"It's about breaking with the Stalinist tradition!"

Interview with Nicos Poulantzas on authoritarian etatism in Western Europe and the strategy of the labor movement - conducted by Rodrigo Vaquez-Prada*

Abstract

Occasionally he has been accused of formalism and abstractness. Nevertheless, despite all the criticism that can be voiced against it, the work of this Paris-based Greek undoubtedly constitutes one of the most solid and original contributions to contemporary Marxism. A decade ago, in describing his own spiritual development, Nicos Poulantzas wrote that "in epochs of crisis, the theoretical revolution in the history of thought acts as a locomotive". Today it would no longer be an exaggeration to claim that his work played such a role - against the mechanistic and dogmatic schemata of Stalinism - while Poulantzas himself practised a certain form of "political intervention" in precisely defined political situations. And this orientation of his theoretical work emerges with all clarity in his previous works. This also applies to his recently published essay "L 'Etat, Je Pouvoir, Je Socialisme", German: Staatstheorie (Hamburg 1978), in which he sharply and clearly reflects on what he calls 'authoritarian etatism' - a new form of government that is in the process of forming in the countries of developed capitalism, in the European countries.