THE BUBBLE BURSTS: CAPITALISM IN CRISIS

A great philosopher once said that all things go through an uninterrupted process of coming into being and passing away. Or, as the Canadian rock band Rush were to sing in a later century ‘change isn’t permanent, but change is’.

Sometimes change happens so gradually that we can’t see it – like the slow erosion caused by rain and wind on the mountaintops, or the gradual workings of biological evolution. In the social, political and economic world too, change is always there, often pulling in different directions, but so gradual that it isn’t at first perceived. At other times all of the contradictions and gradual changes that have been bubbling under the surface erupt forward at an accelerated pace.

Species die and new species emerge as a result of global climate change. The gradual erosion of the mountain loosens tons of rock, which under the force of gravity avalanche downward as a tremendous landside which changes the topography forever. Or a social and economic system which seemed to some the very paradigm of stability is suddenly shaken to its very foundations. All of a sudden we feel that history is no longer the academic study of past events, but something that we are living through.

The bursting of the world’s debt bubble and all the free market illusions that went with it is just such a moment. The great credit crunch of 2007-2008 and the subsequent and ongoing recession, with its devastating effects for ordinary working people, is just such a time – a time of turmoil, a time of political reassessment, a time of accelerated change, and, hopefully, a time of fightback.

Following the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the late eighties, and with it its hideous totalitarian distortion of socialism, many right wing thinkers proclaimed ‘the end of history’. The capitalist system – mediated by liberal democracy - was the best that humanity could hope for or achieve, they said. Social democratic parties in Europe, including the Labour party in the UK, accelerated their drive to the right, ditched any commitments to socialist change and enthusiastically embraced the ‘free’ market.

For the past eleven years New Labour crowed about how it could manage capitalism better than the Tories, and despite political difficulties over Iraq, were able to point to year on year growth in the economy, albeit it at a modest average of 2-3 percent per year. As recently as a year ago Gordon Brown was still trumpeting that he and New Labour had done away with ‘boom and bust’. Similar mantras were repeated by pro-capitalist political leaders in almost every advanced capitalist country.

Socialists pointed out, of course, that even under these conditions of modest growth there was a considerable downside. Inequality continued to rise. Levels of poverty, by a whole range of measures, were either unaffected by this neo-liberal market miracle or actually rose. Council and health service finances were squeezed as New Labour continued to insist that capital projects were delivered by the costly and profit driven Private Finance Initiative. Workers on the shop floor felt the whip hand of Tony Blair’s drive for ‘flexibility’ and the push for increased corporate profits. House prices rose and millions had to mortgage themselves to the hilt to get a decent roof over their heads. Others were priced out of the housing market altogether. As is the case in all periods of capitalist boom some did alright thank-you-very-much, but millions continued to work hard for little reward, living lives of quiet desperation and little hope, struggling to get by as best they could.

To mainstream politicians and the reflective lens of the mass media and its commentators, however, everything in the garden continued to smell of roses. The corporate giants in banking, the privatised utilities, the phone and internet companies, as well as the energy, food and transport companies posted record profits year on year. Some people, somewhere at least, were having a big and ongoing party.

Gordon ‘Iron Chancellor’ Brown and Tony ‘Third Way’ Blair, by embracing the market, hounding the jobless, kicking the unions and restricting public spending, were creating ideal conditions for big business to flourish. Easy credit meant that, whatever were the other problems of life, people could at least buy things they couldn’t otherwise afford. Rising house prices made millions feel better off, even if in reality that fictitious capital gain would never be realised for most.

If, in July 2007, some white robed prophet had walked into BBC News Headquarters at Pacific Quay in Glasgow and claimed that, within months, a major British bank – Northern Rock - would be nationalised to prevent a run on it as people queued in the streets to remove their deposits, he would have raised only mocking laughter and been asked to leave.
	Panic outside Northern Rock

Had he then said that by next summer house prices throughout the UK would be falling at an accelerating rate; that with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister there would be massive discontent over domestic fuel bills that had risen by over 40%; that production and profits were falling at the same time inflation and unemployment was rising; that the Tories would hold a consistent 10 -15% percentage point lead in UK wide polls of voting intentions for the Westminster Parliament; and that Labour in Scotland would not be able to regard any of their Westminster seats as safe from the SNP, news staff would probably have dismissed our imaginary Cassandra as a late April fool or some leftie ‘Trot-Nat’ stuntist.

