Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 143

Poulantzas lesen. Zur Aktualität marxistischer Staatstheorie, Edited by Lars Bretthauer,

Alexander Gallas, John Kannankulam and Ingo Stützle, Hamburg: VSA Verlag, 2006.

Abstract
his review discusses a collection of papers on Nicos Poulantzas’s contribution to Marxist state-
theory and socialist strategy. Chapters are grouped into three subject-areas: theory and method;
globalisation; political strategy. Particular attention is paid to Poulantzas’s definition of the state
and methodology for investigating concrete state-forms. Poulantzas gives primacy to the balance
of forces between classes, which raises two questions: Should his approach be integrated with
theories which emphasise the formal aspects of the capitalist state? Can power-relations other
than those between classes be integrated into a Poulantzian framework?
Poulantzas’s work is also relevant to the study of globalisation and supranational actors. First,
his investigations of the internationalisation of capital and different fractions of the bourgeoisie
help us analyse developments since the 1970s. Second, his theory of the state and its functions
provide a benchmark for assessing to which degree national states have been superseded by inter-/
supranational institutions such as the EU.
Regarding political strategy, the focus is on the path towards democratic socialism. Questions
raised concern primarily the right mixture of struggles inside and outside the institutions of
parliamentary democracy.

Keywords
state-theory, form-analysis, class-struggles, Marxism and feminism, globalisation, European
integration, democratic socialism

Every social force or movement that stands in opposition to the capitalist status quo and
that cannot be put down violently will, at some point, have to reflect on its relationship to
the institutions of the capitalist state. his may not have been much of an issue in the
decade or so following the global rupture of 1989. Since then, however, left-wing and
socialist projects have made a comeback, be it the left-wing governments in Latin America
or the resurgence of oppositional movements and organisations in many other countries,
such as ATTAC or, in Germany, the new ‘Left Party’. Especially the latter’s frequently statist
orientations and occasional naïveté have brought the question of the state firmly back on to
the table and thus renewed interest in Poulantzas’s contributions to Marxist state-theory
and socialist strategy. His work seems particularly pertinent in the German context, where
oppositional movements have not only been confronted with the repressive power of the
state, but also with its power to integrate opposition. he Green Party, which went from
posing fundamental alternatives to partnership in a coalition-government, is a case in point
and a warning to activists. It is these discussions that the editors of the volume under review
here want to draw together.
Moreover, because Poulantzas described the beginning of the end of Fordism, his
work can be useful in analysing the neoliberal restructuring of the capitalist state and
economy – and, one might argue, the restructuring that is likely to happen as a result of the
current crisis of neoliberal capitalism.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/146544609X12537556703476

144 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

hese strongly political motivations notwithstanding, the focus of this volume1 is on

more academic and theoretically oriented contributions that try to encourage reading and
discussion of the primary texts by demonstrating the many fields of study in which
Poulantzas’s concepts and analyses might be fruitfully applied.
In this regard, the editors and contributors have done a good job. In what follows, I will
take up the main topics in the volume and discuss the various papers that deal with them.
I will also point to what I consider a crucial omission.

Questions of method and theory

he strongly theory-oriented contributions that form the bulk of this volume deal with a
fairly broad range of topics, from the core issues of Marxist state-theory to Poulantzas’s
relation to Foucault and his early theories of the legal system. his section discusses the
main ones.

he form, function, and materiality of the state and law

It is striking that, among the contributors to this volume, there seems to exist a virtual
consensus that the central claim of Poulantzas’s State, Power, Socialism – namely, that the
state is ‘a relationship of forces, or more precisely the material condensation of such a relationship
among classes and class fractions’2 – is his most inspiring theoretical thought and the one
that can and should be most strongly developed and transferred to other areas of critical
social science. his definition makes two key points: firstly, that the state is neither a more
or less rational subject standing above society and representing its general interest, nor
an instrument to be wielded by the bourgeoisie or any other social power, but a social
relationship between classes; secondly, that, at the same time, the state

is not reducible to the relationship of forces; it exhibits an opacity and resistance

of its own. To be sure, change in the class relationship of forces always affects the
State; but it does not find expression in the State in a direct and immediate
fashion. It adapts itself exactly to the materiality of the various state apparatuses,
only becoming crystallized in the State in a refracted form that varies according
to the apparatus. A change in power is never enough to transform the materiality
of the state apparatus.3

A case in point, and a good place to start, is Sonja Buckel’s paper on ‘he Juridical
Condensation of the Relations of Forces’, in which she argues that the idea may be fruitfully
applied to the theory of law, albeit with certain revisions and extensions. hese would
include broadening one’s view so as also to take, among others, gender relations into
account, for ‘[g]ender relations are also constituted and reproduced by the state and law’

1. An English-language edition of the book is due to be published in winter 2009/10 by

Merlin Press, London.
2. Poulantzas 2000, p. 128.
3. Poulantzas 2000, pp. 130–1.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 145

(p. 178).4 Poulantzas’s class-based analysis should also be more rigorously combined with
the so-called form-analytical approach of Evgeny Pashukanis and the German ‘state-
derivationists’ (p. 180). his, she claims, would yield a stronger theoretical account of the
capitalist state’s relative autonomy vis-à-vis social classes and the economy. In fact, the
potential of such a combination for an account of the crucial dimension of state-materiality
and -autonomy is discussed or hinted at in several chapters.
he state-derivation school originated in West Germany in the 1970s. Whereas Poulantzas
based his analysis of the capitalist type of state mostly on the specific nature of class-relations
in the capitalist mode of production, the former tried to ‘derive’ the state from the logic of
capital as an ‘automatic subject’;5 that is, by trying to extend Marx’s analysis of the value-
form towards a theory of the political sphere/the state. One of their main concerns was
to ‘logically’ demonstrate why the capitalist mode of production necessitates the existence
of an institutionally separate state that fulfils a number of necessary functions for
maintaining accumulation, such as ensuring contracts between legally free subjects. he
determinations thus derived were called the ‘state-forms’ or, put differently, the state itself,
as an institutionally separate sphere, is a form. he rule of law [Rechtsstaat] was another
of these forms.6
he state-derivationists successfully explained some generic features of the capitalist type
of state at a very high level of abstraction. But they neglected class-struggle and historical
specificity, committed the fallacy of functionalism (because they ignored the fact that ‘form
problematises function’),7 and assumed that the differentiation of the state was already
enough to guarantee its functionality for capital-accumulation. Nevertheless, in ‘Poulantzas
and Form-Analysis’, Joachim Hirsch and John Kannankulam argue that, because the state-
derivationists explained more stringently than Poulantzas the form of the state as necessarily
institutionally separate from the economy, they also laid the ground for a better
understanding of its relative autonomy. Poulantzas, on the other hand, was right about
emphasising the importance of class-struggles in creating hegemony and thus a relatively
unified state that would serve the need of continuing accumulation. herefore, a
combination of the two approaches would best advance Marxist state-theory and enable it
to deal with the challenge of explaining the changes of the state and the international
system in globalisation (p. 80). While I would agree with this conclusion, Hirsch and
Kannankulam could have tried to give more concrete hints as to how such a combination
could help in dealing with these questions.
he anti-functionalist critique of certain state-theoretical approaches is also taken up
in Lars Bretthauer’s contribution, ‘Materiality and Condensation in Nicos Poulantzas’, in
which the author stresses that Poulantzas focused on the contingency and the potential
failure of the state to secure the conditions of continuous accumulation. In Bretthauer’s
reading, Poulantzas not only opened up state-theory for the analysis of the ways in which
relatively stable and coherent political and economic arrangements are produced through
struggles as historical results; he also gave pride of place to the role of struggle on the most

