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. Texts include his early analyses of law, his studies of hegemony, authoritarianism, and social classes, and his debate on the state with Ralph Miliband and Ernesto Laclau.
An essential introduction for the scholar and the student to a body of work that continues to reverberate across the social sciences.

"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"

Nicos Poulantzas was born in Athens in 1936 and died in Paris in 1979. His other published works include Political Power and Social Classes, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, The Crisis of Dictatorships and State, Power, Socialism.