Abstract

The big book devoted by Poulantsaz to the Communist International in the face of fascism is published in 1971. It is, in the same time, a reflection on the history of communism, its errors, its divisions, but also its ability to think about the revolutionary transformation. The study aims to show how Poulantzas develops his theoretical analysis in term based on historical studies on the history of the USSR and the communist movement. His remarks are strongly marked by the debates that cross the communist movement and the left, in Greece of course, where the dictatorship crushed the democratic movement. Even as the tension between the USSR and China is at its peak, Maoism inspires at this moment Poulantzas’s thought which imputes to economism and reformism the failure of antifascism. In this sense, this book represents a moment of his thought that after opens up more to the problems of the analysis of the state and democratic forms.