Abstract
There is nothing self-evident about the importance that the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (the Trotskyist LCR) attached to Poulantzas’s thought: most of its theorists took a very critical approach toward him, especially on account of his Eurocommunist convictions. Nonetheless, this piece demonstrates a critical but attentive reception of Poulantzas by LCR theorists like Daniel Bensaïd, Antoine Artous, and Michael Löwy, in which we see both serious disagreements and an evident mutual respect. Poulantzas’s novel theoretical propositions on complex and often controversial questions (the internationalization of capital, the advent of a new petty bourgeoisie, the conception of the state) were all discussed and subjected to critique, showing the vitality of a ‘warm current’ of Marxism that saw its glory years in France in the 1970s.
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- 1.
Indeed, the CD-ROM of the LCR’s paper Rouge does not feature any mention of Poulantzas. Thanks to Christian Beauvain and Jean-Guillaume Lanuque for helping me to check this information.
- 2.
Michael Löwy, ‘The Nicos Poulantzas I knew’, English text at https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1908-michael-lowy-the-nicos-poulantzas-i-knew. This interview was conducted for Contretemps by Alexis Cukier, Razmig Keucheyan and Fabio Mascaro Querido in December 2014. It is worth noting that Poulantzas’s name did not appear in the standard historical study of the LCR, Jean-Paul Salles’s La Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (1968–1981). Instrument du Grand Soir ou lieu d’apprentissage? Rennes: PUR, 2005, or in Joshua Florence’s Anticapitalistes. Une sociologie historique de l’engagement, Paris: La Découverte, 2015.
- 3.
Razmig Keucheyan, Left Hemisphere: Mapping Critical Theory Today, London: Verso.
- 4.
English text available at https://www.viewpointmag.com/2014/09/05/the-notion-of-the-revolutionary-crisis-in-lenin-1968/. The author would like to thank Sophie Bensaïd for generously (and very promptly) sending him the French version, which is now available on the Daniel Bensaïd site at http://danielbensaid.org/La-notion-de-crise-revolutionnaire.
- 5.
Political Power and Social Classes, op. cit., p. 47.
- 6.
Daniel Bensaïd and Alain Naïr, ‘À propos de la question de l’organisation: Lénine et Rosa Luxemburg’, Partisans, 45, December 1968–January 1969, p. 11.
- 7.
Daniel Bensaïd, ‘À propos de “Fascisme et dictature”. Poulantzas, la politique de l’ambiguïté’, Critiques de l’économie politique, 11–12, April–September 1973, pp. 268 et sqq.
- 8.
Daniel Bensaïd, ‘Nicos Poulantzas, La crise des dictatures: Portugal, Grèce, Espagne’, Critique communiste, June–July 1975, p. 127.
- 9.
Jean-Marie Vincent, ‘État et classes sociales. Sur un livre de Nicos Poulantzas’, Critiques de l’économie politique, 19, January–March 1975, p. 28.
- 10.
Antoine Artous and Daniel Bensaïd, ‘Hégemonie, autogestion et dictature du prolétariat’, Critique communiste, 16, May 1977, p. 45.
- 11.
Jean-Marie Vincent, ‘État et classes sociales’, op. cit., p. 8.
- 12.
‘L’État et la transition au socialisme’, interview of Nicos Poulantzas by Henri Weber, Critique communiste, 16, May 1977, p. 17.
- 13.
Antoine Artous and Daniel Bensaïd, ‘À l’Ouest, questions de stratégie’, Critique communiste, 65, 1987, pp. 23–24.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Daniel Bensaïd, ‘Eurocommunisme, austromarxisme et bolchevisme’, Critique communiste, 18/19, October–November 1977, p. 165.
- 16.
Razmig Keucheyan, preface to the new edition of Nicos Poulantzas, L’État, le pouvoir et le socialisme, Paris: Les Prairies ordinaires, 2013, p. 30.
- 17.
Nicos Poulantzas and Henri Weber, ‘L’État et la transition au socialisme’, op. cit., p. 19.
- 18.
Antoine Artous and Daniel Bensaïd, ‘À l’Ouest, questions de stratégie’, op. cit.
- 19.
Daniel Bensaïd, ‘Grève générale, front unique, dualité de pouvoir’, Critique communiste, 26, January 1979, pp. 55 et sqq.
- 20.
Nicos Poulantzas, ‘L’État et la transition au socialisme. Interview par H. Weber’, op. cit., pp. 21–22.
- 21.
Antoine Artous and Daniel Bensaïd, ‘À l’Ouest, questions de stratégie’, op. cit.
- 22.
Daniel Bensaïd, ‘Eurocommunisme, austromarxisme et bolchevisme’, op. cit., p. 194.
- 23.
Jean-Marie Vincent, ‘État et classes sociales. Sur un livre de Nicos Poulantzas’, op. cit., p. 5.
- 24.
Daniel Bensaïd, ‘À propos de “Fascisme et dictature”. Poulantzas, la politique de l’ambiguïté’, op. cit., p. 281.
- 25.
Michael Löwy, ‘The Nicos Poulantzas I knew’, op. cit.
- 26.
Razmig Keucheyan, preface to the new edition of Nicos Poulantzas, L’État, le pouvoir et le socialisme, op.cit., p. 10. Here the author adopts the formula E.P. Thompson coined in his The Making of the English Working Class.
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Bantigny, L. (2019). The Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, Nicos Poulantzas, and the Reception and Discussion of His Theory. In: Ducange, JN., Keucheyan, R. (eds) The End of the Democratic State. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90890-8_7
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