First-ever collection of the key writings of one of the most influential political theorists of the postwar epoch.

Nicos Poulantzas was one of the leading Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, developing seminal analyses of the state and social classes during the crisis of monopoly capitalism. This volume brings together a wide selection of Poulantzas’ key writings in legal philosophy and political sociology, including some important pieces translated here for the first time. Articles include his early pieces on law, his studies of hegemony, authoritarianism, and social classes, and his debate on the state with Ralph Miliband and Ernesto Laclau.

Praise for State, Power, Socialism
“It is Poulantzas’ great virtue to have seen so clearly that an adequate Marxist theory of politics must be able to deal with just those phenomena which non-Marxists have regarded as decisive refutations of Marxism. — Times Literary Supplement

Praise for Classes in Contemporary Capitalism
“Poulantzas is one the leading Marxist theorists of the modern capitalist state…” — Choice

Nicos Poulantzas was born in Athens in 1936 and died in Paris in 1979. His other published works include Political Power and Social Classes and State, Power, Socialism. James Martin is Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmith’s College, London, and is the author of Gramsci's Political Analysis, co-author of Third Way Discourse: European Ideologies in the Twentieth Century, and editor of Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments.