Political Power and Social Classes

Introduction

“Political Power and Social Classes” appeared in 1968. Poulantzas wrote it as a theory of the political within Althusser’s structural Marxism: the capitalist mode of production assigns the state a specific function, the cohesion of a society divided into classes. The state is relatively autonomous from the dominant classes; it unites their competing fractions into a “power bloc” under the hegemony of one fraction, a concept taken from Gramsci, and isolates the dominated classes by addressing them as individual citizens. The book also analyses Bonapartism, class fractions and the political scene. Translated into English in 1973, it became, together with his exchange with Ralph Miliband begun in 1969, a standard text of Marxist state theory; critics found it formalist and functionalist.

Connections

Builds on

• For Marx1965 · Louis Althusser

More works by Nicos Poulantzas

• 1978State, Power, Socialism