This paper explores the way socialists have deployed Marxist theories in analysing European integration and Britain's participation in it. The first section shows how theories of the relationship between nation states and global capitalism opened up new perspectives on regional integration in Europe. The second section looks at later debates about ‘varieties of capitalism’, and argues that these debates have ignored the global constitution of capitalism and exaggerated the range of variation within it. The third section develops this point in relation to the possibility of challenging neoliberalism within the EU.
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