The Miliband–Poulantzas debate was a debate between Marxist theorists

Ralph Miliband Ralph Miliband (born Adolphe Miliband; 7 January 1924 – 21 May 1994) was a British sociologist. He has been described as "one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation", in this manner being compared with E. P. Thompson, Eric Ho ...

and

Nicos Poulantzas Nicos Poulantzas ( ; 21 September 1936 – 3 October 1979) was a Greek-French Marxist political sociologist and philosopher. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading structural Marxist; while at first a Leni ...

concerning the nature of the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

societies. Their exchange was published in ''

New Left Review The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal, established in 1960, which analyses international politics, the global economy, social theory, and cultural topics from a leftist perspective. History Background As part of the emergin ...

'', beginning with Poulantzas's review of Miliband's 1969 work on

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

democracies, ''The State in Capitalist Society''. The exchange is typically characterized as a debate between Miliband's

instrumentalist A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

model of the capitalist state and Poulantzas'

structural A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

position; however,

Bob Jessop Bob Jessop (born 3 March 1946) is a British academic who has published extensively on State (polity), state theory and political economy. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster. Work Jessop's major c ...

argues that this account is misleading.

Debate

In ''The State in Capitalist Society'', Miliband presents his theory of how the state functions to serve capitalist interests. It does so, he claims, because of (1) the social origins of members of the government and (2) the personal ties and influence between members of the government and ruling-class elites. Poulantzas disagrees with Miliband's approach, adopting a structural position. He claims the state is objectively a capitalist entity, which can serve no purpose other than preserving the capitalist mode of production. Furthermore, he argues that if members of the

ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the class who own the means of production in a given society and apply ...

are the same people as those who manage the state, this is merely a coincidence: the state reproduces capitalist relations regardless of who is in charge. In his critique, he claims:

The relation between the bourgeois class and the state is an objective relation. This means that if the function of the state in a determinate social formation and the interests of the dominant class coincide, it is by reason of the system itself: the direct participation of members of the ruling class in the state apparatus is not the cause but the effect.

In a response to Poulantzas's criticisms, Miliband counters that Poulantzas's position allows no room for agency and is therefore too limiting. His point of view does not allow individuals to make decisions based on their own free will; rather, their decisions are determined solely by the structure of society:

For what his exclusive stress on 'objective relations' suggests is that what the state does is in every particular and at all times wholly determined by these 'objective relations': in other words, that the structural constraints of the system are so absolutely compelling as to turn those who run the state into the merest functionaries and executants of policies imposed upon them by 'the system'.

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Debate

See also

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Further reading