La prise en compte des « modes de production » dans l’analyse système-monde

En 1974, Immanuel Wallerstein a développé l’analyse système-monde, une forme de recherche épistémologique et historiographique spécifique à l’intérieur du vaste programme de la Global History. A l’intérieur de ce modèle théorique, qui a par ailleurs été complexifié par d’autres chercheurs, se trouve un complément qui mérite un développement particulier.

Il a été reproché à Wallerstein, notamment par des historiens et des économistes marxistes comme Bernard Brenner, de confondre « mode de production » et « système de production » capitaliste à partir du XVIe siècle méditerranéen. D’autres historiens ont dépassé cette confusion en reconnaissant l’existence de « modes de production » bien avant le début de l’époque moderne en Europe. Ces « modes de production », par les liens qu’ils ont tissé, ont ensuite créé le « système » du monde.

Parmi ces historiens, Samir Amin, Eric Wolf, David Wilkinson, Christopher Chase-Dunn et Thomas Hall ont proposé des réflexions très riches. Tout en restant intégrées au modèle centre-périphérie classique, elles apportent des correctifs à la théorie wallersteinienne et à ses continuateurs.

Plan de la fiche

I. Le mode de production tributaire/précapitaliste

II. Contre les hégémonies et en faveur d’un système monde de longue durée : la « civilisation centrale » (David Wilkinson)

III. Cœur/périphérie pour Christopher Chase-Dunn et Thomas Hall : relations intersociétales et typologie des systèmes-monde

I. Le mode de production tributaire/précapitaliste

Dans son analyse des systèmes-monde, Immanuel Wallerstein appuie la différence entre le système-monde moderne et les empires-monde et économies-monde pré-modernes par la différence de mode de production. Selon lui, les empires-monde comme l’Empire ottoman étaient limités parce qu’ils sont demeurés des systèmes tributaires ; le système-monde européen est le premier à s’être transformé en un mode de production capitaliste.

