BANI World or Neoliberal Dystopia: A Political Economic Critique

Abstract

This study basically focuses on the dynamics that gave rise to the concept of BANI in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. It is argued that role of political economic processes in periodic analyses of the modern capitalist world system is crucial. Accordingly, we cannot determine the dynamics that gave rise to BANI without evaluating the crucial role of neoliberalism, which has directly shaped social, political and economic life since end of the 1970s, and radically transformed relationships between and among individual, society and state. In historical capitalism, each hegemonic cycle essentially consists of two successive interrelated periods, material expansion and then financial expansion. During the material expansion phase, by focusing on production and trade hegemony consolidates its global power economically, militarily and politically. However, towards the end of this kind of expansion phase, crises of overaccumulation emerge as competition intensifies among capitalist actors. The hegemonic power’s way out of these crises is through financialization. Thus, it enters a period of financial expansion, supporting new accumulation projects by managing credit and debt systems through collaboration of financial institutions and states. Thus, as the last example, neoliberalism, which has dominated the capitalist world for nearly 45 years, is exactly the name, ideology and practice of the financialization period of US hegemony. In addition, it is seen that the primary value from Strange’s combination of basic values (wealth, justice, freedom and security) is constantly changing for each period. For example, as far as US hegemony concerned, in the period of its material expansion, the primary value is welfare; in the period of overaccumulation crises of 1970s, justice; in the period when financialization rises with globalization during 1980s and 1990s, freedom; and in the final period of financial expansion, when hegemonic competition is visible after September 11, security is the primary value. The post-9/11 world is a period in which security has become primary value again and geopolitical options are once again on the table for major powers as seen in the first half of the twentieth century. It is precisely the security-first world left to those who have been already made economically, socially and psychologically insecure by neoliberalism that has created the world of BANI.