Nicos Poulantzas: For Gramsci

Nicos Poulantzas' work makes a major epistemological contribution to the study of the production and reproduction of the social relations of existence. This work is an in-depth exegesis and analysis of Poulantzas' view on the capitalist State, social classes, ideology, and the democratic transition to democratic socialism. Poulantzas' relational or articulation theory is systematically developed with regard to the political, ideological, and economic practices. It is shown that these practices are fundamental ensembles whose particular form of articulation establishes the morphology of concrete social formations. There is also an examination of the work of Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser. The linkages between Gramsci's problematic and Poulantzas' problematic are revealed on a variety of levels through a symptomatic reading. Poulantzas makes wide use of Gramsci's concepts, e.g., hegemony, historical bloc, etc., which he articulates with the structural concepts of Althusser to form a new and more powerful epistemology. It is further noted that Althusser's work on ideology, like that of Poulantzas, is heavily overdetermined by Gramsci's problematic.