Marx and Europe, or How to Overcome Predatory Finance?

From a Marxist perspective, Cécile Barbier retraces the historical construction of the European Union as an economic and financial free-market space, focused on how the ideas of the German ordoliberal tradition have been influential in shaping fundamental central institutions such as the Central Bank and the Eurozone. Particularly attentive to how the ordoliberal authors were initially inspired by Marxist capitalist critique with their idea of “social market economy”, as well as to how the recurring economic and political crisis of the European construction have led to the progressive radicalization of ordoliberal orthodoxy and of predatory finance, Barbier defends a critical return to Marxian perspectives and to the struggle for the commons.