Notes

1. David Wilkinson, « Central Civilization », Comparative Civilizations Review, 1987, p. 31-59 ; « Universal Empires : Pathos and Engineering », Comparative Civilizations Review, 1988, p. 22-44 ; « Cores, Peripheries and Civilizations », dans Christopher Chase-Dunn, Thomas Hall (dir), Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, Westview Press, 1991, p. 113-166 ; « Cities, Civilizations and Oikumenes », Comparative Civilizations Review, 1992, p. 51-87 ; « Civilizations, Cores, World Economies, and Oikumenes », dans Andre Gunder Frank, Barry Gills (dir), The World System : Five Hundred Years or Five Thousands ?, Routledge, 1993, p. 221-246.
2. Voir Christopher Chase-Dunn, « Urbanization in the World-System, New Directions for Research », Comparative Urban Research, 9, 1983, p. 41-46 ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, « The System of World Cities, A.D. 800–1975 », dans Michael Timberlake (dir), Urbanization in the World-Economy, Academic Press, 1984 ; Jonathan Friedmann, « The World City Hypothesis », Development and Change, 17, 1986, p. 69-84 ; Olivier Dollphus, L’espace monde, Economica, 1994 ; Paul Knox, Peter Taylor (dir), World Cities in a World-System, Cambridge University Press. 1995 ; Janet Abu-Lughod, America’s Global Cities, University of Minnesota Press, 1999 ; Andrew Bosworth, « The Evolution of the World-City System, 3000 BCE to AD 2000 », dans Robert Denemark, Jonathan Friedman, Barry Gills, George Modelski, World System History, the Social Science of Long-Term Change, Routledge, 2000, p. 273-284 ; Jennifer Robinson, « Global and World Cities, a View from Off the Map », International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26, 2002, p. 531-554 ; Peter Taylor, World City Network : a Global Urban Analysis, Routledge, 2004 ; Christof Parnreiter, « Global Cities, Global Commodity Chains and the Geography of Coreness in the Capitalist World-System », dans Salvatore Babones, Christopher Chase-Dunn (dir), Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis, Routledge, 2012, p. 231-238, Michael Timberlake et David Smith, « Global Cities and World City Networks ») dans Salvatore Babones, Christopher Chase-Dunn (dir), Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis, Routledge, 2012, p. 247-255.
3. Christopher Chase-Dunn, Thomas Hall, « Conceptualizing Core/Periphery Hiérarchies for Comparative Studies », dans Christopher Chase-Dunn, Thomas Hall (dir), Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, Westview Press, 1991, p. 5-44 ; « World-Systems and Modes of Production : Toward the Comparative Study of Transfomations », Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 18, 1992, p. 81-117 ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, Peter Taylor, Giovanni Arrighi, Robert Cox, Henk Overbeek, Barry Gills, Andre Gunder Frank, George Modelski, David Wilkinson, « Hegemony and Social Change », Mershon International Studies Review, 38, 1994, p. 361-376 ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, Thomas Hall (dir), Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalists Worlds, Westview Press, 1991 ; Rise and Demise. Comparing World-Systems, Westview Press, 1997 ; Global Formation : Structures of the World-Economy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998 ; Global Formation : Structures of the World-Economy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998 ; « Comparing World-Systems to Explain Social Evolution », dans Robert Denemark, John Friedman, Barry Gills, George Modelski (dir), World System History. The Social Science of Long-Term Change, Routledge, 2000, p. 85-111 ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, Yukio Kawano, Benjamin Brewer, « Trajectories of Globalization Since 1800 : Cycles of World-System Intergration », American Sociological Review, 65, 2000, p. 77-95 ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, Yukio Kawano, Benjamin Brewer, « Trade Globalization since 1795, Waves of Integration in the World-System », American Sociological Review, 65, 2000, p. 77-95 ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, Andrew Jorgenson, « Interaction Networks and Structural Globalization : a Comparative World-Systems Perspective », Society in Transition, 34, 2003, p. 206-220 ; « Growth/Decline Phases and Semi-Peripheral Development in the Ancien Mesopotamian and Egyptian World-System », dans Barry Gills, William Thompson (dir), Globalization and Global History, Routledge, 2006, p. 104-126 ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, Thomas Hall, « East/West in World-Systems Evolution », dans Patrick Manning, Barry Gills (dir), Andre Gunder Frank and Global Development : Visions, Remembrances and Exploration, Routledge, 2011, p. 97-119) ; Christopher Chase-Dunn, Bruce Lerro, Social Change : Globalization From the Stone Age to the Present, Paradigm Press, 2014 ; voir aussi Thomas Hall, James Fenelon, « Indigenous Movements and Globalization: What is Different ? What is the Same ? », Globalizations, 5, 2008, p. 1-11 ; Thomas Hall, James Fenelon, Indigenous Peoples and Globalization: Resistance and Revitalization, Paradigm Press, 2009 ; Thomas Hall, « Puzzles in the Comparative Study of Frontiers : Problems, Some Solutions, and Methodological Implications », Journal of World-Systems Research, 15, 2009, p. 25-47 ; « Incorporation into and Merger of World-Systems », dans Salvatore Barones, Christopher Chase-Dunn (dir), Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis, Routledge, 2011. p. 37-55 ; Thomas Hall, Nick Kardulias, Christopher Chase-Dunn, « World-Systems Analysis and Archaeology : Continuing the Dialogue », Journal of Archaeological Research, 19, 2011, p. 233-279.
4. « Defining a network in terms of a single center precludes the possibility of multicentric networks. It is like treating the British Empire as a separate system from the French Empire. The reality is that these were colonial empires within a larger multicentric intersocietal system. Many, if not most, ancient world-systems were also multicentric in the sense that either the core areas were constituted as an interstate system of several autonomous states, or there were a few large empires interacting with one another. The thirteenth century Eurasian worldsystem studied by Janet Abu-Lughod (1989) had three separate core areas linked directly by long distance prestige goods trade and indirectly by interactions with shared peripheral regions. The notion of multicentricity should not preclude us from studying the differential extent of centralization within intersocietal systems, but defming these systems in terms of single centers is certainly a mistake » (Christopher Chase-Dunn, Thomas Hall, « Conceptualizing Core/Periphery Hiérarchies for Comparative Studies », dans Christopher Chase-Dunn, Thomas Hall (dir), Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, Westview Press, 1991, p. 5-44).
5. « Before the modern capitalist world-system, in the era of world-empires built around the tributary mode of accumulation, peripheral societies gave up a portion of their surplus to the core in return for nominal independence, or they were absorbed altogether (in which event they gave up an even larger portion of their surplus to the imperial core). The maintenance of peripheral status during those times relied exclusively on the credible threat of military force. Today, the reproduction of the international power hierarchy is achieved more subtly through market mechanisms, and force is used only when the market ‘rules’ (which act to sustain the dominance of the core) are challenged by insurrection. The hypothesis of ‘unequal exchange’ contends that the central mechanism by which the global market acts to gather together the global surplus and channel it to the core is through price inequality, in which the political and military suppression of wages in the periphery allows the products of peripheral labor to be much cheaper than those of the core. Put simply, an hour of labor in the periphery costs capital only a fraction of its costs in the core, so that a commodity produced there is much cheaper than the same commodity produced in the core. When core and periphery come together to exchange products, in the world market, the exchange results in a net transfer of value from the periphery to the core. Hence the market masks a process of exploitation, a process backed up by the military power of the states in the periphery and, behind them, the military power of the core » (Christopher Chase-Dunn, Peter Grimes, « World-Systems Analysis », Annual Review of Sociology, 21, 1995, p. 387-417, p. 396).