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Nicos Poulantzas (Greek: Νίκος Πουλαντζάς; 1936 – 1979) was a Greek Marxist political sociologist....

Nicos Poulantzas (Greek: Νίκος Πουλαντζάς; 1936 – 1979) was a Greek Marxist political sociologist. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading Structural Marxist and, while at first a Leninist, eventually became a proponent of eurocommunism. He is most well-known for his theoretical work on the state. But he also offered Marxist contributions to the analysis of fascism, social class in the contemporary world, and the collapse of the dictatorships in Southern Europe in the 1970s (e.g. Franco's rule in Spain, Salazar's in Portugal, and Papadopoulos's in Greece). Poulantzas studied law in Greece and was active in the student movement. He then moved to France.. He killed himself in 1979 by jumping from the window of his Paris flat. Poulantzas's theory of the state was reacting against what he saw as more simplistic understandings within Marxism. Instrumentalist Marxist accounts held that the state was simply an instrument in the hands of a particular class. Poulantzas disagreed with this, because he saw the capitalist class as too focused on their individual short term profit, rather than on maintaining the class's power as a whole, to simply exercise