Theories of Fascism: Nicos Poulantzas as Historian*

Abstract

The work of Marxist political theorist Nicos Poulantzas would perhaps be less well known in this country without long debate that has been taking place between him and Ralph Miliband. Within a year of each other, in I968-69, two writers published deeply contrasting studies of state under capitalism,' and thereby embarked on a project of mutual criticism which has had a wide airing among British Marxists.2 This interest is hardly surprising. For one thing, coincidence of books' publication broke a relative silence on theory of state in Marxism, and a debate of some kind was long overdue. But secondly, debate they provoked went straight to heart of an already familiar conflict of political cultures, as a resume will show. Poulantzas and Miliband start from theoretical positions which could hardly be more dissimilar, and they have become progressively more critical of each other. Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society is a work of dissenting radicalism, forceful, incisive and politically uncompromising. Yet, as a detailed exposure of composition, mechanics and style of Western political systems, it stands firmly within empirical tradition exemplified by political sociologist to whom book is dedicated, C. Wright Mills. In this sense, its structure, if not its political judgement, conforms to a version of orthodox political theory rooted in Western bourgeois thought. Poulantzas's Political Power and Social Classes, on other hand, is heir, through critical modification, of newer and rather less accessible methodological school associated with name of Louis Althusser. Its entire problematic and vocabulary are less familiar in this country, and correspond to a theoretical rigour quite absent from Miliband's work. The establishment of a strict Marxist theoretical framework is an integral part of Poulantzas's project, and is pursued by him with a special regard for conceptual precision and subtle differentiations. The two authors themselves are a good deal less dispassionate than this in describing one another's method. In Miliband's eyes, Poulantzas suffers from 'an exaggerated fear of empiricist contamination', and is guilty of a 'structuralist abstractionism' so abstruse that 'it cuts him off from any possibility of achieving what he describes as the political analysis of a concrete conjuncture '.3 Conversely, Poulantzas accuses his critic of capitulating to 'the illusions of evident', and of a neo-positivist empiricism which (returning Miliband's own charge of 'super-determinism') leads to establishment of 'immutable dogmas'. In addition, some of Miliband's criticisms strike him as so 'utterly absurd' that he declines to respond.4 Hardly surprising, then, to find that two writers have been characterised as working within utterly different systems of knowledge. 5