4. All quotes from the volume under review are the reviewer’s translations.
5. Marx 1976, p. 255.
6. he most sophisticated contribution to this debate is, in my opinion, Blanke et al. 1975.
It is still well worth reading.
7. Jessop 1990, p. 87.
146 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

abstract level of state-theory, instead of just positing theoretically the existence of the
preconditions for continuous capital-accumulation in order to then examine how they
historically came about (pp. 88–9). In other words, political and economic struggles and
relations of forces are not theoretically subordinate to structures or the ‘capital-logic’. his
then requires the development of theoretical concepts for historically concrete analyses of
the state as a terrain of struggle over the reproduction of capitalist social relations. It is here
that Poulantzas’s treatment of the different aspects of the materiality of the capitalist type of
state in State, Power, Socialism – such as the form of law or nationality – becomes useful and
can be developed further.
Bretthauer’s interpretation stands in opposition to the suggestion by Hirsch and
Kannankulam to integrate form-analysis with Poulantzas’s more class-based, more
historically sensitive approach. However, while I would agree with his claim that one should
start from the improbability of successful state-formation – that is, the formation of a state
that not only maintains internal unity and coherence but also fulfils necessary functions
vis-à-vis the process of accumulation and the maintenance of class-domination – I do not
see why this would preclude a highly abstract ‘derivation’ of a few very basic forms of the
capitalist type of state. his would not imply the functionalist assumption that state-forms
and state-interventions are always successful in maintaining and stabilising capitalist
accumulation. here can be analyses of ‘the formal correspondence between different social
forms’, but one cannot conclude from them that actual correspondence necessarily emerges.8
Moreover, this is important in order to have a clear idea of the specifically capitalist type
of state to start with. Otherwise, what one would analyse would just be the state in capitalist
society and how it secures the conditions of continuous capital-accumulation.9 his
admittedly, presupposes that it is possible in principle to have a theory of the capitalist state
that is equally abstract and general as the theory of the capitalist economy, even though it
may just comprise a few basic features of the state-form, such as its institutional separation
from the economy. It could also be the case that the wide diversity of existing and historical
states in capitalist societies effectively renders futile such an endeavour. It is a question that
Marx already posed in his Critique of the Gotha Programme:

. . . the ‘present-day state’ changes with a country’s frontier. It is different in the

Prusso-German Empire from that in Switzerland, and different in England from
what it is in the United States. ‘he present-day state’ is therefore a fiction.
Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilised countries, in spite of
their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on
modern bourgeois society, more or less capitalistically developed. hey have,
therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common.10

To my knowledge, this problem has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.

he position that form-analysis and more historically sensitive analyses of political and
economic struggles in their relation to the state can and should be combined is also in line
with the more abstract argument put forward in Alexander Gallas’s contribution, ‘Reading
Capital with Poulantzas’, which is an interpretation of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

8. Jessop 1990, pp. 354–5.

9. Jessop 2008.
10. Marx 1989, pp. 94–5.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 147

inspired by Poulantzas rather than a paper on Poulantzas directly. Gallas draws a distinction
between form and struggle as explanatory principles, both of which, he claims, can be found
in Capital. hey have to be seen as equally fundamental and not reducible to each other.
‘Form’ denotes the ‘historically specific shape of societies’ – such as the commodity-form
or the wage-form – while ‘struggle’ refers to ‘specific courses of action [Handlungsverläufe]’
(p. 102). He goes on to argue that, in State, Power, Socialism, both principles are treated as
equally constitutive of capitalism as a self-reproducing society because the forms constitute
a ‘field’ of action that constrain but do not completely determine courses of actions
(p. 106). hese can always ‘overflow’ the forms and thus stabilise or de-stabilise them. He
concludes:

he central message one can get from Poulantzas is that in the capitalist mode of
production as an ensemble of forms [Formzusammenhang] there is an inherent
tendency to reproduce itself, but it only becomes actualised if relations of forces
and, accordingly, the courses of struggles admit this. Moments of stability and
instability, therefore, exist side by side. (p. 108.)

he case in point for Gallas is Marx’s famous description of the struggle over the length of
the working day that led to legal fixing of maximum hours per day. Here, the wage-form
that labour-power assumes under capitalism did not determine the conditions of its use so
that a field of struggle was opened up – which, in this case, led to a long-term stabilisation
of capitalist relations of production (pp. 113–17). he point here is to demonstrate how
forms and struggles intersect in the real world of capitalist relations, but also to demonstrate
the necessity for combining form-analysis and historical research.
his, for Gallas, not only has theoretical but also political implications. He takes on two
recently influential Marxists, John Holloway and Moishe Postone, who, according to him,
both delivered reductionist accounts of the relations between form and struggle. he
former11 allegedly regards forms as mere effects of struggle, thus denying them any causality
of their own; while, for Postone,12 labour-struggles, even the most militant ones, have no
transformative potential precisely because of their nature as labour-struggles, that is, because
they are always caught up within the forms of capitalist society which they therefore only
reproduce but cannot transcend (pp. 103–5). herefore Holloway falls into the trap of
voluntarism, while Postone attributes to capitalism a kind of super-stability.
Having talked now at length about form-analysis as a theoretical resource for getting to
grips with the materiality and autonomy of the state, I would like to take up another point
made almost in passing by Sonja Buckel. In the context of conceptualising the relative
autonomy of law, she also refers to the theory of autopoietic systems of Niklas Luhmann as
another theoretical resource to be used here (p. 180). his theory, which has not yet been
widely received in the English-speaking world, assumes that modern societies are primarily
characterised by the fact that they consist of functionally differentiated social subsystems
such as law, politics, economy, art, education and so on. hese operate according to a basic
code that is unique to the system in question and which is always binary. For example, the
economic code is payment/non-payment; that of the science-system true/not true. On the
most abstract level, these codes constitute not only the unity, but also the autonomy of

11. Holloway 2002.

12. Postone 1993.
148 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

functional systems by orienting all their operations towards either one side of the dichotomic
code. In other words: the code constitutes a horizon of meaning for everything that goes on
internally while relegating to the outside or ‘environment’ everything that does not assume
the form of one of the code-values; thus it also determines what is relevant to the system’s
operations. Truth is irrelevant in the economy; what matters is whether there is payment
or not.
he theory of social systems is often perceived as contrary or even hostile to Marxism
(Luhmann himself often criticised and ridiculed it). However, a concern with the self-
referential closure of non-economic systems was already articulated by Marx, and, in
particular, by Engels after Marx’s death. He argued against economic reductionism by
fellow-Marxists, for which he took some responsibility, saying that he and Marx had had to
overemphasise the primacy of the economic.13 In a number of letters, he recognised the
(relative) autonomy and effectiveness of politics and ideology, that is, the ‘superstructure’ in
general. In 1886, for example, he wrote:

