The Greek political thinker Nicos Poulantzas was one of those Marxists who attempted to think about fascism as a challenge that was both theoretical and strategic. His writings on fascism were not motivated simply by theoretical considerations but also by urgent political exigencies. He sought not only to describe what led to fascism but also to distinguish fascism from other forms of “exceptional state.”

Poulantzas rejected the liberal approach that presented fascism as an anomaly in the history of capitalism that told us nothing about the system in general. Yet he also challenged the economic determinism of those Marxists who depicted fascist regimes as a necessary function of capitalist development during the interwar period. According to Poulantzas, the potential for fascism existed within capitalist states, but the realization of that potential depended on the outcome of class struggles.

With the rise of far-right political movements in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, the question of whether those movements will repeat the experience of interwar fascism, in whole or in part, is being widely debated. Poulantzas can be an important reference point for such debates. His warning that capitalist democracies were shifting toward a kind of “authoritarian statism” that would preserve the forms of liberal-democratic rule while trampling upon civil liberties now seems especially prescient in the light of contemporary trends.