by

Robert Cauneau

19 April 2025

Introduction

Public debate on economic policies in the Eurozone is saturated with rhetoric insisting on « inevitable » financial limits. Deficits that must not be exceeded, public debt that must be contained, financial markets that must be reassured: these constraints are presented not as political rules, but as iron economic, even natural, laws. However, as heterodox approaches such as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT1) emphasize, there is often a yawning gap between the intrinsic functional capabilities of a monetary system and the political and regulatory use made of it. One of the major ideological victories of neoliberalism consists precisely in presenting the specific and restrictive rules of the Eurozone as technical or natural necessities, obscuring their character as contingent political choices.

In order to deconstruct this naturalization and reveal its democratic implications, it is valuable to articulate three critical lines of thought from different but perfectly complementary fields. Cornelius Castoriadis, philosopher of institutional creation; Barbara Stiegler, political philosopher of adaptive neoliberal rationality; and Quinn Slobodian, historian of neoliberal encapsulation, together allow us to intersect the anthropological, political, and historical dimensions of the naturalization of economic limits. Bringing these three thinkers into perspective allows us to identify the deep foundations of the dominant economic discourse, its power-based effects, as well as the possibilities for subverting it.

Castoriadis: Forgetting That We Create Our Own Rules

At the heart of Cornelius Castoriadis’s thought lies the fundamental distinction between autonomy and heteronomy. An autonomous society is one that recognizes itself as the source of its own laws and institutions (self-institution), and that consciously establishes its meanings and purposes. Conversely, a heteronomous society is one that attributes the origin of its institutions to an external source (God, ancestors, Nature, History, or today, Economics or Technology). It forgets that it is a creation of the instituting social imagination and ends up reifying its own creations, perceiving them as objective and immutable realities to which it must submit.

The budgetary and monetary rules of the Eurozone constitute a textbook case of this process of heteronomy. Indeed, these rules do not derive from any transcendent economic law, but are the product of specific political decisions, taken in a given historical and ideological context, that of the rise of neoliberalism and German ordoliberalism. 5 Yet, the dominant discourse presents them as indispensable technical safeguards, quasi-natural constraints. Mainstream economists who confuse these political rules (contingent use) with the functional properties of money (its intrinsic potential) actively participate in this reification. They forget, and make others forget, that these rules are institutions, human creations, and that they could be radically different if society decided to self-institute differently.

Stiegler: Adapting to the World Rather Than Changing It

Barbara Stiegler, in dialogue with John Dewey, analyzes neoliberalism not only as an economic doctrine, but as a political rationality that profoundly transforms the conditions of life, thought, and deliberation. This rationality, particularly in its « biological » version, inspired by Walter Lippmann, posits that the challenge is no longer so much to adapt the environment to human needs (a classic democratic project) but to adapt humans to an environment (economic, technological, competitive) presented as increasingly complex, unstable, and restrictive.

The rules of the Eurozone function precisely as this environment to which we must adapt. « Fiscal discipline » and « structural reforms » aimed at « competitiveness » are presented as the only possible and responsible responses to the « realities » of the globalized market and « objective » monetary constraints. This discourse inevitably produces an anesthetic effect on critical thinking and collective inquiry. Any attempt to question the relevance of the rules themselves, to explore policy alternatives (for example, a more expansive fiscal policy to meet social or ecological needs), or to redefine the purposes of monetary union is dismissed as « unrealistic, » « populist, » or « irresponsible. » Technical complexity, real or perceived, is invoked to short-circuit democratic deliberation and replace it with expertise aligned with the need for adaptation. The naturalization of financial limits is thus a powerful tool of this adaptive governmentality that prevents citizens from once again becoming the conscious authors of their shared world.

Slobodian: Protecting the Market Against Democracy

Historian Quinn Slobodian, in his study of the neoliberal thinkers of the Geneva School, highlights a crucial aspect of their project: not « laissez-faire, » but the active construction of a global legal and institutional order aimed at « encasing » the market economy to protect it from democratic interference by nation-states. The goal is to guarantee property rights and the free movement of capital on a global scale by creating rules and institutions (trade treaties, arbitration courts, international organizations) that are above or beyond the reach of national political processes.

