was itself set aside, the autonomization of political and ideological action was taken to its ultimate extreme.
The transportation of these principles to the advanced capitalist countries of the West, to be adopted especially by students and intellectuals, was clearly no easy matter and required significant modifications – given the existence of well-developed and large working classes with long histories of struggle, not to mention the less than ideal conditions of intellectuals in China itself. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see the attractions exerted by this view of revolution, with its delicately ambiguous synthesis of democratic and anti-democratic elements. On the one hand, Maoist doctrine, with its insistence on keeping in touch with the masses, its attack on bureaucratic ossification, its mass line, and its Cultural Revolution, seemed to satisfy the deepest anti-statist and democratic impulses. On the other hand (whatever its actual implications in China), it could be interpreted as doing so without relegating declassed intellectuals to the periphery of the revolution. The dissociation of revolution from class struggle, the autonomization of ideological and cultural struggles, could be interpreted as an invitation to them to act as the revolutionary consciousness of the people, to put themselves in the place of intrinsic class impulses and interests as the guiding light of popular struggles. After all, if there is any kind of revolution that intellectuals can lead, surely it must be a ‘cultural’ one.
Maoism, never more than a marginal and incoherent phenomenon in the context of advanced capitalism, could not long survive transportation; but the themes of cultural revolution, the autonomy of political and especially ideological struggles, and in particular the displacement of struggle from class to popular masses did survive in forms more appropriate to a Western setting. At least, some of those who had been attracted to Maoism for its adherence to these doctrines seem to have found in Eurocommunism a reasonable substitute: an alternative to Stalinism which promised both democracy or popular involvement and a special place for elite party cadres and declassed intellectuals. In particular, here, too, class was increasingly displaced by the more flexible ‘popular masses’ – though, of course, in a very different form. And here, too, political and ideological struggles were rendered more or less autonomous from material relations and class. Maoist influences need not, of course, be invoked to explain Eurocommunist doctrine. European Communism has traditions of its own on which to draw – the legacy of the Popular Front with its cross-class alliances, suitably modified versions of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony with its stress on ideological and cultural domination, etc. But for one important segment of the European left, the transition from ‘Maoism’ (in its Western variant) to Eurocommunism had a certain comfortable logic. It is therefore not surprising to find certain continuous themes figuring prominently in the academic theoretical systems that have grown up side by side with Eurocommunism.
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1 André Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism, Boston 1982, p. 96.
2 Ibid., p. 15.
3 Ibid., p. 68.
4 Ibid., p. 7.
5 Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism, London 1976, p. 66.
6 Ibid., p. 64–5.
7 Ibid., p. 55.
8 Ralph Miliband, ‘Constitutionalism and Revolution: Notes on Eurocommunism’, Socialist Register 1978, pp. 165–7.
The Forerunner: Nicos Poulantzas
I
All the major themes of the NTS are present in embryo in the work of Nicos Poulantzas; and it is possible that had he lived, he might have followed the logic of his theoretical and political trajectory to the position now occupied by many of his post-Althusserian colleagues. As it is, however, he certainly never went so far; and if he is without doubt a major influence, he cannot really be regarded, theoretically or politically, as a full-blown NTS, either with respect to the theoretical detachment of ideology and politics from any social determinations, or with respect to the political detachment of socialism from the working class.
Poulantzas deserves special attention not only because he is perhaps the most important theorist of the post-Althusserian tradition, the one who has done most to ground that tradition, with its philosophical preoccupations, more firmly in the immediate political problems of contemporary socialism, but also because he has made a major contribution to directing Marxists generally to long neglected theoretical problems. The extent of his influence on the present generation of Marxist political theorists, which is the more impressive for the tragic brevity of his career, would be reason enough for singling him out as an exemplary case. But he is exemplary also in a more general, historical sense. The course of his political and theoretical evolution traces the trajectory of a major trend in the European left, reflecting the political odyssey of a whole generation.
When Poulantzas wrote his first major theoretical work, Political Power and Social Classes, published in 1968, like many others he was seeking a ground for socialist politics that was neither Stalinist nor social democratic. There was then, on the eve of the Eurocommunist era, no obvious alternative in Europe. Poulantzas’s theoretical exploration of the political ground was still abstractly critical, negative, chipping away at the theoretical foundations of the main available options without a clear positive commitment to any party line. Like many of his contemporaries, however, he seems to have leaned towards the ultra-left, more or less Maoist, option. At least, his theoretical apparatus, deeply indebted to Althusser whose own Maoist sympathies were then quite explicit, bears significant traces of that commitment. The attack on ‘economism’, which is the hallmark of Poulantzas’s work and the basis of his stress on the specificity and autonomy of the political, was essential to Maoism and constituted one of its chief attractions for people like Althusser. The concept of ‘cultural revolution’ also held a strong fascination for Poulantzas, as for the many others who claimed it as the operative principle of ‘revolutions’ like that of May 1968. Whatever this concept meant to the Chinese, it was adopted by students and intellectuals in the West to cover revolutionary movements without specific points of concentration or focused political targets, characterized instead by a diffusion of struggle throughout the social ‘system’ and all its instruments of ideological and cultural integration. The theoretical implications of this conception are suggested by Poulantzas himself, for example, in his debate with Ralph Miliband. In this exchange, Poulantzas adopted the Althusserian notion of ‘ideological state apparatuses’, according to which various ideological institutions within civil society which function to maintain the hegemony of the dominant class – such as the Church, schools, even trade unions – are treated as belonging to the system of the state.1 He went on to suggest a connection between the idea of ‘cultural revolution’ and the strategic necessity of ‘breaking’ these ideological apparatuses. It is not difficult to see why advocates of ‘cultural revolution’ might be attracted to the notion of conceiving these ‘apparatuses’ as part of the state and thus theoretically legitimizing the shift to ‘cultural’ and ideological revolt and the diffusion of struggle.
