The Althusser-Poulantzas Discussion on the State

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to present and criticize Althusser’s and Poulantzas’s key positions on the State and its mechanisms. To begin with there is a discussion on the notion that the State is an aggregation of ideological and repressive apparatuses and on the position according to which the State is an instrument. This is followed by a rejection of Althusser’s and Poulantzas’s claims in the light of the thesis that the State is the material outcome of a correlation of forces in the context of a specific mode of production but that there is a limit to the changes that may be made within the capitalist mode of production.

KEYWORDS:

• Marxism
• State
• Poulantzas
• Althusser

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Spyros Sakellaropoulos is Professor in the Social Policy Department of the Panteion University, Greece. His research interests are centered on the theory of the State, the study of the Modern Greek, Cypriot and Nepalese societies and the theory of development of the capitalist mode of production. His recent books include The Cypriot Social Formation (1191–2004) (Athens: Topos, in Greek) and Greece’s (Un)competitive Capitalism and the Economic Crisis—How the Memoranda Changed Society, Politics and the Economy (Palgrave, forthcoming).

Notes

1. See the English version in Poulantzas (2008).

2. See the English version in Althusser (1969).

3. The use of the term State in uppercase means the State as the global-central institution. The use in lowercase has the meaning either of the “public” (state organizations) or of the “situtation” (state of the economy). The only exception is the term State apparatuses, invented by Althusser, which is used in uppercase, as well as in Althusser's work. As far as the quotations is concerned it followed the spelling of the original.

4. In any case, as early as the introduction and the first footnote, Poulantzas clearly endorses Althusser’s interpretation of the content and relationship between historical and dialectical materialism (Poulantzas 1978b, 11, 18n6).

5. Poulantzas (1980, 33) says,

Certain apparatuses are distinguished in an almost nominalist or essentialist manner according to whether they are repressive (set mainly through repression) or ideological (set mainly through ideology). But this distinction is itself highly debatable. Depending on the form of the State and regime and on the phase of reproduction of capitalism, a number of apparatuses can shift from one sphere to the other and assume new functions.

6. Althusser (2006, 82) says, “The State apparatus may well display a diversity of apparatuses (repressive, political and ideological); what defines them as state apparatuses is the fact that they all work together to ‘the same end.’”

7. Althusser (2006, 107) says,

We would clearly say that the State is a machine for producing power. In principle, it produces legal power . . . because, even when the state is despotic, and “dictatorial” to boot, it always has an interest, practically speaking, in basing itself on laws; . . . In fact, the whole political apparatus, like the whole State administration, spends its time producing legal power, hence laws, as well as decrees and ordinances . . . The rest οf it consists in monitoring their application by the agents of the State themselves, subject in their turn to the monitoring of inspectorates beginning with the Court of Auditors.

8. Althusser (2006, 81) says,

All this is a way of reiterating that Marx’s and Lenin’s formula to the effect that the State is an “instrument,” and is therefore separate from the class struggle, the better to serve the interests of the dominant class, is a powerful formula. There can be no question of abandoning it.

Similarly, the reference to “the circle of the reproduction of the State in its functions as an instrument for the reproduction of the conditions of production, hence of exploitation, hence of the conditions of existence of the domination of the exploiting class” (Althusser 2006, 126). Here it is obvious that there has been a shift in Althusser’s position from the assertion in Sur la Reproduction, where he is clearly polemicizing against

certain Marxists, and by no means the least of them, (who) have ‘fallen’ to the wrong side of the path on the ridge by presenting the State as a mere instrument of domination and repression in the service of objectives, that is, of the dominant class's conscious will. (Αlthusser 2014, 72)

The former work was written in 1971; the second in 1978.

9. As he says, specifically in relation to Althusser:

Let us linger for a moment on Althusser. Contrary to what he maintains, every class confrontation, all the social movements (syndicalist, ecological, autonomist, feminist, student, etc.) insofar as they are political, or rather in relation to their political aspects, are necessarily located in the strategic field of the State. Proletarian policies cannot be placed outside the State, just as a policy that is situated within the scope of the State is not for that reason necessarily a bourgeois policy. (Poulantzas 1979c, 88)

10. As Weber (1978, 10) aptly observes, “It is not enough to occupy the heights in order to hold the entire apparatus; if the summit is lost, the centre of real power changes position.”