ABSTRACT

Had a latter-day European Rip Van Winkle gone to sleep in 1978 only to have awakened in 2008, he would have found the European political economy barely recognisable. Having closed his eyes to the power of labour, strong state action, and the subordination of business to the needs of society, he would have opened them to the power of business, a much diminished state, and the subordination of labour to the needs of the market. Moreover, whereas he would have commenced his slumber surrounded by staunch believers in Marxian ideas about class conflict whose discourse centred around the fight between labour and capital, he would have ended it encircled by equally staunch believers in neo-liberal ideas whose discourse was all about free markets and global trade. Most immediately, however, he would have been hard put to buy himself a cup of coffee with the national coins in his pockets, given European Monetary Union, while the croissant he would have had with his coffee might have been from a French bakery, the sugar from a German beet grower, the orange juice from a Spanish orchard, the coffee cup from China, and the coffee itself from a well-known American chain, all thanks to the Single Market.