ABSTRACT
Refining our earlier analytical framework on class fractions, I outline below what we may regard as three different, but partially overlapping, structural factors that shape the ideological and strategic orientation of different individual capitalist groups within Europe’s emerging transnational capitalist class. In chapter 2, and beyond, I will then argue how within the context of the process of European class formation as it evolved in the 1980s, two main rival ‘fractions’ within an emergent European transnational capitalist elite crystallised around these three factors. The ‘fractions’ that I will distinguish here are not meant as categories valid for the analysis of capitalism in its historical totality. Rather, they are meant to identify concrete groups within the European bourgeoisie as the process of transnational class formation within the European region evolved in the 1980s.
