ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the liberal democratic project associated with the European integration should be conceived as the politics of regulated liberalism. It investigates the Amsterdam treaty as marking an institutionalisation of the latest 'stage' of European integration and focuses on the 'rights' agenda of Amsterdam. The chapter presents the approach of historical materialism drawn from the work of Karl Marx, and argues for its cogency, pertinence and relevance in the explanation and understanding of the processes of European integration. Political liberalisation implies equality under the law because the system of social relations is constituted by an actual equality of exchange of commodities. In Liberal polities, politics is constituted as a separate sphere from economics in the process of which the state is reified as something separate from the society in which it is embedded. The state is, an instance of the overall 'capital relation', that is 'class domination in capitalist society'.