And if, as the security guards professionally but firmly prepared to eject the soothsayer, he let it be known that by September 2008 two major American banks would have failed, that 50% of American mortgages would be effectively nationalised by the Bush administration, and a trillion dollar state intervention to save the US banking system would actively be being proposed; that further, by early October Brown and New Labour would have part nationalised both Bradford & Bingley and a merged Lloyds TSB/HBOS and taken a 60% public stake in Scotland’s biggest company, the Royal Bank of Scotland, to prevent the whole UK banking system from collapse...well, social services would probably have been called.

Our prophet’s narrative would probably never gotten as far as mid-October 2008, when, even after the US, British and European governments had, in co-ordinated fashion, recapitalised failing banks the world over through their effective nationalisation or part nationalisation, and over 2 trillion dollars - that’s 2,000,000,000,000 or two thousand billion to me and you - of public money had been spent to prevent complete financial meltdown, stock markets the world over continued to plummet on the fears of a severe global recession. (At the time of writing UK and US stocks have lost 40% of their value, and are still sliding.)

Of course, as socialists we don’t believe in prophecy, but what this thought experiment illustrates is how absolutely no one could have predicted the pace and scale of the collapse of the international financial system, and just how desperately the advocates of capital would reach for the socialist instruments of state intervention and public ownership (though not, of course, on a genuine socialist basis) in order to keep their system afloat.

Even socialists and Marxist thinkers who had previously explained - almost as voices in the wilderness - that the economic growth of the nineties and early noughties was on the basis of unsustainable debt, and that, at some point, there would be an accounting (and, inevitably, a recession) could not have imagined the titanic scale of the economic meltdown that took place in September and October of 2008. On a global basis these were truly historic events, the reverberations of which will be felt for years to come.

To a certain extent however, the firestorm that was the banking crisis was something of a distant spectacle for ordinary folk, a circus played out on the nightly news bulletins where collages of red screens and plunging red lines were played out against a symphonic background of incomprehensible numbers and the finance speak of ‘sub-prime’, ‘liquidity’, ‘de-leveraging’, and ‘credit default swaps’. People were worried, but were unsure to what extent events in this strange parallel universe of high finance would affect them.

Unfortunately, the deals done with mountain ranges of taxpayers cash to stabilise the banking system are the end of the beginning of the crisis in global capitalism, not the beginning of its end. The banking crisis was the lightning in the sky that presaged the coming of a hurricane in the wider economy.

Unemployment has been predicted to rise to 3 million over the next two years – Thatcher era levels. By the time this article has been printed and published another 30 – 40, 000 people will have lost their jobs as the economy contracts. Others will face a rising tide of home repossessions and the nightmare of negative equity. Mothers and fathers will find it harder to heat their homes, and feed and clothe their children. Real people, real lives, will be ripped apart and transformed for the worse. For those already on the poverty line – the people that capitalism forgot – life is going to get even harder. The rich bankers and corporate fat cats had their days in the sun, and some are now losing their jobs and assets, but it is unlikely that Fred Goodwin, ex-boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland and a £2million plus a year man, will worry about where his next meal is coming from, or whether he can afford a tenner for a pre-payment token before the electricity runs out.

This is their crisis: a crisis of the greed and venality of capitalism – yet they and their supporters in government expect you to pay the price. It’s their crisis but your job, your income, your home, your public services, your pension, your quality of life at risk.

Neither Solidarity nor Democratic Green Socialist magazine believe in a system that puts the greed of a few before the needs of the many. We do not believe in politicians who tell us we need to fix a broken system so that we can go through the same tragedy and farce in another five or ten years. We believe in a fundamental transformation of society from top to bottom (and from bottom up); a democratic, green and libertarian socialism - in an independent Scotland and internationally - that can guarantee a decent life for everyone.

This article sets out to explain the underlying causes and processes that have caused the economic crisis, examines the effects that will have on all our lives and on politics here in Scotland and elsewhere, and asks - what needs to be done?

Such has been the shock to world leaders – the political executive of the capitalist ruling class – of their whole system going into a Chernobyl style meltdown that they have often spoken with uncharacteristic and unintended candour. The two quotes above from the usually tongue tied warmonger, hometown boy and Texan oil multi-billionaire, George W. Bush, speak bluntly of the unplumbed depths of the financial crisis the defenders of the corporate world found themselves in this autumn, and the extraordinary - and for them ideologically poisonous - measures they were prepared to take to ‘preserve’ the system.

