The Crisis of the Dictatorships. Nicos Poulantzas

      Contents

      Preface

      IThe Imperialist World Context

      IIThe Dictatorships, the United States and Europe

      IIIThe Dominant Classes

       IVThe Popular Classes

       VThe State Apparatuses

       VIConclusion

       From March 1975 to June 1976

       Index

       Preface

      The past two years in Europe have witnessed a series of events of considerable significance: the overthrow of the military dictatorships in Portugal and Greece; and the accelerated decay of the Franco régime in Spain, so that its overthrow is now also on the historical agenda.

      Both the path taken by the fall of the Portuguese and Greek dictatorships, and the process now under way in Spain, raise a number of important questions which are still far from being resolved. The basic pivot in these is as follows. The Portuguese and Greek regimes were evidently not overthrown by an open and frontal movement of the popular masses in insurrection, nor by a foreign military intervention, as was the case with Italian fascism and Nazism in Germany. What then are the factors that determined their overthrow, and what form has the intervention of the popular masses taken in this conjuncture?

      These are not just questions bearing only on Portugal, Greece and Spain. They also concern, in particular, several other countries which have in common with those we are dealing with here that they stand in a relationship of dependence to the imperialist metropolises and are similarly marked by exceptional capitalist regimes (fascism, bonapartism, military dictatorship); we need only note the numerous examples in Latin America. The lessons that may be drawn from the European dictatorships are of major importance in this respect.

      But some of these questions also concern the ‘industrialized’ and ‘free’ countries of Europe, as they are called. For Greece, Portugal and Spain are characterized by a special kind of dependence. These countries are no longer marked by the condition referred to descriptively as ‘under-development’. As far as their economic and social structure is concerned, they are firmly in the European arena. The events taking place there are thus directly relevant, at least in some respects, to the other European countries.

      These then are the questions that this essay deals with, and to which it sets out to give at least a preliminary rough answer. With this in mind, I must make the following points here, for the sake of clarification.

      1) My intention has been to produce a short text of political theory, limited to the basic questions; it is in no way exhaustive, and does not present a detailed history of these regimes and their overthrow. It is addressed to a relatively well-informed readership, who have been following the events in these countries with a political interest, and can thus to a certain extent dispense with a factual description and concentrate on underlying causes and their explanation. Nevertheless, and so as not to make the presentation too dry, I have brought in what seemed to me the most important concrete material, in an effort to avoid the usual danger of this type of analysis, i.e. to say at the same time too much and too little.

      2) The overthrow of the Portuguese and Greek regimes, and the process elapsing in Spain, seem to me to exhibit certain common features, at least as far as the basic factors involved are concerned. This is frequently despite manifest appearances, and the reasons for this I shall explain. While I have also been concerned to point out the important differences that remain, I have sought above all to keep in mind these similarities, even though this obviously involves a certain degree of schematism.

      3) There is one major absence in this text which is entirely deliberate. Even though I frequently indicate the role that organizations of the left have played in these processes, I have not gone into their actions in any detail, confining myself to bringing out what is to a certain extent the effect of these actions, namely the particular role of the popular masses. This is in no way because I under-estimate the action of these organizations, but for quite the opposite reason. In order to deal properly with their role, it would have been necessary to embark on an exhaustive discussion of political strategies and the questions of political theory that underlie them, and this would have involved a separate book. Faced here in particular with the danger of saying both too much and too little, I have made the definite choice of leaving the ground untrodden for the time being.

      4) This essay, therefore, is not envisaged as anything more than a contribution to the discussion already under way on the events that have taken place up till now, particularly with respect to the process of democratization, and the lessons to be drawn from them. Above all, it does not claim to define the paths that these countries will follow in the future, and this is particularly true for Portugal, given the instability of the present balance of forces in that country.

      5) One final remark – in certain analyses and positions taken in this text, the reader will find some departures from my book Fascism and Dictatorship, published originally in 1970. To some extent these differences bear on the different nature of the object under consideration, in the present case regimes of military dictatorship which are not in the strict sense fascist, and which are located in a different historical period from that of the inter-war years. But these differences are also due in part to certain rectifications of my previous analyses, due to the fact that events in these countries have undeniably presented a series of new elements in the experience of popular movements confronting the exceptional capitalist regimes (regimes of open war against the popular masses).

      Paris, February 1975

       I

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