It is among professional politicians, theorists of public law and jurists of private law
that the connection with economic facts gets well and truly lost. Since in each
particular case the economic facts must assume the form of juristic motives in order
to receive legal sanction; and since, in so doing, consideration has, of course, to
be given to the whole legal system already in operation, the juristic form is, in
consequence, made everything and the economic content nothing. Public law and
private law are treated as independent spheres, each having its own independent
historical development, each being capable of, and needing a, systematic presentation
by the consistent elimination of all innate contradictions.14

In other words: to become juristically relevant, aspects of the economic environment have
to be ‘translated’ into the language of law and made compatible with its processes, specifically
the need for logical coherence.
his leads us again to what is a core problem for all Marxist attempts at accounting for
the (relative) autonomy of non-economic spheres of social life: the lack of an understanding
of the specific materiality of non-economic practices. his is exactly the materiality
mentioned in the quote from Poulantzas at the beginning of this section; it is the reason
why changes in class-relations or the exigencies of accumulation do not find a direct and
immediate expression in the state or, for that matter, in other non-economic institutional
orders. Of course, the Marxist tradition has done some very good work with regard to the
state and the political process, but it lacks a more general theory/approach. Luhmann
provides such a theory of the materiality of all social practices. To be sure, it is not one that
is ultimately satisfactory from a Marxist point of view, as it over-emphasises the disjunction
of society’s subsystems. But it is one from which a lot may be learned.

Poulantzas and feminist state-theory

A point made by Sonja Buckel is that state-theory needs to take gender-relations into
account as they too are constituted and reproduced by state and law. his is developed in

13. See, for example, Engels 1972.

14. Engels 1990, p. 393.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 149

more detail in Jörg Nowak’s paper, ‘Poulantzas, gender-relations, and Feminist State-
heory’, which is concerned with how the interaction/intersection of class- and gender-
relations can be analysed and what Poulantzas and feminist theory have to offer in that
regard. Poulantzas touched on the importance of ‘the relations between men and women’15
in State, Power, Socialism but, according to Nowak, in an ultimately superficial way because
he failed to develop a theoretical concept of gender-relations on a par with his concept of
classes. herefore, he was unable to analyse their intersection (pp. 140–2). On the other
hand, while feminists tend to be less ignorant towards Marxist scholarship than vice versa,
their state-theories also fail to treat class and gender equally, although interesting analyses
are produced (pp. 145–9). here remains important work to do because, as Nowak
rightfully states:

In order to reduce the political and social divisions between those who depend,
directly or indirectly, on wage-labour, the struggle for gender-equality in
exploitation must be coupled with the overall struggle over the value of labour-
power as a commodity. However, this perspective will remain blocked unless the
gendering of the social division of labour is considered in connection with the
class-relations inscribed into it. (p. 151.)

Poulantzas and Foucault

Another recurring topic in this volume, albeit a less prominent one, is the relation between
the writings of Poulantzas and Foucault and how each could enrich the other. his seems
appropriate not only given the importance Foucault has achieved in critical social science
but also because, as Urs Lindner notes in his contribution to the volume, ‘State, Power
and Politics’, ‘Poulantzas’ State, Power, Socialism must not be regarded as just an attempt
at giving a systematic foundation to Marxist state theory, but also as a first approach to
a Marxist appropriation of Foucault’ (p. 154). Lindner then describes some of the
commonalities and points of contact between the two thinkers, such as their focus on the
productivity of state-rule as opposed to theories that just see it as repressive or merely
prohibitive (pp. 158–62). Indeed, Poulantzas was inspired by Foucault’s analysis of
disciplinary apparatuses to include this aspect in State, Power, Socialism, whereas he had
neglected it in earlier works.
Ingo Stützle’s paper, ‘he Order of Knowledge’, focuses on a specific area where insights
from Poulantzas and Foucault could be combined. He discusses the role that the state as
‘knowledge-apparatus’ plays in formulating a ‘general interest’ of capital; how it enables
itself, through the production and administration of knowledge, to act as the ‘ideal
personification of the total national capital’.16 It is easy to see that, in this perspective,
Foucault’s work, which emphasised the connection between (the production of ) knowledge
and the power exercised in state- (and other) apparatuses and institutions, such as prisons
or schools, is of major interest. Stützle’s approach is helpful because it allows for a more
material interpretation of Engels’s oft-cited but problematic expression. It is too easy, even
for Marxists, to have a metaphysical, Hegelian understanding in which the state possesses a

15. Poulantzas 2000, p. 43.

16. Engels 1987, p. 266. his is the English translation of the much more succinct German
term ‘ideeller Gesamtkapitalist’ used by Engels (1962, p. 260) to which Stützle refers (p. 188).
150 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

privilege of rationality vis-à-vis individual members of society who are too immersed in
their immediate, day-to-day interests. If, indeed, the state is rationally superior, this is not
due to it standing outside or above society but the result of a wide variety of practices of
knowledge-production/gathering. An example of that is official statistics: ‘hrough abstract
knowledge that is reduced to numbers and figures, capitalist society and the social relations
constituting it appear manageable and governable’ (pp. 196–7). A special role is played by
economics as a field of knowledge that, as a consequence of the institutional separation of
the political and economic sphere in capitalism, is not directly subjected to the state because
its object is the autonomous logic of a differentiated sphere of social life. Hence, it is not
simply ‘government knowledge’ – something that Foucault saw more clearly than Poulantzas
in his slightly state-centric view (p. 199). However, the state is implied in economics
because it has to take its findings into account and because, above all, it is the place where
the crucial discussions take place about the role of the state in successful capital-
accumulation: ‘he discourse of political economy thus structures the field of controversy
around the articulation of a general capitalist interest’ (p. 200).

Poulantzasian perspectives on globalisation, the European Union, and transnational

class-formation
Another focus is on Poulantzas’s contribution to understanding processes that transcend
the territorial boundaries of the nation-state, namely economic globalisation and the
formation of transnational classes. He witnessed the beginning of the unravelling of the
Fordist mode of regulation and of globalisation, and he described certain aspects of it,
providing a basis to be elaborated on for the analysis of more contemporary phenomena.17
In ‘Poulantzas’s Contribution to Class-Analysis and Social-Structure Analysis’ Max Koch
argues that his enquiries into the internationalisation of capital and the role of the state in
it can be used to counter exaggerated claims about the disappearance of the national state.
According to him, Poulantzas stressed the active role of the state in organising the
international division of labour instead of seeing it as just passively subjected to external
forces (p. 130). In ‘Territory and Historicity’, an interesting discussion of the analysis of the
capitalist formation of time and space in State, Power, Socialism, Markus Wissen argues that
Poulantzas demonstrated how the national state was implied in constituting a spatial matrix
that is compatible with the societal prerequisites of capitalist economic development. In
particular, it demarcates a territory of regulation in which one set of rules applies generally
(pp. 211–12). Because the capitalist mode of production and national spaces are so deeply
intertwined, claims that the national state is being marginalised or superseded by elements
of an inter- or transnational state become implausible. hat does not mean that, for
Poulantzas, capitalism is inevitably tied to the nation-state. Rather, his analysis allows us to
ask precisely if and in what regard the role of the national state as an organiser of capitalist
space is taken over by institutions on sub- or supranational scales (pp. 218–20).
An area where such questions can be explored is the study of European integration.
If anything comes close to constituting (elements of ) supranational statehood it is the
European Union, with its dense network of regulation, the common market, its common

