Finance Unravelled: A Historical Materialist Analysis of EU Public Policy

The 2007–09 financial crisis has prompted critical self-reflection, not least because of the socioeconomic costs to more susceptible social groups. This paper targets public policy accounts of EU integration for their agent-centred, pluralist analysis, which systematically failed to address latent asymmetries and inequalities. For this reason, these accounts are largely incapable of either explaining the crisis except in contingent terms or of suggesting fruitful political responses. Instead I outline a historical materialist apparatus to contextualize the financial crisis within the longer-term rise of financialized capitalism in Europe, its key agents and dominant world-views. In turn, I employ this apparatus to examine post-2000 EU financial integration before suggesting certain key lessons for a post-crisis agenda.