms’ or, put diff erently, the state itself, as an institutionally separate sphere, is a form. Th e rule of law [Rechtsstaat] was another of these forms.6

Th e state-derivationists successfully explained some generic features of the capitalist type of state at a very high level of abstraction. But they neglected class-struggle and historical specifi city, committed the fallacy of functionalism (because they ignored the fact that ‘form problematises function’),7 and assumed that the diff erentiation of the state was already enough to guarantee its functionality for capital-accumulation. Nevertheless, in ‘Poulantzas and Form-Analysis’, Joachim Hirsch and John Kannankulam argue that, because the state-derivationists explained more stringently than Poulantzas the form of the state as necessarily institutionally separate from the economy, they also laid the ground for a better understanding of its relative autonomy. Poulantzas, on the other hand, was right about emphasising the importance of class-struggles in creating hegemony and thus a relatively unifi ed state that would serve the need of continuing accumulation. Th erefore, a combination of the two approaches would best advance Marxist state-theory and enable it to deal with the challenge of explaining the changes of the state and the international system in globalisation (p. 80). While I would agree with this conclusion, Hirsch and Kannankulam could have tried to give more concrete hints as to how such a combination could help in dealing with these questions.

Th e anti-functionalist critique of certain state-theoretical approaches is also taken up in Lars Bretthauer’s contribution, ‘Materiality and Condensation in Nicos Poulantzas’, in which the author stresses that Poulantzas focused on the contingency and the potential failure of the state to secure the conditions of continuous accumulation. In Bretthauer’s reading, Poulantzas not only opened up state-theory for the analysis of the ways in which relatively stable and coherent political and economic arrangements are produced through struggles as historical results; he also gave pride of place to the role of struggle on the most

4. All quotes from the volume under review are the reviewer’s translations.5. Marx 1976, p. 255.6. Th e most sophisticated contribution to this debate is, in my opinion, Blanke et al. 1975.

It is still well worth reading.7. Jessop 1990, p. 87.


abstract level of state-theory, instead of just positing theoretically the existence of the preconditions for continuous capital-accumulation in order to then examine how they historically came about (pp. 88–9). In other words, political and economic struggles and relations of forces are not theoretically subordinate to structures or the ‘capital-logic’. Th is then requires the development of theoretical concepts for historically concrete analyses of the state as a terrain of struggle over the reproduction of capitalist social relations. It is here that Poulantzas’s treatment of the diff erent aspects of the materiality of the capitalist type of state in State, Power, Socialism – such as the form of law or nationality – becomes useful and can be developed further.

Bretthauer’s interpretation stands in opposition to the suggestion by Hirsch and Kannankulam to integrate form-analysis with Poulantzas’s more class-based, more historically sensitive approach. However, while I would agree with his claim that one should start from the improbability of successful state-formation – that is, the formation of a state that not only maintains internal unity and coherence but also fulfi ls necessary functions vis-à-vis the process of accumulation and the maintenance of class-domination – I do not see why this would preclude a highly abstract ‘derivation’ of a few very basic forms of the capitalist type of state. Th is would not imply the functionalist assumption that state-forms and state-interventions are always successful in maintaining and stabilising capitalist accumulation. Th ere can be analyses of ‘the formal correspondence between diff erent social forms’, but one cannot conclude from them that actual correspondence necessarily emerges.8 Moreover, this is important in order to have a clear idea of the specifi cally capitalist type of state to start with. Otherwise, what one would analyse would just be the state in capitalist society and how it secures the conditions of continuous capital-accumulation.9 Th is admittedly, presupposes that it is possible in principle to have a theory of the capitalist state that is equally abstract and general as the theory of the capitalist economy, even though it may just comprise a few basic features of the state-form, such as its institutional separation from the economy. It could also be the case that the wide diversity of existing and historical states in capitalist societies eff ectively renders futile such an endeavour. It is a question that Marx already posed in his Critique of the Gotha Programme:

. . . the ‘present-day state’ changes with a country’s frontier. It is diff erent in the Prusso-German Empire from that in Switzerland, and diff erent in England from what it is in the United States. ‘Th e present-day state’ is therefore a fi ction.

Nevertheless, the diff erent states of the diff erent civilised countries, in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, more or less capitalistically developed. Th ey have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common.10

To my knowledge, this problem has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.Th e position that form-analysis and more historically sensitive analyses of political and

economic struggles in their relation to the state can and should be combined is also in line with the more abstract argument put forward in Alexander Gallas’s contribution, ‘Reading Capital with Poulantzas’, which is an interpretation of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

8. Jessop 1990, pp. 354–5. 9. Jessop 2008.10. Marx 1989, pp. 94–5.


inspired by Poulantzas rather than a paper on Poulantzas directly. Gallas draws a distinction between form and struggle as explanatory principles, both of which, he claims, can be found in Capital. Th ey have to be seen as equally fundamental and not reducible to each other. ‘Form’ denotes the ‘historically specifi c shape of societies’ – such as the commodity-form or the wage-form – while ‘struggle’ refers to ‘specifi c courses of action [Handlungsverläufe]’ (p. 102). He goes on to argue that, in State, Power, Socialism, both principles are treated as equally constitutive of capitalism as a self-reproducing society because the forms constitute a ‘fi eld’ of action that constrain but do not completely determine courses of actions (p. 106). Th ese can always ‘overfl ow’ the forms and thus stabilise or de-stabilise them. He concludes:

Th e central message one can get from Poulantzas is that in the capitalist mode of production as an ensemble of forms [Formzusammenhang] there is an inherent tendency to reproduce itself, but it only becomes actualised if relations of forces and, accordingly, the courses of struggles admit this. Moments of stability and instability, therefore, exist side by side. (p. 108.)

Th e case in point for Gallas is Marx’s famous description of the struggle over the length of the working day that led to legal fi xing of maximum hours per day. Here, the wage-form that labour-power assumes under capitalism did not determine the conditions of its use so that a fi eld of struggle was opened up – which, in this case, led to a long-term stabilisation of capitalist relations of production (pp. 113–17). Th e point here is to demonstrate how forms and struggles intersect in the real world of capitalist relations, but also to demonstrate the necessity for combining form-analysis and historical research.

Th is, for Gallas, not only has theoretical but also political implications. He takes on two recently infl uential Marxists, John Holloway and Moishe Postone, who, according to him, both delivered reductionist accounts of the relations between form and struggle. Th e former11 allegedly regards forms as mere eff ects of struggle, thus denying them any causality of their own; while, for Postone,12 labour-struggles, even the most militant ones, have no transformative potential precisely because of their nature as labour-struggles, that is, because they are always caught up within the forms of capitalist society which they therefore only reproduce but cannot transcend (pp. 103–5). Th erefore Holloway falls into the trap of voluntarism, while Postone attributes to capitalism a kind of super-stability.

Having talked now at length about form-analysis as a theoretical resource for getting to grips with the materiality and autonomy of the state, I would like to take up another point made almost in passing by Sonja Buckel. In the context of conceptualising the relative autonomy of law, she also refers to the theory of autopoietic systems of Niklas Luhmann as another theoretical resource to be used here (p. 180). Th is theory, which has not yet been widely received in the English-speaking world, assumes that modern societies are primarily characterised by the fact that they consist of functionally diff erentiated social subsystems such as law, politics, economy, art, education and so on. Th ese operate according to a basic code that is unique to the system in question and which is always binary. For example, the economic code is payment/non-payment; that of the science-system true/not true. On the most abstract level, these codes constitute not only the unity, but also the autonomy of

11. Holloway 2002. 12. Postone 1993.


functional systems by orienting all their operations towards either one side of the dichotomic code. In other words: the code constitutes a horizon of meaning for everything that goes on internally while relegating to the outside or ‘environment’ everything that does not assume the form of one of the code-values; thus it also determines what is relevant to the system’s operations. Truth is irrelevant in the economy; what matters is whether there is payment or not.

Th e theory of social systems is often perceived as contrary or even hostile to Marxism (Luhmann himself often criticised and ridiculed it). However, a concern with the self-referential closure of non-economic systems was already articulated by Marx, and, in particular, by Engels after Marx’s death. He argued against economic reductionism by fellow-Marxists, for which he took some responsibility, saying that he and Marx had had to overemphasise the primacy of the economic.13 In a number of letters, he recognised the (relative) autonomy and eff ectiveness of politics and ideology, that is, the ‘superstructure’ in general. In 1886, for example, he wrote:

It is among professional politicians, theorists of public law and jurists of private law that the connection with economic facts gets well and truly lost. Since in each particular case the economic facts must assume the form of juristic motives in order to receive legal sanction; and since, in so doing, consideration has, of course, to be given to the whole legal system already in operation, the juristic form is, in consequence, made everything and the economic content nothing. Public law and private law are treated as independent spheres, each having its own independent historical development, each being capable of, and needing a, systematic presentation by the consistent elimination of all innate contradictions.14

In other words: to become juristically relevant, aspects of the economic environment have to be ‘translated’ into the language of law and made compatible with its processes, specifi cally the need for logical coherence.

