The Immanent Potential of Economic and Monetary Integration: A Critical Reading of the Eurozone Crisis

The Eurozone crisis has revealed fundamental flaws in the institutional architecture of the European Economic and Monetary Union. Its lack of political steering capacity has demonstrated the need for a broad but seemingly unachievable political union with shared economic governance and a common treasury. Agreement on further measures has been difficult to achieve as different actors have imposed different criteria for the success of the Eurozone from the outside. As part of the heritage of Western Marxism, the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School sought overcome such problems by identifying criteria for social criticism from the inside. Building on their understanding of immanent critique, I argue that the Eurozone contains the internal normative principles necessary to support greater political integration. While the citizens of Europe must provide the democratic legitimation necessary to realize this latent potential, the flaws revealed by the crisis are already pushing Europe towards greater transnational solidarity.