The State

A return to the state in political science, sociology, and history was launched by the publication of Nicos Poulantzas's Pouvoir politique et classes sociales (1968; Political power and social classes) and Ralph Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society (1969), which directly challenged pluralist theory and systems analysis. The worldwide political rebellions of 1968 called into question the dominant assumptions of an academic social science that presumed the existence of pluralism and system equilibrium as the basis of the political system. Miliband and Poulantzas both drew on a radical tradition identified with the writings of Karl Marx (1818–1883), Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), V. I. Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov; 1870–1924), and Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and considered a theory of the state anchored in this tradition to be the main alternative to the dominant social science. Their works were highly influential. At the height of his popularity in the mid-1970s, Miliband was one of the leading political scientists in the English-speaking world. Nicos Poulantzas was arguably the most influential political theorist in the world, with works that influenced scholars in Europe, North America, and Latin America.