17. See Poulantzas 1974a and 1975.

 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 151

currency and central bank (at least for 15 of 27 member-states), the European Court of
Justice, and institutions like the European Parliament and Commission. Whether Poulantzas
can contribute anything to the study of European integration is the topic of Hans-Jürgen
Bieling’s paper on ‘European Statehood’. Bieling first discusses the approach of Panitch and
Gindin,18 who assume that European capital and the integration-process remain subject to
American dominance, which therefore is the analytical vantage-point from which to
approach European integration. Here, they draw upon Poulantzas’s account of the
penetration of Western-European capital by US-capital in Classes in Contemporary
Capitalism. heir view, Bieling argues, underestimates the momentum of the integration-
process and reduces it to a sub-division of US-imperialism (pp. 229–30). In his view,
integration, which has proceeded more rapidly since the 1980s through the Single European
Act and the treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Nice, has reached a stage where there
are clear elements of European statehood as well as a nascent European civil society. his
European level of the capitalist state should be analysed as a site of a ‘material condensation
of relations of forces’ between classes. However, that does not mean that one could simply
transfer the conceptual tools that were used for analysing the nation-state to the European
level. here are too many important differences between them, such as the fact that the
latter does not have a big budget that it can deploy in the maintenance of social cohesion,
or that it only has a comparatively small and limited administrative apparatus (pp. 232–6).
Unfortunately, Bieling does not go further in explaining how those conceptual tools would
have to be modified to be applicable to the study of European integration and European
statehood. Important issues are raised by the tendency towards relativisation of the national
scale: What happens to condensation of class-forces and other functions of the state when
there is no clear political centre anymore? Poulantzas’s analyses were entirely focused on
the national state. herefore, as Bob Jessop points out in ‘he Capitalist Type of State and
Authoritarian Statism’, researchers have to take into account the multiplication of scales
and their interpenetration (p. 63).
A different perspective is taken by Jens Wissel in ‘he Transnationalisation of the
Bourgeoisie and the New Networks of Power’. Wissel focuses less on institutional
developments at a supranational level and more on processes of transnational class-
formation and how these affect and are shaped by the national state. Like Panitch and
Gindin, he draws on Poulantzas’s analysis of the penetration of Western Europe by American
capital, but, contrary to them, he argues that today the penetration is mutual so that there
is no clear US-dominance any more. Instead, the mutual interlocking of capital has created
a transnational bourgeoisie that is not tied to a specific state or region any more but active in
all the major markets (pp. 244–5). hese developments transcend the boundaries and
regulatory capacities of the national state(s), which therefore can no longer be the focus of
analysis: ‘A new power-bloc has emerged on the transnational level that organises itself
through flexible and poly-centric networks’ (p. 246). However, these transnational power-
networks – organisations like the UN, WTO, and IMF, and think-tanks like the European
Round Table of Industrialists or the Trilateral Commission – do not replace the national
state as the primary site for the condensation of class-relations because they are much more
fluid: ‘hey lack comparable materiality and are therefore more immediately subject to the
conjunctures in the relation of forces’ (ibid.). he national states do not disappear because

18. As exemplified in Panitch and Gindin 2005.

152 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

they play an important role in the organisation of the transnational power-bloc. But their
importance is diminished as they become just one nodal point, albeit a crucial one, in a
regulatory network (p. 249). However, the exact nature of the relation between the two
levels of regulation and condensation remains unclear. Wissel’s analysis implies that national
states remain the only sites of condensation because transnational networks lack the features
necessary to perform this function, namely a more rigid materiality into which not only the
interests of the ruling classes but also, to a certain degree, those of the dominated classes
can be inscribed. He could be accused of neglecting the emergence of regional levels of
condensation and statehood, at least in the European case. Taking this into account would
perhaps have modified his claim that the formation of a transnational power-bloc has led
to the emergence of an imperial 19 structure of more or less global reach that relativises
national imperialisms (pp. 250–2).
Summing up, one can say that Poulantzas has a great deal to contribute to the study of
globalisation as a multi-faceted phenomenon, for he showed the many ways in which
national states have become involved in the regulation and organisation of capitalist
relations of production and capitalist societies. his not only serves as a corrective against
exaggerated claims of the demise of the national state, it also helps to formulate more
precise questions about globalisation and the relation of different levels to one another, as
well as to the economy and class-struggles. his can, in turn, yield a more differentiated
answer to the question of the fate of the national state in globalisation.

Political strategy
Poulantzas was a political thinker who consistently put his academic work in the context
of strategic debates within and between Communist parties in Western Europe and the
debates of the hird International. In the section of the volume devoted to matters of
political strategy, two papers address the question how his thoughts about ‘radical
transformation’ in State, Power, Socialism20 can be adapted to a situation in which the
Communist parties and most other political organisations of the working class have ceased
to be relevant social forces21 and in which radical movements are faced with the challenges
of globalising capitalism and politics.
Ulrich Brand and Miriam Heigl, in ‘“Inside” and “Outside”’, agree with Poulantzas’s
strategic principle that a movement that seeks ‘radical transformation’ cannot simply act
outside of the state and try to destroy it. Instead, a strategy would have to be pursued that
aims at shifting the relations of forces within the state and at transforming the materiality
of the state-apparatuses, its institutional forms and strategic selectivities, because changes in

19. Compare Hardt and Negri 2000.

20. here he refrained from talking about ‘revolution’; see the final chapter entitled ‘Towards
a Democratic Socialism’.
21. his may seem exaggerated. One could object that, for example, the Italian Rifondazione
Comunista is still relevant. But the overall trend on the Left – in many Western countries at
least – is towards pluralisation and the displacement of the capital-labour contradiction from the
centre of political struggles. It remains to be seen whether the current economic crisis will lead
to major changes.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 153

