Political Practice and the State in the Limits of Marxism: The Poulantzas/Althusser Debate (1976-1979)

This paper aims to identify, in the work of Poulantzas and Althusser during the period 1976/1979, the singular issues of their discrep-ancies on the definition of the state and on the nature of an anti-capitalist politics at the dawn of neoliberalism. Taking note of the different perspectives that the debate arouses in the spe-cialized literature and recovering some of these contributions, the article privileges an approach focused on the theoretical-political problems and their possible access keys, rather than on their biographical trajectories. After a detailed tour that includes the exploration of hitherto ne-glected interventions, the conclusions provide an assessment of their more serious counterpoints: the state as condensation / the state as machine, exteriority / interiority of politics, popular strug-gles as distant effects / or as a foci of resistance. Its value lies in contributing to the study of the dilem-mas that Marxist theories of the state and politics face under the effects of the crisis in their field of intervention, while at the same time allowing them the possibility to be evoked to problematize the current theoretical and political situation