Nicos Poulantzas
| Nicos Poulantzas | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
September 21, 1936 Athens, Greece |
| Died | October 3, 1979 (aged 43) Paris, France |
| Alma mater | School of Law, University of Athens (BA, 1957) University of Munich University of Heidelberg University of Paris (PhD, 1964) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy, Western Marxism |
| Institutions | Paris 8 University |
|
Main interests
|
Structural Marxism |
|
Notable ideas
|
The relative autonomy of the state from the capitalist class |
|
Influenced
|
|
Nicos Poulantzas (Greek: Νίκος Πουλαντζάς; 21 September 1936 – 3 October 1979) was a Greek-French Marxist political sociologist. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading Structural Marxist and, while at first a Leninist, eventually became a proponent of eurocommunism. He is most well known for his theoretical work on the state, but he also offered Marxist contributions to the analysis of fascism, social class in the contemporary world, and the collapse of dictatorships in Southern Europe in the 1970s (e.g., Franco's rule in Spain, Salazar's in Portugal, and Papadopoulos's in Greece).
Poulantzas studied law in Greece and moved to France in 1961; there he completed a doctorate in the philosophy of law under the title The rebirth of natural Law in Germany (La renaissance du droit naturel en Allemagne) in 1964. He taught sociology at the University of Paris VIII from 1968 until his death. He was married to the French novelist Annie Leclerc and had one daughter. He killed himself in 1979 by jumping from the window of a friend's flat in Paris.
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 leading contemporary Marxist state theorist, Bob Jessop.
...
Wikipedia