the relation of forces are not automatically translated into changes in its materiality.22
However, they argue that, even though Poulantzas acknowledged the necessity of struggles
and movements outside or at a distance from the state, he was too state-centred and
underestimated the autonomous capacities for the mobilisation of forces outside of the
state, such as the new social movements. hey especially criticise his assumption that these
movements would end up as neocorporatist interest-groups due to the particularity of their
political projects. hey see this claim as a result of Poulantzas’s residual class-reductionism
and privileging of working-class struggles (pp. 277, 281). Referring to antiprivatisation-
struggles and the alterglobalisation-movement in general, they claim that a more pluralist
movement that also attempts to change the micro-level of everyday life outside of the state
is more promising.
While it is sensible to insist on the inevitable pluralism and heterogeneity of any non-
parochial social movement with a geographically wide reach, it should be pointed out that
this heterogeneity can create the problem of having merely rhetorical solidarity between
different struggles without any kind of organic connection – the downside of the
carnivalesque plurality of the alterglobalisation-movement. Furthermore, stressing the need
of combining struggles within and at a distance from the state may indeed be valuable
advice for this movement, which has a statist wing – ATTAC, certain NGOs, and, insofar
as they participate in it, churches and trade-unions – as well as an autonomist wing.
However, Brand and Heigl do not deal with the practical problems of trying to maintain
such an alliance. he Brazilian example of a governing party that emerged from the trade-
union movement and has now all but lost any connection with the social movements is a
case in point.
Alex Demirović’s contribution ‘Rule by the People?’ focuses on Poulantzas’s assessment
of representative democracy. he Leninist tradition just saw it as another guise for bourgeois
political domination and therefore followed the strategy of dual power. Poulantzas’s
assessment is more ambivalent. While he saw the democratic republic as the normal form of
bourgeois rule – as opposed to exceptional states like fascism or military dictatorships23 – it
was at the same time one, but not the only, field of a struggle for democratic socialism.
According to Demirović, Poulantzas followed Rosa Luxemburg in stressing ‘that the
institutions of representative democracy must be preserved as positive preconditions of
political liberties and democratic socialism’ (p. 301), instead of being smashed. On the
other hand, as Brand and Heigl also argue in their contribution, the ultimate aim is not
to preserve those institutions but to radically transform them in a democratising way.
In combination with democratic organisations and struggles at a distance from the state,
this should eventually lead to a withering away of the state. Finally, Demirović urges us
to reconsider Poulantzas’s thoughts on political strategy in light of the changes in statehood,
namely the relativisation of the national state as the sole level of condensation of relations
of forces, and to devise democratic strategies towards a radical transformation of
transnational state-apparatuses (pp. 304–5).
his is clearly an important point (made also by Brand and Heigl, p. 288). However, it
seems problematic to talk in the abstract about strategically using the institutions of
representative democracy. Not because, as Demirović acknowledges, the parliament is an

22. Poulantzas 2000, p. 260.

23. Compare Poulantzas 1974b, pp. 310–30.
154 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

institution whose role and influence is determined differently in each concrete political
system and conjuncture – it may be really powerful in one situation or merely an ideological
façade in another (p. 297) – but because the question is also one of who is trying to get into
it. Not every left-wing movement or organisation can use the arena of parliamentary politics
equally well for its own ends; a network-based movement is very different in that regard to
a traditional communist party. Demirović does not really reflect on the fact that the
traditional organisations of the labour-movement – which were still an unproblematic
point of reference for Poulantzas – have mostly ceased to exist as relevant political forces.
Brand and Heigl are more keenly aware of this.
he final contribution in this section, Peter homas’s ‘Conjuncture of the Integral
State?’, also deals with the question of ‘dual power’ and the different sites for the political
struggle of the working class. Poulantzas had claimed that Antonio Gramsci’s distinction
between ‘war of movement’ and ‘war of position’ reproduced what is ultimately a reifying
distinction of two separate, external spheres of political power, in spite of his substantial
refinement of the Leninist problematic.24 According to this critique, Gramsci ultimately
failed to understand the way in which popular struggles are inscribed into the state,
effectively viewing them as external to it. homas argues that this does not do justice to the
way Gramsci conceptualised the relation between civil society and political society in the
integral state. Far from juxtaposing them as two essentially unrelated spheres (which would
allow the proletariat to built up its power ‘outside’ of the state-apparatuses), they are rather
conceived of as distinct elements within the dialectical unity of the integral state (p. 318).
In this unity, civil society is the social basis; therefore the strategy of the war of movement
cannot be understood any more as simply laying siege to and slowly encircling the fortress
of the state. Instead, it is a struggle on the terrain of the state, even though it should
eventually transcend it (p. 322).
his reading leads to the conclusion that Gramsci’s ideas are much closer to Poulantzas’s
concept of the state as condensation of a relationship of forces than the latter would admit
(p. 314) – a conclusion that allows us to combine their ideas on political strategy.

Omissions
here is one major omission in this volume: classes – particularly the working class;
and there is a minor one: a neglect of Poulantzas’s work on exceptional states. he only
contribution that deals extensively with the latter topic is homas Sablowski’s ‘Crisis and
Statehood in Poulantzas’, which discusses Poulantzas’s analysis of fascism, albeit not with a
view to future research. Of course, analyses of fascism or military-dictatorships seem less
urgent anyway in a period when, at least in Europe, there are few political systems that are
not formally democratic; but where, on the other hand, ‘normal’ states become increasingly
authoritarian, as Poulantzas had predicted in the chapter on ‘authoritarian statism’ in State,
Power, Socialism (a point discussed in Jessop’s contribution). However, if Poulantzas’s
analyses of exceptional states from the past do not seem to be of interest to sociologists or
political scientists any more, it would still have been interesting to see what a Marxist
historian would make of them.

24. Poulantzas 2000, pp. 254–9.

 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156 155

What is really missing, however, is a thorough discussion of Poulantzas’s theory of classes

in capitalism with a view to its application and further development. Koch’s paper is
supposed to do that, but it remains pretty much an annotated summary of Poulantzas’s
writings about classes – although, as such, it is very good. And Wissel’s remarks about the
formation of a transnational bourgeoisie, interesting as they are, fall short of what is needed:
namely a more general account of classes in globalising capitalism that specifically focuses
on what is most clearly absent from the entire volume: the working classes. his, perhaps,
is not much of a surprise, given that not many Marxists nowadays still do class-theory.
Especially in Europe, a lot of attention is being paid to the ruling classes, to changing
relations between capital-fractions, the formation of a transnational bourgeoisie and so on,
while the opposite pole is more rarely analysed and/or left to post-Marxist concepts like the
‘multitude’. However, there is an ongoing Marxist discussion about class in general and the
working classes in particular.25 So the failure of Poulantzas-scholars to engage with it raises
the question of whether Poulantzas has anything to contribute here. And, while this may
be a problem for Marxist theory more generally, it becomes particularly salient in the
context of discussing Poulantzas, given the centrality of the reference to classes and class-
struggle in his work. After all, it is not just general social power-relations that are being
condensated in the state, but class-relations in particular. (I do not hereby want to preclude
the possibility of extending this concept to other relations of domination, as has been
argued for by a number of contributions to this volume.) One would presume that major
changes in the composition of the working class and the disappearance or fundamental
change of its traditional organisations and power-bases have major effects at the level of the
state. How then could those be understood?
Erik Olin Wright once wrote: ‘As an explanatory concept, class is relevant both to macro-
level analyses of social systems and micro-level analyses of individual lives. In both contexts,
class analysis asserts that the way people are linked to economically-relevant assets is
consequential in various ways.’26 It seems that this micro-level, the sociological grounding
of political class-analysis, is about to get lost in Marxist state-theory. here is no a priori
explanatory privilege of class-relations when it comes to analysing forms and functions of
the state. If the cleavages and struggles in a society should happen to follow entirely different
lines – ethnic ones for instance – then there is no reason why those should not be primary
for state-theory.

