The Eurozone crisis has revealed fundamental flaws in the institutional
architecture of the European Economic and Monetary Union. Its lack of political steering
capacity has demonstrated the need for a broad but seemingly unachievable political
union with shared economic governance and a common treasury. Agreement on further
measures has been difficult to achieve as different actors have imposed different criteria
for the success of the Eurozone from the outside. As part of the heritage of Western
Marxism, the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School sought overcome such problems
by identifying criteria for social criticism from the inside. Building on their
understanding of immanent critique, I argue that the Eurozone contains the internal
normative principles necessary to support greater political integration. While the citizens
of Europe must provide the democratic legitimation necessary to realize this latent
potential, the flaws revealed by the crisis are already pushing Europe towards greater
transnational solidarity
