In spite of the criticisms which have been leveled against the kind of systems theories which were put forward by liberal social scientists in the post-War years, the concept of system continued to be widely used as a framework for social and political analysis. Indeed the term became part of the accepted vocabulary of social science. This chapter will examine an alternative mode of ‘systemic’ analysis which first gained popularity in France in the 60s and 70s of the last century and has had a significant and continuing influence on studies of power. This is the structuralist-Marxist approach associated with the work of Louis Althusser and his school. It will be argued that although the structuralist-Marxist approach made an important contribution to the study of power, this mode of analysis also came up against serious theoretical problems which it was not able to solve within the limits of the approach. The work of Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas will be examined to substantiate the point.

A brief comment on the place of structuralism in French thought after the Second World War, and on the French Communist Party, the PCF, will help to politically locate Althusser's work. The PCF emerged after the Second World War with considerable prestige because of its role in the Resistance. It had the status of a mass workers party. Perry Anderson has written about how leading French intellectuals like Sartre, and Althusser, who had been radicalized by the War and the experience of Fascism, joined the communist movement after the War. In France, an alliance between Marxism and existentialism was formed after the War by Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and de Beavoir, among others.