State, Power, Socialism Quotes

“Contradictions among the dominant classes and fractions - or in other words, the relationship of forces within the power bloc - are precisely what makes it necessary for the unity of the bloc to be organized by the State.”
― Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism

“an institution destined to reproduce class divisions is not, and can never be, a monolithic bloc without cracks, whose policy is established, as it were, in spite of its own contradictions.”
― Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism

“The (capitalist) State should not be regarded as an intrinsic entity: like 'capital', it is rather a relationship of forces, or more precisely the material condensation of such a relationship among classes and class fractions”
― Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism

“With regard to the dominant classes, and particularly the bourgeoisie, the State's principal role is one of organization. It represents and organizes the dominant class or classes; or, more precisely, it represents and organizes the long-term political interest of a power bloc, which is composed of several bourgeois class fractions (for the bourgeoisie is divided into class fractions), and which sometimes embraces dominant classes issuing from other modes of production that are present in the capitalist social formation.”
― Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism

“just as there can be no general theory of the- economy (no 'economic science') having a theoretical object that remains unchanged through the various modes of production, so can there be no 'general theory' of the state-political (in the sense of a political 'science' or 'sociology') having a similarly constant object.”
― Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism

“Whether overtly or not, all twentieth-century political theory has basically posed the same question: what is the relationship between the State, power and social classes?”
― Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism