> I don't get your question, Dennis. What do *you* think the European Union is?
A multinational superstate and economic superpower, just beginning to develop the political infrastructures appropriate to such.
> neo-liberalism and the end of History? Why are the few remaining countries
> outside the union fighting so bitterly to stay out?
Bitterly, my foot. Sweden and Denmark are playing the Scandinavian neutrality card, but the reality is they're no more social democratic than Finland and Austria. Europe is a single economic zone, therefore the Left has to think and act on continental terms.
> Or maybe you're talking about something else altogether. In what sense is the
> European Union an agent of liberation? I would find some examples helpful.
It's not an agent, it's a terrain of struggle. There's the European Investment Bank: 200 billion EUR of assets, loaning money to the Europeriphery at superlow rates. There are powerful unions like IG Metall, EU-wide enviro regulations, universal health care, equitable pension funds, and intelligent, well-crafted industrial policies. And of course they have sane electoral systems which actually *count votes correctly*, unlike certain Northamerican monarchies we could name.
I should note that this isn't meant as a slam of Hardt & Negri, whose work I have considerable sympathy for, they have a tremendous sense of the utopian energies running loose out there, and the literary skills to bring this to life. I'm just insisting that there needs to be an Adornian self-critique here, a concrete reckoning of the geopolitical terrain of multinational capital, fine-grained enough to scope out what Deutsche Bank and Axa are doing in the field, so to speak.
-- Dennis