1 Dialogue of the Deaf: Some Reflections on the Poulantzas-Miliband Debate Bob Jessop Pre-copyedited version of chapter 7 in in P. Wetherly, C.W. Barrow, and P. Burnham, eds, Class, Power and the State in Capitalist Society: Essays on Ralph Miliband, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 132-57. The state is such a complex theoretical object and so complicated an empirical one that no single theoretical approach can fully capture and explain its complexities. The resulting aporia was reflected in the debate between Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband on the nature, form, and functions of the state and, a fortiori, on the best way to analyze these issues. Indeed their mutual critiques became a key reference point in anglophone discussions on the state during the 1970s and 1980s and were also taken up in many other contexts (for an intellectual history of the debate and its context, see Barrow 2002). The main state theory agenda later turned to other methodological issues, such as the benefits of a society- rather than state-centred approach to the state, and towards substantive topics, such as the future of the capitalist state in an era of globalization, the nature of the European Union, and ‘empire’ as a new form of political domination. 1 Interest in state theory was also weakened by fascination with the apparently anti-state-theoretical (or, at least, anti- Marxist) implications of Foucault’s work on the micro-physics of power and on governmentality. 2 My contribution revisits the Poulantzas-Miliband debate, clarifies its stakes as far as its main participants were concerned, and offers a new reading of its significance for theoretical and empirical analyses of the state. For the issues in dispute were seriously misunderstood, including by its two key figures, who seem to have engaged in a dialogue of the deaf. Moreover, in clarifying these issues, we can better understand the state’s recent restructuring and reorientation. Possible Objects of State Theory Everyday language sometimes depicts the state as a subject – the state does, or must do, this or that; and sometimes as a thing – this economic class, social stratum,