To be fair to these leaders and the ‘free’ market ideologues that surround them, they had to do something. There can be no doubt that without the massive international state intervention, the partial or full effective nationalisation of banks and mortgage lending institutions across the globe, and the hundreds of billions of pounds of public money pumped into the money markets to provide liquidity and security, the world banking system, the very heart of capital itself, would have gone bust. There would have been an economic crash and slump on the scale of the US depression of 1929 – 1933, but on a global basis.

But they acted, ultimately, on the basis of their own class interests, not the interests of the vast majority who have no stake in the anarchic, boom-and-bust, few winners and many losers system that is capitalism. Some political commentators who should know better have lauded Gordon Brown to the hilt. No doubt a few Labour Party and trade union die hards will be naively brushing up their Old Labour clothes on the strength of the state intervention and nationalisations that have taken place. Brown and Darling, and Bush and Paulson have been crystal clear however – their actions have had nothing to do with taking the banks and financial institutions into genuine and democratic public ownership so they can be run for the benefit of the many. Not for them the idea of a rationally planned economy for the benefit of all.

These measures were taken not to change the old world order, but to perpetuate it, to keep the economic downturn to the scale of a severe recession rather than an outright crash or depression. Gordon Brown’s injunction to the banks to return to the irresponsible lending levels of 2007 as a condition of the bail out show decisively that what is uppermost in the minds of these so-called leaders is as quick as possible a return to business as usual.

As the great Russian revolutionary and anti-Stalinist Leon Trotsky wrote many years ago:

‘Scottish industries in the late 1960s were internationally famous. Clydeside made more ships than the USA…railways were exported to South America from Shettleston, cars made in Linwood, cranes in Govan, Ravenscraig made steel for these in furnaces from the coal in Scottish mines.’

So wrote Alasdair Gray in an inspiring article in the Guardian shortly after the SNP came to power in the Holyrood elections of 2007. After years of Labour ‘talking down’ Scottish independence it is always refreshing to be reminded, particularly by a thoughtful writer such as Alasdair Gray, that Scotland used to be the proud home of world class industry and production. For those of us born during the near omnipotent reign of the Iron Lady, children of Thatcher, we may have little or no memory of industries such as Denny’s of Dumbarton, Singers, Tate and Lyle, Bryant and Mays not to mention British Steel and Clyde Shipbuilding. All strong home-grown industries and all now folded as capital and investment bestrode the globe in search for ever cheaper sources of labour and increased rates of profit. All that is left in its wake are the empty husks of abandoned factories that are now so frequently dotted around the country.

These old brick monoliths act as memorials to a time when a myriad of products were manufactured in this country and exported throughout the world, a time when capitalism –exploitative as it was and as much as we wanted to change it - seemed more straightforward. That is, before Thatcher’s political crusade against state intervention and organised labour turned the economic heart of this country away from manufacturing and towards the more abstract realms of banking and finance. Nothing could seem further removed from the world of industry than the world occupied by city traders, a world in which nothing is produced yet still colossal sums of money are made and lost at the role of a dice. As the film director Ken Loach has remarked ‘it seems insane that we are all bound to this terrible wheel of instability.’

Just how unstable this wheel actually is has now starkly been laid bare and the consequences for a de-industrialised Scotland are grim. Recession, according to all expert opinion, is now upon us. National growth came to an abrupt halt in spring and the ripples of this are felt across the country, in what banker Mervyn King has described as ‘the great unwinding.’

Hearing the various news sound bites about company after company going into administration; falling house prices; rising mortgage payments; tens of thousands new unemployed by Christmas only a fool could not be struck by the interconnectedness of the economic world – the financial sector and the ‘real’ economy, but also how the whole global system has relied on a heady stream of cheap credit. Never before in history was it easier to access dizzyingly high levels of credit – personal, mortgage and corporate - and never before has there been such an array of credit cards, mortgage lenders and debt management services. Virtually all of the advanced capitalist countries followed a policy of financing consumption through easy credit to one degree or another. The winds of recession blew earliest in the US and that triggered the first blasts in the financial demolition derby. Remember when we were told that this crisis was caused by, and would be confined to, the sub-prime mortgage market in the US? Were those who propagated that fiction idiots or liars?

