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UMI University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 Nortfi Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 8921661 Nicos Poulantzas: For Gramsci Kardaxas, Basil P., Ph.D. The American University, 1989 Copyright ©1989 by Kardaras, Basil P. All ri^ts reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 NICOS POULANTZAS: FOR GRAMSCI BY Basil P. Kardaras submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Signatures of Coirpittee: Chairperson: Dean ofofithe Ithe CollegeDean College 24 April 1989 Date 1989 The American University Washington, D.C. 20016 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY © COPYRIGHT BY BASIL P. KARDARAS 1989 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For Eleni and Katherine NICOS POULANTZAS: FOR GRAMSCI BY Basil P. Kardaras ABSTRACT 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' views 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/power bloc, etc., which he articulates with the structural concepts of Althusser to ii 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. Ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Professors Samih Farsoun, the chair of my committee, Ken Kusterer, and John Scott for their support and encouragement throughout my whole project. I am especially indebted to these individuals for their epistemologically powerful courses, and for allowing me to pursue topics of special interest. The content of their courses was instrumental in my intellectual development, and is reflected in the morphology of this work. Professors Farsoun's and Kusterer's courses in political economy/macrosociology, and Professor Scott's courses in social inequality coupled with Professor Kusterer's and Professor Gert Mueller's social theory courses were of paramount significance for me. I am grateful to the Department of Sociology for providing a vibrant and stimulating atmosphere for me to learn and teach. The department's members, my students, and the unfolding character of historical conjunctures were forces in my own intellectual development. I would like to thank Robert David, as chair of the department during this tenure, for his support. I would also like to thank Helen Koustenis, the department's administrator, for her kindness iv and support. In addition, I would like to thank The American University for granting me a one year University Doctoral Fellowship to pursue my research and writing. I wish to thank my parents, Peter and Helen, and my wife, Dessie, for their support. My father was instrumental in tracing some of the Greek bibliographic material, and my wife was very helpful on the French translations. I could not have done it without them. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Chapter I. THE PROBLEM................................... 1 Introduction to the Problematic ............ 1 The Value of the S t u d y .................... 5 Methodology................................. 15 Chapter Contents ........................... 18 II. BIOGRAPHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL NOTES .......... 20 The Greek Context........................... 20 The French C o n t e x t ......................... 22 III. FROM STRUCTURALISM TO STRUCTURAL MARXISM . 27 The Specificity of Structuralism ........ 27 Ferdinand de Saussure ...................... 31 Sigmund Freud ............................... 33 Claude Lévi-Strauss ......................... 35 The Rise of Marxist Study in France: The Antecedents to Structural Marxism ........ 38 Structural Marxism ......................... 47 Maurice Godelier ........................... 49 Louis Althusser............ 52 Epistemological Break and Problematic .... 53 The Genealogy of Marx's Epistemological B r e a k ..................................... 56 Overdetermination: The Negation of Economism................................. 58 Causality, Empiricism, and Historicism . 65 Contradiction, Conjuncture, and Transition: The Unity of the Concepts . 68 Economism/Humanism ......................... 72 Economism................................... 74 H u m a n i s m ................................... 77 Class Struggle: The Denial of the Bourgeois Fetishization of M a n .................... 80 VI IV. THE GRAMSCIAN PROBLEMATIC.................. 88 The Metamorphosis.................... .. 88 Economism................................. 91 P o s i t i v i s m ............................... 94 H e g e m o n y ................................. 98 The Specificity of Hegemony.............. 105 Hegemony and Ideology .................... 109 Civil Society and the S t a t e .............. 117 War of Position and War of Maneuver .... 125 The Crisis of Hegemony .................. 130 Organic Intellectuals .................... 136 V. THE ARCHITECTONICS OF AN EMERGING PROBLEMATIC............................... 143 The Articulation of the Practices........ 143 Mode of Production and Social Formation . 149 Specification of the Practices .......... 157 The Economic Practice .................... 158 The Political Practice .................. 164 The Ideological Practice ................ 168 VI. PROLEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OF THE STATE .... 174 Social Relations of Production .......... 174 The Specificity of the Power B l o c ........ 184 H e g e m o n y ................................. 194 Relative Autonomy ........................ 199 The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate .......... 215 VII. THE MATERIAL SPECIFICITY OF THE CAPITALIST STATE ..................................... 233 The Problem with Economism .............. 233 Characteristics of the Capitalist State . 238 The Dominant and the Dominated Classes . 241 Authoritarian Statism .................... 247 VIII. SOCIAL CLASSES ............................. 259 The Structural Determination of Social C l a s s e s................................. 259 The Wage Question and C l a s s .............. 274 The Taxonomic and Topographical Existence of the Petty B o u r g e o i s i e .............. 279 IX. THE MATERIALITY OF IDEOLOGY................ 302 The Ideological Practice ................ 302 Ideology and State Apparatuses .......... 311 Vll The Ideological State Apparatuses ........ 318 Interpellation .......................... 328 The Juridico-Political Region of Ideology . 335 The Juridico-Political Discourse and the Monopoly of Force-Violence ............ 340 The Juridico-Political Discourse of Law . 345 CONCLUSION......................................... 352 The Edifice.............. 352 The Crisis of/in Marxism ................ 362 Crisis in Conjunctures .................. 363 The Transition to Democratic Socialism . 371 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................... 390 Vlll CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM Introduction to the Problematic The oeuvre of Nicos Poulantzas represents a major epistemological break^ with former conceptualizations of the capitalist State, social classes, ideology, politics, and the social relations that constitute the capitalist social formation. Poulantzas' problematic^ makes valuable ^An epistemological