The architecture of the Eurozone can be read as a particularly successful regional manifestation of this encapsulation strategy. The single currency, managed by an independent and protected central bank, coupled with rigid supranational fiscal rules, creates a framework that drastically limits the economic sovereignty of member states and, consequently, the ability of citizens to influence macroeconomic policies through democratic means. The much-cited « financial limits » are not raw economic data, but the bars of the institutional cage deliberately constructed to constrain politics. Naturalizing these limits amounts to masking the very existence of the cage and the political project (protecting the capital of democracy) that presided over its construction. The dominant economic discourse, by treating these rules as technical or necessary, becomes the guardian of this encapsulation.

Conclusion: Rediscovering Lucidity and the Space of Politics

Connecting Castoriadis, Stiegler, and Slobodian allows us to grasp the depth of the problem of failing to distinguish between, on the one hand, the intrinsic functional characteristics of the monetary system and, on the other, the way it is used. The confusion perpetuated by some economic discourse between the functional potential of a monetary system and the political rules that govern its use in the Eurozone is not a simple technical error. It is a manifestation of heteronomy (Castoriadis), where a social creation is mistaken for a natural law; it is a tool of neoliberal adaptive rationality (Stiegler) that stifles critical thinking and collective inquiry; and it is the tangible result of an encapsulation strategy (Slobodian) aimed at isolating the economic order from democratic control.

This ongoing confusion between functional potential and restrictive political use finds an illuminating technical echo in MMT, mentioned in the introduction. By recalling the intrinsic capacities for action of the creator of a sovereign currency, largely restricted in the current architecture of the Euro by self-imposed rules, MMT does not simply describe a functioning: it highlights the extent of political choices deliberately ignored, or even prohibited. It thus provides pragmatic confirmation of the philosophical and political diagnosis: the « chains » of the Euro do not arise from an economic necessity, but from a constructed institutional lock.

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Bibliographic References

Castoriadis, C. (1975). L’Institution Imaginaire de la Société. Éditions du Seuil.

Castoriadis, C. (1978-1999). Les Carrefours du Labyrinthe (Volumes 1-6). Éditions du Seuil.

Dewey, J. (1927). The Public and Its Problems. Henry Holt and Company.

Lippmann, W. (1937). The Good Society. Little, Brown & Company.

Slobodian, Q. (2018). Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Slobodian, Q. (2023). Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. Metropolitan Books

Stiegler, B. (2019). « Il faut s’adapter » : Sur un nouvel impératif politique. Gallimard (NRF Essais).

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Notes

1. This blog contains the fundamental articles on MMT: https://mmt-france.org/

2. Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) is a French-Greek philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is one of the founders of the Socialism or Barbarism group and the author of The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975), in which he develops the concept of the self-institution of society.

3. Barbara Stiegler (born 1971) is a professor of political philosophy at the University of Bordeaux. Her publications include « Il faut s’adapter » (2019), a critical reading of neoliberalism as the biopolitics of adaptation.

4. Quinn Slobodian (born 1978) is a Canadian historian. His works, notably Globalists (2018) and Crack-Up Capitalism (2024), trace how neoliberal thinkers have sought to protect markets from democratic intervention.

5. Ordoliberalism is a German school of economic thought that emerged in the 1930s. It advocates a strong legal framework guaranteeing free and undistorted competition. Unlike laissez-faire, it entrusts the state with the role of creating and maintaining market order. This doctrine profoundly influenced the economic development of post-war Germany and, more broadly, that of the European Union.

6. John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American pragmatist philosopher and a central figure in the philosophy of education and deliberative democracy. In The Public and Its Problems (1927), he developed a critique of emerging technocracy and defended the idea that only collective experience and the active participation of citizens can address public problems. His work and his intellectual debate with Walter Lippmann served as a basis for Barbara Stiegler’s analysis of neoliberalism as a biological and adaptive shift.

7. Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) was an American journalist and political thinker whose book The Good Society (1937) profoundly influenced theorists of neoliberalism. Concerned about the decline of classical liberalism in the face of the rise of totalitarianism and the expansion of the interventionist state, Lippmann called for a refoundation of liberalism based on institutions capable of containing democratic excesses. His work inspired the Lippmann Colloquium organized in Paris in 1937, which brought together future pillars of neoliberalism (Hayek, Röpke, Rougier, etc.) to think of a renewed liberalism, concerned with regulating democracy without abolishing it.