Th is leads us again to what is a core problem for all Marxist attempts at accounting for the (relative) autonomy of non-economic spheres of social life: the lack of an understanding of the specifi c materiality of non-economic practices. Th is is exactly the materiality mentioned in the quote from Poulantzas at the beginning of this section; it is the reason why changes in class-relations or the exigencies of accumulation do not fi nd a direct and immediate expression in the state or, for that matter, in other non-economic institutional orders. Of course, the Marxist tradition has done some very good work with regard to the state and the political process, but it lacks a more general theory/approach. Luhmann provides such a theory of the materiality of all social practices. To be sure, it is not one that is ultimately satisfactory from a Marxist point of view, as it over-emphasises the disjunction of society’s subsystems. But it is one from which a lot may be learned.

Poulantzas and feminist state-theory

A point made by Sonja Buckel is that state-theory needs to take gender-relations into account as they too are constituted and reproduced by state and law. Th is is developed in

13. See, for example, Engels 1972.14. Engels 1990, p. 393.


more detail in Jörg Nowak’s paper, ‘Poulantzas, gender-relations, and Feminist State-Th eory’, which is concerned with how the interaction/intersection of class- and gender-relations can be analysed and what Poulantzas and feminist theory have to off er in that regard. Poulantzas touched on the importance of ‘the relations between men and women’15 in State, Power, Socialism but, according to Nowak, in an ultimately superfi cial way because he failed to develop a theoretical concept of gender-relations on a par with his concept of classes. Th erefore, he was unable to analyse their intersection (pp. 140–2). On the other hand, while feminists tend to be less ignorant towards Marxist scholarship than vice versa, their state-theories also fail to treat class and gender equally, although interesting analyses are produced (pp. 145–9). Th ere remains important work to do because, as Nowak rightfully states:

In order to reduce the political and social divisions between those who depend, directly or indirectly, on wage-labour, the struggle for gender-equality in exploitation must be coupled with the overall struggle over the value of labour-power as a commodity. However, this perspective will remain blocked unless the gendering of the social division of labour is considered in connection with the class-relations inscribed into it. (p. 151.)

Poulantzas and Foucault

Another recurring topic in this volume, albeit a less prominent one, is the relation between the writings of Poulantzas and Foucault and how each could enrich the other. Th is seems appropriate not only given the importance Foucault has achieved in critical social science but also because, as Urs Lindner notes in his contribution to the volume, ‘State, Power and Politics’, ‘Poulantzas’ State, Power, Socialism must not be regarded as just an attempt at giving a systematic foundation to Marxist state theory, but also as a fi rst approach to a Marxist appropriation of Foucault’ (p. 154). Lindner then describes some of the commonalities and points of contact between the two thinkers, such as their focus on the productivity of state-rule as opposed to theories that just see it as repressive or merely prohibitive (pp. 158–62). Indeed, Poulantzas was inspired by Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary apparatuses to include this aspect in State, Power, Socialism, whereas he had neglected it in earlier works.

Ingo Stützle’s paper, ‘Th e Order of Knowledge’, focuses on a specifi c area where insights from Poulantzas and Foucault could be combined. He discusses the role that the state as ‘knowledge-apparatus’ plays in formulating a ‘general interest’ of capital; how it enables itself, through the production and administration of knowledge, to act as the ‘ideal personifi cation of the total national capital’.16 It is easy to see that, in this perspective, Foucault’s work, which emphasised the connection between (the production of ) knowledge and the power exercised in state- (and other) apparatuses and institutions, such as prisons or schools, is of major interest. Stützle’s approach is helpful because it allows for a more material interpretation of Engels’s oft-cited but problematic expression. It is too easy, even for Marxists, to have a metaphysical, Hegelian understanding in which the state possesses a

15. Poulantzas 2000, p. 43.16. Engels 1987, p. 266. Th is is the English translation of the much more succinct German

term ‘ideeller Gesamtkapitalist’ used by Engels (1962, p. 260) to which Stützle refers (p. 188).


