For several years now the ECB has routinely been acting extra legem to fill the political vacuum created at the centre of the EMU by its founders, with the intention to build Euroland into the apolitical capitalist market economy of neoliberalism

Habermas developed his ‘Theory of Communicative Action’ in large measure through an immanent critique of Luhmann’s work

In this way, without wanting or planning it, Germany controversially became the European hegemon, until further notice.

Of course, at present European institutions are ruled by a camarilla of national governments conspiring to hide from their citizens what they are doing in their name

Unlike in what I believe are simplistic readings of Marxian political economy, or ‘historical materialism’, noting the hegemonic tendencies of the capitalist economy in a capitalist society does not imply that ‘the economy’ is always the predominant ‘subsystem’ of a society, in the way of a ‘substructure’ governing a ‘superstructure’.

‘the economy’ appears as producing inputs for politics, in the form of competing group interests, preferably presenting themselves as functional imperatives of efficient economic management, that need to be politically adjudicated.

a progressive subsumption of social life under the organizing principles of a capitalist economy is an inherent ever-present danger of life under capitalism that needs to be politically counteracted.

under capitalism, it is essentially driven and shaped by what Karl Polanyi has characterized as an almost Manichaean battle between a ‘movement’ towards liberalization and ‘counter-movements’ for social stabilization, or for collective political control over markets and the direction of social change

Much of contemporary political economy clings to a reified notion of scarcity as an objective condition with respect to objectively needed material requirements of life

As couples spend more time in employment, they have less time for children. This means they must externalize childcare, either to the market or to the state. Of course many have no children at all, devoting their time entirely to the exigencies and attractions, as the case may be, of work and consumption.