Colloque

Capitalism and Geopolitics in Historical Perspective: Recasting the Origins and Development of the European System of States

Benno Teschke

Membre a labase

Benno Teschke

Résumé de la communication

This paper re-examines the problematique of the relation between 'geopolitics' and 'capitalism' in historical perspective. It starts by exploring the limits of world system's theory and the 'geo- political competition' model prevalent in Neo-Weberian Historical Sociology and Historiography. It then introduces some core assumptions of 'Political Marxism' and reconstructs, on this basis, the diverging, yet interacting, processes of class relations, economic development and state-formation in the two paradigmatic cases of early modern France and England. It argues that the European system of states was neither the product of military competition between state- rationalising rulers, nor an expression of or necessary geopolitical counterpart of the expansion of capitalism, but rather the outcome of century-long medieval and early modern conflicts between pre-capitalist ruling class over the exploitation and domination of 'land and people'. The specific rise of capitalism in 17th Century England and its 'expansion' was thus a geopolitically-mediated process within the context of a pre-existing non-capitalist system of states whose regionally differentiated balances of class forces refracted the expansion of capitalism in variable ways. The paper concludes with a short theoretical reflection on the 'comparative method' and the historically changing relations between capitalism and territorial orders for Marxist international theory.

Résumé du colloque

Nous organiserons un cocktail de clôture. Lors de cette occasion nous signalerons le départ de Jules Duchastel de son poste de titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en Mondialisation, Citoyenneté et Démocratie. Nous espérons pouvoir informer les participants de son remplaçant à titre de titulaire.