Banks dismissively entitled these mortgage products ‘sub-prime’ because these were mortgages made out to low income families often with a poor credit history. Working class wages remained almost static yet credit levels spiralled out of control as families were able to take out 100% mortgages which were up to five times higher than their annual salary. This seems remarkable risk-taking, but as property prices continued to rise and interest rates remained low it may have seemed like a sound investment – and both lenders and borrowers were encouraged to believe it was.

However, between 2004 and 2006 US interest rates rose from 1% to 5.35% and inevitably families began to default on payments. As this trend grew mortgage lenders hit upon the cavalier idea of selling of this highly risky debt. These debts were bundled together in various complex portfolios made up of both prime and sub-prime mortgages and sold to other banks and financiers (credit default swaps). Also add to this dubious equation were the insurance brokers who jumped on the chance to make tidy premiums selling insurance to cover the risk of these mortgages defaulting. Thus a house of cards was built. And not just in the US.

This ‘toxic’ debt did not spread around the world like a new flu or internet craze. The virus was already inherent in the whole body of the system, in the very methodology of the neo-liberal global economy. Rates of profit were maintained by ‘outsourcing’ manufacture to developing countries where cheap labour was available to be exploited; consumption levels for cheaper products were maintained in the de-industrialised countries by creating historical levels of personal debt and the fictitious capital of rising house prices, with as much money as possible to be made from the burgeoning housing market and off the backs of working folk. Once banks realised the scale of this ‘toxic debt’ suspicions were raised about just how much of it had spilt across the balance book, how much of it could be recovered in the coming economic downturn, and as a result inter-bank lending dried up. The financial sector began to fall apart.

Recession in the ‘real’ economy caused the house of cards to fall, not vice versa. But the fall of the house of cards gave a yet stronger impetus to recessionary factors and pressures.

The crisis has unquestionably unfolded as a global crisis yet Brown and Darling – aided by a largely complacent and bewildered media - have eloquently dodged responsibility by suggesting that this is a problem which has swept in from across the Atlantic, a problem they are reacting to and dealing with ‘responsibly’.

It is worth mentioning here that in the UK in 2007 the independent market analyst Datamonitor estimated that growth in sub-prime mortgages in Britain would double the growth in normal mortgages by 2011. Northern Rock, the first to fold, was described by the Financial Times as ‘one of the most enthusiastic users of the capital markets to finance its mortgage lending business.’ In other words it too borrowed capital to lend mortgages to people with poor credit ratings and thus did its bit to cash in on consumer debt. The figures are staggering as the bank had lent out three times more than it holds in savings and deposits, a total of £33bn. Clearly banks were involved in the same irresponsible lending here as much as in the US. Undoubtedly, this failure is as much an indictment on Gordon Brown’s term as Chancellor as it is on the financial system as a whole.

The UK government’s total failure to regulate the financial industry and their active encouragement of the debt based economy has meant that on average consumers have accrued total debts worth 180% of their disposable incomes. As Heather Stewart in the Guardian pointed out this is ‘the highest proportion of any country in the G7 club of rich nations. It adds to a mountainous £1.44 trillion in personal debt.’

Solidarity, in its July 2007 document The Whole of the Moon, predicted that this huge debt bubble would inevitably deflate at some point, deepening and extending a recessionary crisis in the economy. These predictions, based on a marxist analysis of the economy, are now being borne out tenfold.

The immediate effects of the credit crunch/recession has seen mass staff redundancies in the financial sector from HSBC to Lehman Brothers, not to mention the many jobs threatened if Lloyds TSB takes over HBOS. However, the effects of the recession will not be limited to the financial sector; every aspect of the economy will be shaken. Mortgage lending has fallen by a massive 95% as potential first-time buyers have a steeper climb onto the ‘property ladder’ and many mortgage products have been withdrawn from the market. In fact, the government has stated that the number of houses being sold has fallen to its lowest level since 1959 whilst in the summer repossessions reached a sixteen year high.

In turn other companies have suffered a sort of domino effect, firstly those retailers connected to the housing market like Rosebys and MFI, and those which specialise in luxury goods like the package holiday company XL whose sudden death left thousands of holiday makers high and dry. These ripples will spread. The outlook for unemployment looks undeniably grim as in August people claiming job seekers allowance rose by 32, 500. David Blanchflower, member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, has also warned that by Christmas unemployment may well reach the two million mark. Pension schemes across the UK have also been hit hard, losing a whopping £250bn off the books.