Reviewed by Julian Müller

Lancaster University
j.muller1@lancaster.ac.uk

References
Blanke, Bernhard, Ulrich Jürgens and Hans Kastendiek 1975, ‘Das Verhältnis von Politik und
Ökonomie als Ansatzpunkt einer materialistischen Analyse des bürgerlichen Staates’, in Kritik
der Politischen Wissenschaft. Analysen von Politik und Ökonomie in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft,

25. See, to give just one example, Camfield 2004.

26. Wright 1996, p. 703.
156 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 143–156

edited by Berhard Blanke, Ulrich Jürgens and Hans Kastendiek, Frankfurt am Main:
Campus.
Camfield, David 2004, ‘Re-Orienting Class Analysis: Working Classes as Historical Formations’,
Science & Society, 68, 4: 421–46.
Engels, Friedrich 1962 [1894, hird Edition], Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft,
in Marx/Engels-Werke, Volume 20, Berlin (East): Dietz Verlag.
—— 1972, ‘Letter to Joseph Bloch’ (21/09/1890) in Marx, Engels, Lenin on Historical
Materialism, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
—— 1987 [1894, hird Edition], Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, in
Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 26, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
—— 1990 [1886], Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in Marx and
Engels Collected Works, Volume 26, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri 2000, Empire, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
Holloway, John 2002, Change the World Without Taking Power, London: Pluto Press.
Jessop, Bob 1990, State heory. Putting Capitalist States in their Place, Cambridge: Polity Press.
—— 2008, ‘Dialogue of the Deaf: Some Reflections on the Poulantzas-Miliband Debate’, in
Class, Power and the State in Capitalist Society: Essays on Ralph Miliband, edited by Clyde W.
Barrow, Peter Burnham and Paul Wetherly, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marx, Karl 1976 [1867], Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, London: Penguin
Books.
—— 1989 [1891], Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Marx and Engels Collected Works,
Volume 24, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Panitch, Leo and Sam Gindin 2005, ‘Superintending Global Capital’, New Left Review, II, 35:
101–23.
Postone, Moishe 1993, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical
heory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Poulantzas, Nicos 1974a, ‘Internationalisation of Capitalist Relations and the Nation State’,
Economy and Society, 3, 2: 145–79.
—— 1974b [1970], Fascism and Dictatorship: he hird International and the Problem of
Fascism, London: NLB.
—— 1975 [1974], Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, London: NLB.
—— 2000 [1978], State, Power, Socialism, London: Verso.
Wright, Erik Olin 1996, ‘he Continuing Relevance of Class Analysis – Comments’, heory and
Society, 25, 5: 693–716.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 157–163 157

Ends in Sight: Marx/Fukuyama/Hobsbawm/Anderson, Gregory Elliott, London: Pluto Press,

2008.

Abstract
Gregory Elliott’s Ends in Sight (2008) argues that Marxism is no longer a ‘real movement’
grounded in the historical tendencies of the present, but has retreated into being a utopian idea.
Refusing to embrace anti-Marxism, Elliott controversially argues that such a position is the only
realistic one that can be held by the Left in the wake of the defeat of historical socialism. In
assessing this claim, this review-essay re-traces Elliott’s indebtedness to the work of Perry
Anderson, and notes the tension Elliott reproduces from Anderson between resignation to defeat
and a realism that would scan for new signs of resistance. Elliott’s closing embrace of a full-blown
pessimism is criticised as inconsistent with the necessity of some consolatory ‘illusions’ to any
radical political mobilisation. he crucial question that Elliott raises concerns the motivational
power of Marxism as a political discourse, particularly once shorn of its grounding in the ‘tide of
history’.

Keywords
history, Marxism, Perry Anderson, teleology, Gramsci

he plural ‘ends’ of Gregory Elliott’s title ostensibly refers to the various forms of the ‘end-
of-history’ thesis canvassed at the close of the twentieth century by Francis Fukuyama, Eric
Hobsbawm, and Perry Anderson. However, there is really only one end in question here:
the end of socialism. he large thesis of this brief, unfortunately overpriced, work is that we
have witnessed the end of any kind of systematic alternative to capitalism for the foreseeable
future. Elliott’s provocative contention is that communism can no longer claim to be a ‘real
movement’ grounded in the historical tendencies of capitalism, but, instead, has retreated
into being a utopian idea; Marxism has succumbed to Marx and Engels’s condemnation of
‘critical-utopian socialism’: at best offering ‘valuable materials for the enlightenment of the
working class’, at worst merely painting ‘fantastic pictures of future society’.1 he charge of
utopianism is, of course, a common trope of anti-Marxism, both right and left. Elliott,
however, insists that, rather than abandoning Marxism tout court, or embracing a utopian
Marxism in the style of Bloch or Jameson, we must think Marxism in light of its historical
weakness and crisis. To summarise Elliott’s relation to Marx, we could give the more
idiomatic version of his repetition of Domenico Losurdo’s definition of his relation to
Marx: ‘can’t live with him, can’t live without him’ (p. xi).
he adoption of such an ambivalent and pessimistic position might not appear obvious
from Elliott’s previous intellectual and political trajectory. He is probably best-known for
his work Althusser: he Detour of heory (originally published in 1987 and reissued in
2006), an intellectual biography characterised by a fine balance of criticism and sympathy
towards its subject, especially considering the passions aroused by the Althusserian project,
not least in the UK. Elliott has also done continuing and highly-valuable work as a
translator, and rightly gained a reputation as an eloquent and acerbic commentator,
especially on the French intellectual scene.2 He has always retained an independence of

1. Marx and Engels 2002.

2. See Elliott 2006b.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/146544609X12537556703511
158 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 157–163

judgement, and a refusal of the usual see-sawing of enthusiasm followed by renunciation

that has often characterised UK left-intellectual engagement with continental Marxist
theory. He is, to return a judgement of Elliott’s from a review back to sender, ‘an author
mercifully free . . . of the phobias and philias about French intellectual life’.3

Displacing Marxism
he clue to the origin of Ends in Sight, I think, lies in Elliott’s intellectual biography of
Perry Anderson, Perry Anderson: he Merciless Laboratory of History,4 to which it might
be regarded as a pendant. In the concluding balance-sheet of the biography, Elliott noted
Anderson’s loss of ‘confidence in the theory of historical trajectory – cornerstone of
“scientific socialism” – of which he had been an indefatigable partisan.5 he result was not
the abandonment of Marxism by Anderson, but rather its displacement from expressing a
movement of social transformation to the explanation and criticism of the existing state of
affairs, coupled to ‘a quasi-Pascalian wager’ on the future abolition of capitalism.6 Elliott
finished by expressing qualified admiration for Anderson’s ‘waiting game’. In a strange
moment of identification between biographer and subject, Ends in Sight adopts the position
Elliott ascribed to Anderson wholesale.
he effect of this political identification profoundly shapes Elliott’s work, but the
permeating influence does not stop there. Anderson is not merely one of the figures
discussed, but primus inter pares, as Anderson’s own earlier discussions of Fukuyama and
Hobsbawm guide Elliott’s work.7 here is also a more nebulous stylistic link. he oft-
remarked ‘Olympian tone’ of Anderson’s work, which has attracted so much ire from the
Left,8 is given a sharper and more urgent edge in Elliott’s writing. A notable stylist in his
own right, Elliott combines the combative polemical edge of Anderson’s early work, which
he had commended in Perry Anderson: he Merciless Laboratory of History,9 with the serene
dismissiveness of Anderson’s more recent surveys of intellectual life. he result, however, is
considerably more compressed than Anderson’s work; indeed, this whole book is probably
shorter than Anderson’s essay on Fukuyama. It consists of a series of profiles reworked from
articles and papers dating from 1995–2004, and this perhaps accounts for the occasional
repetitions and, more problematically, variations in tone and conclusions.
he first chapter, on Marx, is pivoted around the 150th anniversary of the Communist
Manifesto (in 1998), and more particularly the faith that text placed in an historical dialectic
that, although proceeding ‘by the bad side’, could ground the necessary emergence of the
revolutionary proletariat from the internal contradictions of capital. Elliott notes it was this

