Steven Kettell analyzes the development of exchange rate policymaking from a Marxist perspective. He examines and provides a new means of understanding three key policymaking episodes in Britain - the return to the gold standard in 1925, membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism from 1990-1992 and the possibility of joining the Single European Currency. The alternative means of understanding these policy episodes provides a basis for making wider generalizations about the political economy of exchange rate policymaking.