privilege of rationality vis-à-vis individual members of society who are too immersed in their immediate, day-to-day interests. If, indeed, the state is rationally superior, this is not due to it standing outside or above society but the result of a wide variety of practices of knowledge-production/gathering. An example of that is offi cial statistics: ‘Th rough abstract knowledge that is reduced to numbers and fi gures, capitalist society and the social relations constituting it appear manageable and governable’ (pp. 196–7). A special role is played by economics as a fi eld of knowledge that, as a consequence of the institutional separation of the political and economic sphere in capitalism, is not directly subjected to the state because its object is the autonomous logic of a diff erentiated sphere of social life. Hence, it is not simply ‘government knowledge’ – something that Foucault saw more clearly than Poulantzas in his slightly state-centric view (p. 199). However, the state is implied in economics because it has to take its fi ndings into account and because, above all, it is the place where the crucial discussions take place about the role of the state in successful capital-accumulation: ‘Th e discourse of political economy thus structures the fi eld of controversy around the articulation of a general capitalist interest’ (p. 200).

Poulantzasian perspectives on globalisation, the European Union, and transnational class-formation

Another focus is on Poulantzas’s contribution to understanding processes that transcend the territorial boundaries of the nation-state, namely economic globalisation and the formation of transnational classes. He witnessed the beginning of the unravelling of the Fordist mode of regulation and of globalisation, and he described certain aspects of it, providing a basis to be elaborated on for the analysis of more contemporary phenomena.17

In ‘Poulantzas’s Contribution to Class-Analysis and Social-Structure Analysis’ Max Koch argues that his enquiries into the internationalisation of capital and the role of the state in it can be used to counter exaggerated claims about the disappearance of the national state. According to him, Poulantzas stressed the active role of the state in organising the international division of labour instead of seeing it as just passively subjected to external forces (p. 130). In ‘Territory and Historicity’, an interesting discussion of the analysis of the capitalist formation of time and space in State, Power, Socialism, Markus Wissen argues that Poulantzas demonstrated how the national state was implied in constituting a spatial matrix that is compatible with the societal prerequisites of capitalist economic development. In particular, it demarcates a territory of regulation in which one set of rules applies generally (pp. 211–12). Because the capitalist mode of production and national spaces are so deeply intertwined, claims that the national state is being marginalised or superseded by elements of an inter- or transnational state become implausible. Th at does not mean that, for Poulantzas, capitalism is inevitably tied to the nation-state. Rather, his analysis allows us to ask precisely if and in what regard the role of the national state as an organiser of capitalist space is taken over by institutions on sub- or supranational scales (pp. 218–20).

An area where such questions can be explored is the study of European integration. If anything comes close to constituting (elements of ) supranational statehood it is the European Union, with its dense network of regulation, the common market, its common

17. See Poulantzas 1974a and 1975.


currency and central bank (at least for 15 of 27 member-states), the European Court of Justice, and institutions like the European Parliament and Commission. Whether Poulantzas can contribute anything to the study of European integration is the topic of Hans-Jürgen Bieling’s paper on ‘European Statehood’. Bieling fi rst discusses the approach of Panitch and Gindin,18 who assume that European capital and the integration-process remain subject to American dominance, which therefore is the analytical vantage-point from which to approach European integration. Here, they draw upon Poulantzas’s account of the penetration of Western-European capital by US-capital in Classes in Contemporary Capitalism. Th eir view, Bieling argues, underestimates the momentum of the integration-process and reduces it to a sub-division of US-imperialism (pp. 229–30). In his view, integration, which has proceeded more rapidly since the 1980s through the Single European Act and the treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Nice, has reached a stage where there are clear elements of European statehood as well as a nascent European civil society. Th is European level of the capitalist state should be analysed as a site of a ‘material condensation of relations of forces’ between classes. However, that does not mean that one could simply transfer the conceptual tools that were used for analysing the nation-state to the European level. Th ere are too many important diff erences between them, such as the fact that the latter does not have a big budget that it can deploy in the maintenance of social cohesion, or that it only has a comparatively small and limited administrative apparatus (pp. 232–6). Unfortunately, Bieling does not go further in explaining how those conceptual tools would have to be modifi ed to be applicable to the study of European integration and European statehood. Important issues are raised by the tendency towards relativisation of the national scale: What happens to condensation of class-forces and other functions of the state when there is no clear political centre anymore? Poulantzas’s analyses were entirely focused on the national state. Th erefore, as Bob Jessop points out in ‘Th e Capitalist Type of State and Authoritarian Statism’, researchers have to take into account the multiplication of scales and their interpenetration (p. 63).

