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EU Integration as Uneven and Combined Development

Analytical Gains of Geopolitical Economy

ISBN: 978-1-78560-337-2, eISBN: 978-1-78560-336-5

Publication date: 7 January 2016

Abstract

This paper documents the EU integration process using the uneven and combined development framework. Because capitalist social relations are territorially defined and politically built, unevenness between countries is not unconnected with that within countries and both involve antagonism between capital and labor. This is manifest in the ‘state form’ of the EU and its anti-democratic tendencies: public institutions at the community level play a major role in reinforcing unevenness in favour of leading countries, in both the productive and financial spheres.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

I would thank Radhika Desai for her useful comments on an earlier version of this paper and for improving the English editing.

‘Imperialism, thanks to the universality, penetrability, and mobility and the break-neck speed of the formation of finance capital as the driving force of imperialism, lends vigour to both these tendencies’, those leading to uneven as well as combined development (Trotsky, 1928).

Citation

Serfati, C. (2016), "EU Integration as Uneven and Combined Development", Analytical Gains of Geopolitical Economy (Research in Political Economy, Vol. 30B), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 255-294. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0161-72302015000030B009

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited