He has several massive works. Pretty much all Marxist state theory debates that happen today can be divided into poulantzas VS Miliband VS other camps. I'd say the principle difference is that he tweaks the definition of the state, to allow for some degree of self interested autonomy yet also parasitic attachment to capital which makes withering arguments and the possibilities of worker states transitioning much more difficult. Poulantzas didn't reject using the state either though, he wrestled with it a lot in his writing. He's defined intellectually by being an ML that has an identity crisis in the face of the late 60s and basically dedicates the rest of his life to reexamining everything. He ended up taking this really particular vision of democratic socialism with non state and state based politics that was still (to him anyway) a revolutionary project.
Now you may ask, well how is that different from what Lenin said about smashing state machinary, and there's an attachment to that quote (Poulantzas used it in a debate with Ralph Miliband) but he'd argue that every ML experiment basically failed to actually do that in a way that could work (though his thought was dynamic and towards the end of his life he started reconsidering the premises of smashing the state so it doesn't quite fit).
This comes up regarding imperialism and poulantzas, but I'm sure there's at least several other pieces he wrote on it, considering it was a big thing for him to figure out the importance of locating each nation’s position in a global “imperialist chain” to make sense of the particular form its state needed to take to reproduce capitalist class power.
I'm definitely gonna look into him more, he seems to have some interesting views on the function of the state under capitalism that even if they aren't perfect, still have merit in deciphering how capitalism reproduces itself using class collaboration.
He has several massive works. Pretty much all Marxist state theory debates that happen today can be divided into poulantzas VS Miliband VS other camps. I'd say the principle difference is that he tweaks the definition of the state, to allow for some degree of self interested autonomy yet also parasitic attachment to capital which makes withering arguments and the possibilities of worker states transitioning much more difficult. Poulantzas didn't reject using the state either though, he wrestled with it a lot in his writing. He's defined intellectually by being an ML that has an identity crisis in the face of the late 60s and basically dedicates the rest of his life to reexamining everything. He ended up taking this really particular vision of democratic socialism with non state and state based politics that was still (to him anyway) a revolutionary project.
Now you may ask, well how is that different from what Lenin said about smashing state machinary, and there's an attachment to that quote (Poulantzas used it in a debate with Ralph Miliband) but he'd argue that every ML experiment basically failed to actually do that in a way that could work (though his thought was dynamic and towards the end of his life he started reconsidering the premises of smashing the state so it doesn't quite fit).
This comes up regarding imperialism and poulantzas, but I'm sure there's at least several other pieces he wrote on it, considering it was a big thing for him to figure out the importance of locating each nation’s position in a global “imperialist chain” to make sense of the particular form its state needed to take to reproduce capitalist class power.
I'm definitely gonna look into him more, he seems to have some interesting views on the function of the state under capitalism that even if they aren't perfect, still have merit in deciphering how capitalism reproduces itself using class collaboration.
Yeah it's really interesting. Huge tragedy for the state theory community he died young, threw himself out a window in Paris in 1979.
I've been intending to read this lately, most recent book published on the Miliband poulantzas debates.