Politicising Commodification: book review of Erne et al

In their major monograph Politicising Commodification: European Governance and Labour Politics from the Financial Crisis to the Covid Emergency, Roland Erne, Sabina Stan, Darragh Golden, Imre Szabó and Vincenzo Maccarrone provide a masterful study of the main policy drive underpinning the European political economy since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In this blog post, I will outline the main theoretical and empirical contributions as well as provide some critical reflections.

 

This volume is both theoretically innovative as well as empirically insightful. Theoretically, unlike other neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist literature on European integration, Erne et al not only focus on the form of integration, they are also able to assess its contents. While they attest that the New Economic Governance regime resembles the corporate governance mechanisms of TNCs (P.319), their main focus is on assessing whether EU policy-making has had a commodifying or a decommodifying effect. In other words, have more and more policy areas been submitted to the pressures of the ‘free market’ or have they been removed from competition?

 

Moreover, unlike much of the comparative political economy literature, Erne et al overcome the pitfalls of methodological nationalism, in which different national political economies are treated as completely separate, unrelated policy areas, which can be compared with each other. The volume’s focus on two policy areas – employment relations and public services – and three services sectors – transport services, water services and healthcare – facilitates comparative analyses beyond nation states.

 

Empirically, the book’s key insight is that European integration since the 2008 GFC has been dominated by an overarching commodifying script. There are some decommodifying prescriptions, this is correct, but they are either weak and/or also focused on commodification and/or geared towards a balance within the overall European political economy. Where present, decommodifying prescriptions have been clearly subordinated to an overarching commodifying framework.  

 

These findings are important for two reasons. First, there have been some arguments about an apparent shift of the EU towards a more Social Europe (e.g. Zeitlin and Vanhercke 2018). Erne et al’s enormous amount of empirical evidence makes clear that this is rather wishful thinking. Second, these findings provide crucial lessons for labour politics. It is clearly much more difficult to mobilise against country-specific NEG prescriptions, even if they are part of an overall commodifying script, than against draft EU Directives. Hence, labour movements should focus their energies on the fight for decommodifying EU laws, not on ‘socialising’ the NEG regime (PP.351-2).

 

Additionally, the authors have established a transnational European socio-economic protest database as part of their research (see also Erne and Nowak 2025) as well as covered the post-pandemic EU policy-making regime. Interestingly, re the latter post – Covid19 period, ‘the European Commission reoriented its employment relations policy in a decommodifying policy direction’ (P.327). Does this finally confirm a shift towards a Social Europe? Not so, the authors point out. The overarching commodifying script has remained in place. ‘All pleas by European unions and social NGOs to the European Commission, Parliament, and Council to include a minimum target for social expenditure in the [Recovery and Resilience Facility] Regulation failed’ (P.318).

 

And yet, why should we be surprised about this lack of decommodification even after the crisis of the pandemic? Since the mid-1980s the EU has pursued a course of neo-liberal restructuring. The 2008 GFC has reinforced this direction and the Covid-19 pandemic did not result in a change in direction either. The main research result of the volume should not come as a surprise. What is missing here, and this is my first point of criticism, is a theory of the EU form of state. The predominantly liberal pluralist, institutionalist understanding of policy-making pursued in this volume overlooks the structural selectivity of the EU institutional set-up, which privileges employers and corporations over trade unions and NGOs. There is no level playing field. Interest groups of capital enjoy much more direct access to key institutions and EU decision-makers than labour movements.

 

This shortcoming is further compounded by a missing understanding of the implications for the balance of structural power resulting from European integration. EMU has not only intensified horizontal market pressures, as Erne et al correctly point out. It has also significantly strengthened (transnational) capital’s structural power at the expense of labour. Taken together, the structural selectivity of the EU form of state privileging capital and capital’s strengthened structural power was always likely to ensure a continuation of the overall neo-liberal and thus commodifying course.

 

The reasons for why Erne et al overlook these dimensions indicate a more fundamental shortcoming in my view. They take the capitalist social relations of production as given, as an ahistorical starting-point of analysis. As the key capitalist structuring conditions are overlooked as a result, the focus on struggle will inevitably remain within the overall capitalist setting. Here and there, the authors recognise the fundamental, underlying capitalist dynamics. For example, they acknowledge the ‘reflection of a general propensity within capitalist systems to open up new areas for capitalist accumulation’ (P.266). However, they do not follow through with the implications of this insight.

 

Finally, the volume suffers from what Atzeni (2021: 1350) calls trade union fetishism. With the slight exception of the healthcare sector (P.259), trade unions are seen as the main agents of resistance and, therefore, the main focus of analysis. Social movements are mentioned now and again as part of wider alliances, but they are never identified as key actors driving contestation.  Nevertheless, contestation of policy-making in the EU and beyond includes a whole range of different organisational expressions of labour movements in addition to and beyond trade unions. For example, in the current campaign against the EU – Mercosur ‘free’ trade agreement, trade unions are at best marginal players, next to social movements and environmental organisations (see STOP EU-Mercosur coalition). It is this broad coalition which has been successful at blocking the ratification of the agreement to date, pointing out not only the disastrous economic but also patriarchal and racist dimensions of the treaty.

  

Nevertheless, these points of criticisms should not distract from the major achievements of the volume. A must read for everyone interested in the political economy direction of the EU. I most strongly recommend this volume!