A diff erent perspective is taken by Jens Wissel in ‘Th e Transnationalisation of the Bourgeoisie and the New Networks of Power’. Wissel focuses less on institutional developments at a supranational level and more on processes of transnational class-formation and how these aff ect and are shaped by the national state. Like Panitch and Gindin, he draws on Poulantzas’s analysis of the penetration of Western Europe by American capital, but, contrary to them, he argues that today the penetration is mutual so that there is no clear US-dominance any more. Instead, the mutual interlocking of capital has created a transnational bourgeoisie that is not tied to a specifi c state or region any more but active in all the major markets (pp. 244–5). Th ese developments transcend the boundaries and regulatory capacities of the national state(s), which therefore can no longer be the focus of analysis: ‘A new power-bloc has emerged on the transnational level that organises itself through fl exible and poly-centric networks’ (p. 246). However, these transnational power-networks – organisations like the UN, WTO, and IMF, and think-tanks like the European Round Table of Industrialists or the Trilateral Commission – do not replace the national state as the primary site for the condensation of class-relations because they are much more fl uid: ‘Th ey lack comparable materiality and are therefore more immediately subject to the conjunctures in the relation of forces’ (ibid.). Th e national states do not disappear because

18. As exemplifi ed in Panitch and Gindin 2005.


they play an important role in the organisation of the transnational power-bloc. But their importance is diminished as they become just one nodal point, albeit a crucial one, in a regulatory network (p. 249). However, the exact nature of the relation between the two levels of regulation and condensation remains unclear. Wissel’s analysis implies that national states remain the only sites of condensation because transnational networks lack the features necessary to perform this function, namely a more rigid materiality into which not only the interests of the ruling classes but also, to a certain degree, those of the dominated classes can be inscribed. He could be accused of neglecting the emergence of regional levels of condensation and statehood, at least in the European case. Taking this into account would perhaps have modifi ed his claim that the formation of a transnational power-bloc has led to the emergence of an imperial 19 structure of more or less global reach that relativises national imperialisms (pp. 250–2).

Summing up, one can say that Poulantzas has a great deal to contribute to the study of globalisation as a multi-faceted phenomenon, for he showed the many ways in which national states have become involved in the regulation and organisation of capitalist relations of production and capitalist societies. Th is not only serves as a corrective against exaggerated claims of the demise of the national state, it also helps to formulate more precise questions about globalisation and the relation of diff erent levels to one another, as well as to the economy and class-struggles. Th is can, in turn, yield a more diff erentiated answer to the question of the fate of the national state in globalisation.

Political strategy

Poulantzas was a political thinker who consistently put his academic work in the context of strategic debates within and between Communist parties in Western Europe and the debates of the Th ird International. In the section of the volume devoted to matters of political strategy, two papers address the question how his thoughts about ‘radical transformation’ in State, Power, Socialism20 can be adapted to a situation in which the Communist parties and most other political organisations of the working class have ceased to be relevant social forces21 and in which radical movements are faced with the challenges of globalising capitalism and politics.

Ulrich Brand and Miriam Heigl, in ‘“Inside” and “Outside”’, agree with Poulantzas’s strategic principle that a movement that seeks ‘radical transformation’ cannot simply act outside of the state and try to destroy it. Instead, a strategy would have to be pursued that aims at shifting the relations of forces within the state and at transforming the materiality of the state-apparatuses, its institutional forms and strategic selectivities, because changes in

19. Compare Hardt and Negri 2000.20. Th ere he refrained from talking about ‘revolution’; see the fi nal chapter entitled ‘Towards

a Democratic Socialism’.21. Th is may seem exaggerated. One could object that, for example, the Italian Rifondazione

Comunista is still relevant. But the overall trend on the Left – in many Western countries at least – is towards pluralisation and the displacement of the capital-labour contradiction from the centre of political struggles. It remains to be seen whether the current economic crisis will lead to major changes.


the relation of forces are not automatically translated into changes in its materiality.22 However, they argue that, even though Poulantzas acknowledged the necessity of struggles and movements outside or at a distance from the state, he was too state-centred and underestimated the autonomous capacities for the mobilisation of forces outside of the state, such as the new social movements. Th ey especially criticise his assumption that these movements would end up as neocorporatist interest-groups due to the particularity of their political projects. Th ey see this claim as a result of Poulantzas’s residual class-reductionism and privileging of working-class struggles (pp. 277, 281). Referring to antiprivatisation-struggles and the alterglobalisation-movement in general, they claim that a more pluralist movement that also attempts to change the micro-level of everyday life outside of the state is more promising.

While it is sensible to insist on the inevitable pluralism and heterogeneity of any non-parochial social movement with a geographically wide reach, it should be pointed out that this heterogeneity can create the problem of having merely rhetorical solidarity between diff erent struggles without any kind of organic connection – the downside of the carnivalesque plurality of the alterglobalisation-movement. Furthermore, stressing the need of combining struggles within and at a distance from the state may indeed be valuable advice for this movement, which has a statist wing – ATTAC, certain NGOs, and, insofar as they participate in it, churches and trade-unions – as well as an autonomist wing. However, Brand and Heigl do not deal with the practical problems of trying to maintain such an alliance. Th e Brazilian example of a governing party that emerged from the trade-union movement and has now all but lost any connection with the social movements is a case in point.

Alex Demirović’s contribution ‘Rule by the People?’ focuses on Poulantzas’s assessment of representative democracy. Th e Leninist tradition just saw it as another guise for bourgeois political domination and therefore followed the strategy of dual power. Poulantzas’s assessment is more ambivalent. While he saw the democratic republic as the normal form of bourgeois rule – as opposed to exceptional states like fascism or military dictatorships23 – it was at the same time one, but not the only, fi eld of a struggle for democratic socialism. According to Demirović, Poulantzas followed Rosa Luxemburg in stressing ‘that the institutions of representative democracy must be preserved as positive preconditions of political liberties and democratic socialism’ (p. 301), instead of being smashed. On the other hand, as Brand and Heigl also argue in their contribution, the ultimate aim is not to preserve those institutions but to radically transform them in a democratising way. In combination with democratic organisations and struggles at a distance from the state, this should eventually lead to a withering away of the state. Finally, Demirović urges us to reconsider Poulantzas’s thoughts on political strategy in light of the changes in statehood, namely the relativisation of the national state as the sole level of condensation of relations of forces, and to devise democratic strategies towards a radical transformation of transnational state-apparatuses (pp. 304–5).

Th is is clearly an important point (made also by Brand and Heigl, p. 288). However, it seems problematic to talk in the abstract about strategically using the institutions of representative democracy. Not because, as Demirović acknowledges, the parliament is an

22. Poulantzas 2000, p. 260.23. Compare Poulantzas 1974b, pp. 310–30.


institution whose role and infl uence is determined diff erently in each concrete political system and conjuncture – it may be really powerful in one situation or merely an ideological façade in another (p. 297) – but because the question is also one of who is trying to get into it. Not every left-wing movement or organisation can use the arena of parliamentary politics equally well for its own ends; a network-based movement is very diff erent in that regard to a traditional communist party. Demirović does not really refl ect on the fact that the traditional organisations of the labour-movement – which were still an unproblematic point of reference for Poulantzas – have mostly ceased to exist as relevant political forces. Brand and Heigl are more keenly aware of this.

Th e fi nal contribution in this section, Peter Th omas’s ‘Conjuncture of the Integral State?’, also deals with the question of ‘dual power’ and the diff erent sites for the political struggle of the working class. Poulantzas had claimed that Antonio Gramsci’s distinction between ‘war of movement’ and ‘war of position’ reproduced what is ultimately a reifying distinction of two separate, external spheres of political power, in spite of his substantial refi nement of the Leninist problematic.24 According to this critique, Gramsci ultimately failed to understand the way in which popular struggles are inscribed into the state, eff ectively viewing them as external to it. Th omas argues that this does not do justice to the way Gramsci conceptualised the relation between civil society and political society in the integral state. Far from juxtaposing them as two essentially unrelated spheres (which would allow the proletariat to built up its power ‘outside’ of the state-apparatuses), they are rather conceived of as distinct elements within the dialectical unity of the integral state (p. 318). In this unity, civil society is the social basis; therefore the strategy of the war of movement cannot be understood any more as simply laying siege to and slowly encircling the fortress of the state. Instead, it is a struggle on the terrain of the state, even though it should eventually transcend it (p. 322).