3. Elliott 2006b, p. 145.

4. Elliott 1998.
5. Elliott 1998, p. 241.
6. Elliott 1998, pp. 242–3.
7. Anderson 1992, pp. 279–375 and Anderson 2005 respectively.
8. See Linebaugh 1986.
9. Elliott contrasts the ‘habitual iconoclasm’ of Anderson’s earlier work with the ‘studied
prudence’ of his later work, concluding ‘the most innovative, original Anderson is the intransigent
freelance intellectual’; Elliott 1998, p. 109. Elliott’s Labourism and the English Genius (1993)
might be said to be his own exercise in mimicry of the iconoclasm of the early Anderson.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 157–163 159

faith that was essential to the workers’ movement of the twentieth century, and he refers to
Gramsci’s remarks on the providential ‘religion of the subaltern’ (p. 33). For Elliott, it is not
possible to simply dismiss or ignore this grounding faith and its mobilising power: ‘the
ideological formation that was historical Marxism – the official party Marxism of the
Second, hird and Fourth Internationals alike – was no mere betrayal of [Marx’s] thought’
(p. 31). Elliott is keen to stress, against the attempts to recover a ‘pure’ or ‘true’ Marxism,
that historical teleology remains crucial to Marx (and Marxism). While the Marx of Capital
and the Grundrisse would considerably complicate the teleological model of history, not
least with his concept of the tendency, as would the critical Marxism of figures such as
Lukács and Althusser, without some historical grounding that can be given or identified,
communism risks being merely utopian. he severing of the dialectic between capital and
its future gravediggers means, in short, that history is not on our side.
he next two chapters, on Fukuyama and Hobsbawm, pursue this theme in a more
indirect fashion. In both cases, Elliott is concerned to identify the problem of the collapse
of systematic alternatives to liberal capitalism, which he regards, following Anderson,10 as
the ‘rational kernel’ of Fukuyama’s thesis (pp. 55–9). Hobsbawm mitigates this conclusion
by a consoling insistence that the self-identified ‘Marxist’ régimes, and social democracy,
provided a civilising balance to untrammelled capitalism in the twentieth century. For
Elliott, such retrospective consolation neglects the internal contradictions of capitalism,
minimises the crimes of Stalinism, and, fatally, allows Hobsbawm to leave his ‘enlightenment
Marxism’ intact in spite of the depth of its defeat. And yet, for Elliott, the recognition of
the historical defeat and failure of actually-existing socialism and social democracy also
entails noting that this has not rebounded to the benefit of alternative formulations of
socialism and communism. If we cannot console ourselves with the past record, neither can
we cheer ourselves up with future hopes; we might again rephrase Elliott’s relation to Marx:
‘couldn’t live with actually existing socialism, can’t live without it’.

Realism or resignation?
Again it appears that Elliott has adopted the same position he had previously analysed in
Anderson, this time of Deutscherite form.11 he Deutscherite position, named after the
great historian and biographer (notably of Trotsky) Isaac Deutscher, hoped for reform,
either from above or below, of the actually-existing socialist countries and a recognition
of their function as a bulwark – or, in the language of theology, katechon (‘restraining
force’) – against capitalism.12 With the dashing of these hopes in 1989, the pessimistic
registration of historic defeat might appear as the only option (p. 107). Such a registration
is, however, avoided by Elliott through invoking Andersonian lucidity, the lynch-pin of the
whole work, and the subject of Chapter Four.
he chapter pivots around Anderson’s editorial for the re-launch of the New Left Review
in 2000, ‘Renewals’, in which he argued that, in the face of the virtually uncontested

10. Anderson 1992.

11. ‘Deutscherism’ merits sixteen entries in the index of Elliott’s biography; Elliott 1998,
p. 324. For Anderson’s own discussion of Deutscher, see Anderson 1992, pp. 56–75.
12. See Davidson 2004 for a critical discussion.
160 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 157–163

consolidation of neoliberalism, the Left has tended to adopt one of two positions:
accommodation with the existing order, or the consolation of inflating the possibilities
of opposition.13 In a footnote, Anderson courted a third option – resignation, ‘a lucid
recognition of the nature and triumph of the system, without either adaptation or self-
deception, but also without any belief in the chance of an alternative to it.’14 Even the
disavowed notation of such an option in a footnote was enough to attract the usual charges
of pessimism.15 Despite his reputation for pessimism, Anderson’s own preference, at least as
regards the NLR, was for the adoption of a stance of ‘uncompromising realism’ that would
refuse both accommodation and the consolation of understating the power of capitalism.16
Elliott sympathetically and convincingly reconstructs this realist position. Instead of
drawing on dubious compensations from the past à la Hobsbawm, or inflating contemporary
possibilities, Marxism can find its place in the unremitting criticism of the present coupled
to a scanning for signs of resistance and refoundation.17 Of course, one could dispute
whether Anderson meets this standard, and Elliott notes his high-handedness when it
comes to analysing instances of resistance; but this necessity to ground Marxism in the
conjunctural identification of the tendencies of the present, negative and positive, certainly
offers a promising model for left thinking.
he difficulty with Elliott’s reconstruction of realism, however, is how this sits with his
prefatory remarks, reiterated in the first chapter, that socialism is condemned to ‘become
utopian once again’ (p. 25). Such a utopian positioning would seem to leave Marxism, as
Marx and Engels indicated, fatally detached from historical conditions, and hence incapable
of a ‘realism’ that could critically assess ‘reality’, as we (ideologically) find it. his self-
undercutting of his own proffered realism is further undermined by the full-blown
pessimism of Elliott’s conclusion. Lambasting the limitations of the rebirth of resistance
against neoliberal capitalism signalled by the emergence of the ‘Il popolo di Seattle’, Elliott
can only conclude that no significant resistance, comparable to historical socialism, is in
sight. he result is that he is drawn irresistibly to embracing Anderson’s option of resignation,
in a gesture plus royaliste que le roi.
hat said, the conclusion is probably the most consistently amusing part of this work,
dishing out brickbats with a mordant glee: Hardt and Negri are condemned for a ‘mutant
Browderism’,18 while Slavoj Žižek is described as the ‘artisan of a quasi-hird Period
Marxism-Lacanism’. It would also be difficult to dispute Elliott’s verdict that we have yet to
see anything like a substantial enough institutional instantiation of the ‘movement of
movements’ that could rival historical socialism. One can share Elliott’s frustrations at the
bien-pensant platitudes of the radical Left, which risk verbally parlaying real defeats into the

