ABSTRACT
European integration has been consistently adopted by the European political and economic elite, as a method through which to impose market discipline through heightened economic competition. This chapter highlights three phases. First, it identifies an initial pre-1945 period, marked by a wave of major social and economic unrest that seriously threatened the authority of employers and owners. In post-1945 Europe, the chapter shows a second phase emerge, in which Europe's political and economic elite moved more consistently to adopt the methods of integration and pacification that had been trialled prior to the war. Eventually, however, a third phase can be witnessed in the brief overview of European capitalism, again witnessing a central role for European integration. The resulting European crises of the post-2008 context reflected in ways the ongoing disruptive capacity of European labour, albeit expressed in new and different forms, and the significant impact it had upon the market-based strategy for pacification associated with the process of European integration.
