Can You Create a Community through Economic Means? The Case of EU

• In Event: 554 - Regular Session. Economic Sociology: Making New Markets, New Firms: Global, Local, Online

Abstract

In this paper I trace a long but little known tradition in social theory and social practice, according to which you can create a community through economic means, rather than through political and/or other means. One early example of this idea can be found in Montesquieu’s doctrine of commerce doux; another in Saint-Simon’s notion that industry will unite Europe; and a third in Marx’s notion that workers will unite and thereby create a new society. Many other examples are also cited. These ideas have been embodied, I then argue, in the attempts after World War II to unite Europe, very strikingly in the Coal and Steel Union; in Jacques Delors’ completion of the Single Market; and in the idea that the next step in the unification of Europe should be through a currency union (the EURO). The emphasis on unification of Europe through economic means, I show, have led to a number of contradictions and difficulties. It has also played a decisive role in creating the Eurocrisis.

Author

• Richard Swedberg, Cornell University