13. Anderson 2000, pp. 13–14.

14. Anderson 2000, p. 13, n. 5.
15. For Gilbert Achcar (2000) the editorial embodied an ‘ultra-pessimism’, while, for Boris
Kagarlitsky (2000), in a more intemperate style, it was a sign of ‘unconditional capitulation’.
16. Anderson 2000, p. 14.
17. See Anderson 2007.
18. Earl Russell Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to
1945, and known for his slogan ‘Americanism is Communism’. Elliott is mocking Hardt and
Negri’s philo-Americanism, and their faith that capitalism is already embryonic communism
simply waiting for the multitude to step into power.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 157–163 161

mirages of future victories. In fact, this might help explain the inconsistency of tone and
position noted above. he bitterness of Elliott’s conclusion would then be the result of a
deliberate choice to ‘bend the stick’ to a deep pessimism as the means of correcting the
tendency to consolatory optimism on the contemporary Left. In true Maoist fashion, it
might then be possible to achieve the correct line between these two ‘deviations’ of the
uncompromising realism Elliott elsewhere seems to favour.
his may, however, amount to a refusal to take Elliott at his word. If so, then his
endorsement of resignation is deeply problematic, and not as coherent as he supposes.
What Elliott appears unable to countenance is Anderson’s suggestion that no one on the
Left is immune to consolation, nor can they be since political movements must motivate
their adherents during periods of defeat.19 Following Anderson, we might suggest
consolation is a necessary ‘illusion’ for left politics, which precisely must balance itself
between a recognition of structural constraints and the recognition of the ability to change
those structures. Lacking that moment of change, resignation threatens to tip-over into
renegacy, and the puncturing of illusions into the ‘passing of an illusion’ (to echo François
Furet’s adieu to Marxism). his is all the more disappointing as Elliott’s careful extrication
of Anderson’s work from such charges promised a powerful re-orientation to a realism that
would not neglect the organisational, structural, and agential questions so often elided in
invocations of a socialist or communist future.
It might also appear that Elliott’s confident judgement that there is currently no end in
sight for capitalism is vitiated by the financial crisis that emerged almost in parallel with
this work. And yet Elliott’s pessimism would still stand because, as he notes: ‘It would be a
false consolation (not to say a defective argument) to infer from the existence of capitalist
crisis some anti-capitalist resolution of it’ (p. 56). While there has been a general agreement
on the necessity for ‘financial regime change’, 20 and concomitant shifts in political and
intellectual régimes, the nature and form of that change remain as yet undefined. To quote
Elliott again: ‘he cruces of an alternative – agency, organisation, strategy, goal – that could
command the loyalties and energies of the requisite untold millions await anything
approaching resolution’ (p. 111). It may be that capitalism as we knew it had ended, but
whether that truly signals its ‘final ending’ (p. 127) is still very much in question. We can
choose to chide Elliott for the underestimation of the factor of class-struggle in these
‘internal contradictions’ of capital, but it would be difficult to refute his thesis regarding the
unlikeliness of the ‘resolution’ of such contradictions in a Marxist, communist, or even
social-democratic direction, without the material bases of alternative agency.

he ending of Marxism
At issue in Elliott’s pessimism is his deliberate choice to conflate two ‘ends’: the end of
‘historical socialism’ with the end of Marxism as a scientifically- and historically-grounded
theory. he collapse of the first, which is beyond argument, would not seem to necessarily
cause the collapse of the second. Elliott’s blunt conflation, however, makes a more refined
point: while he is at pains not to deny the ability of Marxism to analyse the irrationalities

19. Anderson 2000, p. 14.

20. Wade, 2008.
162 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 157–163

of capital, his emphasis falls on the seeming inability of this critique to find material
grounding for its alternative socialist or communist vision, without which such visions
remain chimeras. In this sense, his diagnosis of Marxism almost exactly conforms to the
charge of ‘critical-utopianism’ levelled by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto. While Marxism
may offer the most persuasive diagnosis of capitalism, as the rush to Marx in the current
crisis indicates,21 it has been less persuasive in predicting the transition out of capitalism. If
the Communist Manifesto could provide ideological fodder for the bourgeois triumphalism
of the 1990s, then, no doubt, Capital and the Grundrisse could provide consolation for the
current crisis. Lacking the guarantees of scientific socialism, Marxism risks ‘melting into
air’. Elliott’s question to any refoundation or reformulation of Marxism is in what sense
would it offer ‘a plausible socialist prescription to complement the diagnosis and prognosis
for capitalism’ (p. 124).
Underlying this question, and only implicitly sketched by Elliott, is the question of the
motivational power of Marxism as a political discourse: the broken link between Marxism
as science and Marxism as practice. he paradox of historical socialism was that, although
its confidence in the march of history may have been misplaced, it was this confidence that
led to its material success. Gramsci noted that belief in mechanical determinism, belief that
‘the tide of history is working for me in the long term’, was a source of resistance in the face
of defeat.22 His conclusion, however, was that this was a weak form of resistance, requiring
transformation into the sense of an active will. he difficulty Elliott appears to be indicating
is that the problematisation of such teleological and providential conceptions – and he
approvingly refers to Althusser for just such a problematisation (pp. 52–3) – causes a crisis
of faith in the efficacy of Marxism. Although, like Gramsci, Elliott dismisses such teleological
conceptions, he appears more doubtful about what might take their place. To remain in the
religious register, a Pascalian Marxism of the kind suggested by Anderson might, like
the Jansenism it borrows from,23 be a Marxism for intellectual élites, unable to reach out to
the masses who demand something more than the emptiness of the wager.
What is omitted in Elliott’s retention of a classical and strict division between scientific
and utopian Marxism is the circularity of human practice, in which belief, no matter
how ‘false’, can make itself ‘true’. he tension of Gramsci’s formulation of the ‘religion of
the subaltern’, reproduced by Elliott, lies in the way this motivating function is rooted
in social practice and retrospectively legitimated by its success. I would agree with Elliott’s
Althusserian injunction against ‘telling lies’, but we could also invoke the Nietzschean
commendation of the necessity of falsity to life. In the terms suggested by Anderson we
noted above, the necessity of consolation and inflated hopes to the success of any resistance
is obvious. he problem of a supposedly fully-disabused realism, which lies behind the
critiques of Anderson, is that it can slide into a sanctioning of ‘things as they are’. It would
be fascinating to see Elliott explore this problem further.
It is the immense merit of Elliott’s work to point to this tension and to challenge the
current fashion for the emphasis on the utopian, conjunctural, and contingent. In posing
the question, however equivocally, of how we might historically ground the possibility of
socialism or communism in the absence of a faith in scientific socialism (or at least in its old

21. See Brown 2009.

22. Gramsci 1971, p. 336.
23. See Goldmann 1964, for a Marxist analysis of Jansenism and Pascal.
 Review Articles / Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 157–163 163

teleological and providential form) Ends in Sight remains vital reading. Admirable in its
uncompromising critical verve, if not always consistent or convincing in its conclusions, at
its best Ends in Sight makes a powerful case for us to sharpen our thinking and to embrace
an uncompromising realism that remains true to the flexibility of Marx’s own conjunctural
thinking.

Reviewed by Benjamin Noys

Reader in English, University of Chichester
b.noys@chi.ac.uk

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