Social classes and class alliances

pp. 149-190

in: Bob Jessop, Nicos Poulantzas, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1985

Abstract

This chapter deals with Poulantzas's views on social classes, class alliances, and the political representation of class interests. It is difficult to disentangle these issues from the question of the state apparatuses and state power but the effort is worthwhile because of widespread misunderstanding of his approach to class determination and class position. This is best corrected by considering Poulantzas's changing theoretical and strategic concerns. The principal shifts in his theoretical views on class are marked by three key texts: PPSC, FD, and CCC. Their political dynamic is provided by his concern with the question of class alliances. At stake in the case of France is the antimonopoly, anti-imperialist alliance and its implications for the Union de la Gauche. In Greece the problem concerns the appropriate relation between the anti-dictatorial alliance and the anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist alliance. Although his basic views on social classes remained more or less the same after CCC, Poulantzas did reevaluate the character of social movements. Having initially dismissed the new social movements as irredeemably petty bourgeois, Poulantzas later saw them as valid forms of struggle independent of class struggle. This raised new problems concerning alliance politics and produced a further shift in his approach.