Th is reading leads to the conclusion that Gramsci’s ideas are much closer to Poulantzas’s concept of the state as condensation of a relationship of forces than the latter would admit (p. 314) – a conclusion that allows us to combine their ideas on political strategy.

Omissions

Th ere is one major omission in this volume: classes – particularly the working class; and there is a minor one: a neglect of Poulantzas’s work on exceptional states. Th e only contribution that deals extensively with the latter topic is Th omas Sablowski’s ‘Crisis and Statehood in Poulantzas’, which discusses Poulantzas’s analysis of fascism, albeit not with a view to future research. Of course, analyses of fascism or military-dictatorships seem less urgent anyway in a period when, at least in Europe, there are few political systems that are not formally democratic; but where, on the other hand, ‘normal’ states become increasingly authoritarian, as Poulantzas had predicted in the chapter on ‘authoritarian statism’ in State, Power, Socialism (a point discussed in Jessop’s contribution). However, if Poulantzas’s analyses of exceptional states from the past do not seem to be of interest to sociologists or political scientists any more, it would still have been interesting to see what a Marxist historian would make of them.

24. Poulantzas 2000, pp. 254–9.


What is really missing, however, is a thorough discussion of Poulantzas’s theory of classes in capitalism with a view to its application and further development. Koch’s paper is supposed to do that, but it remains pretty much an annotated summary of Poulantzas’s writings about classes – although, as such, it is very good. And Wissel’s remarks about the formation of a transnational bourgeoisie, interesting as they are, fall short of what is needed: namely a more general account of classes in globalising capitalism that specifi cally focuses on what is most clearly absent from the entire volume: the working classes. Th is, perhaps, is not much of a surprise, given that not many Marxists nowadays still do class-theory. Especially in Europe, a lot of attention is being paid to the ruling classes, to changing relations between capital-fractions, the formation of a transnational bourgeoisie and so on, while the opposite pole is more rarely analysed and/or left to post-Marxist concepts like the ‘multitude’. However, there is an ongoing Marxist discussion about class in general and the working classes in particular.25 So the failure of Poulantzas-scholars to engage with it raises the question of whether Poulantzas has anything to contribute here. And, while this may be a problem for Marxist theory more generally, it becomes particularly salient in the context of discussing Poulantzas, given the centrality of the reference to classes and class-struggle in his work. After all, it is not just general social power-relations that are being condensated in the state, but class-relations in particular. (I do not hereby want to preclude the possibility of extending this concept to other relations of domination, as has been argued for by a number of contributions to this volume.) One would presume that major changes in the composition of the working class and the disappearance or fundamental change of its traditional organisations and power-bases have major eff ects at the level of the state. How then could those be understood?

Erik Olin Wright once wrote: ‘As an explanatory concept, class is relevant both to macro-level analyses of social systems and micro-level analyses of individual lives. In both contexts, class analysis asserts that the way people are linked to economically-relevant assets is consequential in various ways.’26 It seems that this micro-level, the sociological grounding of political class-analysis, is about to get lost in Marxist state-theory. Th ere is no a priori explanatory privilege of class-relations when it comes to analysing forms and functions of the state. If the cleavages and struggles in a society should happen to follow entirely diff erent lines – ethnic ones for instance – then there is no reason why those should not be primary for state-theory.

Reviewed by Julian MüllerLancaster [email protected]

References

Blanke, Bernhard, Ulrich Jürgens and Hans Kastendiek 1975, ‘Das Verhältnis von Politik und Ökonomie als Ansatzpunkt einer materialistischen Analyse des bürgerlichen Staates’, in Kritik der Politischen Wissenschaft. Analysen von Politik und Ökonomie in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft,

25. See, to give just one example, Camfi eld 2004.26. Wright 1996, p. 703.


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Engels, Friedrich 1962 [1894, Th ird Edition], Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, in Marx/Engels-Werke, Volume 20, Berlin (East): Dietz Verlag.

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Marx, Karl 1976 [1867], Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, London: Penguin Books.

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Postone, Moishe 1993, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Th eory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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—— 1974b [1970], Fascism and Dictatorship: Th e Th ird International and the Problem of Fascism, London: NLB.

—— 1975 [1974], Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, London: NLB.—— 2000 [1978], State, Power, Socialism, London: Verso.Wright, Erik Olin 1996, ‘Th e Continuing Relevance of Class Analysis – Comments’, Th eory and

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