Abstract
In an article recently published in this journal, Steven Klein revised Karl Polanyi’s conceptualization of the relation between economy and society, and adapted it to the post-crisis European context. Klein’s reconstruction emphasized the redemocratization potential of trade unions and central banks against the pernicious effects of the commodification of labor and money on the European level. While Klein’s approach is without doubt very insightful and original, we think that some of his claims either deserve discussion or require closer elaboration. This reservation concerns the conceptual approach of setting Polanyi against Habermas as well as the critique of the role of law in the integration process. As for the latter, we think that further contextualization is needed to appreciate changing historical contexts and layers of European integration. With the objective of enriching Klein’s analysis, we first propose a way to reconcile, against what Klein suggests, Polanyian and Habermasian understandings of law and money. This theoretical background will help us, second, to explore in detail the differences between market integration and monetary integration, and in particular the role that law plays in each of these politico-economic constellations. Based on this, we will, thirdly and finally, explain how the interaction of public and private law in the context of post-crisis European integration further promotes the process of commodification, and how the configuration of law in market and monetary integration currently prevents trade unions and central banks from exerting the redemocratizing potential that Klein assigns to them.
Highlights
In an article recently published in this journal, Steven Klein revised Karl Polanyi's conceptualization of the relation between economy and society, and adapted it to the post-crisis European context
Like other contributions published in this journal, we develop our ideas and arguments in relation to the broader conversation, which has continuously been organized by Christian Joerges and, especially, in response to the selected target article by Steven Klein (2020a) on “European Law and the Dilemmas of Democratic Capitalism”
Our approach relies on a contextual understanding of law, for which it is important to take the historical dimension of European integration into account: we understand it as a process unfolding over time
Summary
This article forms part of an interdisciplinary conversation between legal scholars and social scientists on the state of European integration after the Eurozone crisis. Based on Polanyi’s ideas, Klein offers a number of valuable insights in this regard, but he does not systematically distinguish between market and monetary integration This has implications for his account of the legal dimension of European integration. While Polanyi’s ideas, written before the inception of the European integration process, can be interpreted as a coherent whole and adapted to and contrasted against the current circumstances without running into internal inconsistencies, a more nuanced analysis is required in the case of authors contemporary to the evolution of European market and monetary integration, such as Habermas Their statements and ideas, which may have referred to one specific historical context only, have to be carefully considered when adapted to the current state of development of European integration. The last part (section IV) addresses some concrete issues raised by Klein’s approach regarding the law of monetary integration and the re-democratization of money and labor
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