The aforementioned Heather Stewart sums this disaster up from the point of view of the ruling elite when she says that this recession will ‘mark the end of a golden economic period.’

‘There is no hiding place. No corner or crevice of the UK economy will emerge without scars from this crunch. Unemployment across Britain is rising sharply: the schadenfreude at City bankers clearing their desks will soon be tempered by the realisation that they will soon be joined by a growing queue of others, from every region and every industry.’

More worrying still is that this recession may have a potentially disastrous affect on public services. Alistair Darling has already said he will try and spend his way out of this recession – but what kind of Keynesianism can we expect from New Labour’s arch free marketeers?

Already, like a fool singing a wedding song at a funeral, Peter Mandelson is gleefully briefing about the possible privatisation of the Royal Mail. The Office of National Statistics has revealed that public borrowing has soared to record highs in September; in fact it is at the highest since records began in 1946. As taxable income is reduced and public expenditure increases this could be anything up to £100bn in the next two years. Will this mean eventual cuts in public services? Or income tax rises? Or both?

Furthermore, over the last eleven years New Labour has cut funding to local authorities and encouraged them to invest their money in order to boost cash flow. However, with the three major Icelandic banks collapsing in recent weeks and with it many UK local authorities’ investments, anything up to one billion pounds could be lost. Could this mean eventual rises in council tax? Or further cutbacks in council services? Or both?

On top of this New Labour’s PPP/PFI initiatives have encouraged private companies to take over many aspects of our public service. How the recession will affect these profiteering companies and thus further erode the quality of public services across the UK is yet to be seen. New Labour ideology would have us believe that the market can solve everything and if only we would let it run its course then our society would be affluent and content.

For many, this belief is now shattered and exposed for what it is. As Tony Benn stated in a BBC interview ‘You can’t nurse capitalism.’

It is clear that the majority of working folk will have to pay many times over for this financial debacle. A debacle caused by the short sighted and unfathomable greed of a few. We will pay in higher taxes, in loss of pensions, in higher interest rates, in cuts to public services, in our jobs and with our homes.

Whilst Gordon Brown holds down public sector pay rises to below inflation levels city bankers, those responsible, have walked away with colossal sums of money. Sir Fred Goodwin aka ‘Fred the Shred’, shamed ex-chief executive of RBS, has waived his £1.29 million pay off - which is hardly punishment considering he made more than £4 million from RBS, including a £2.86 million bonus. This is small change, however, compared to the £22 million Bob Diamond, chief investment banker at Barclays, walked away with. Furthermore, despite US government bail outs of $700bn many financial workers at top banks in Wall Street are still to receive $70bn in pay deals and bonuses. When nothing less than jail time should be handed out to these corporate criminals for bringing the global financial system to its knees, they are instead being rewarded amply.

However, it cannot be stressed enough that the problem here is not just the reckless behaviour of a few but the culture and system which has allowed them to get away with this for so long.

This takes us to the crux of the matter. It seems that at the heart of our capitalist society there exists a set of fundamental and irreconcilable tensions.

The first is that that whilst the owners of industry wish to keep wages relatively low in order to increase profitability they also require huge amounts of consumer spending to boost the economy. The two do not add up, and in order to overcome the contradiction record levels of credit have been made available, allowing, in fact, encouraging people to spend way beyond their means. As we are now seeing debt must be paid back sometime, and as a result the fictitious bubble of affluence which has swelled our economy is now collapsing fast as credit dries up and property devalues.

Another tension is that which exists between capitalism and democracy. How many people were consulted about how their savings and pensions were being invested? How many people voted on how local authorities invested public money? It seems bizarre that for something as important and risky as this the public in general do not even get a look in. As Noam Chomsky has stated the movement of capital can be used as a weapon against democracy creating a ‘virtual parliament’ between investors and lenders. The chaotic rhythms of boom and bust cast a long and cancerous shadow across our society.

The final tension that exists is that between the free market and public subsidy. Solidarity co-convenor Tommy Sheridan has highlighted a report published by the non-profit policy research foundation Cato Institute ‘which puts a $92bn a year figure on the subsidy to big business through tax relief and direct handouts’. ‘Free’ trade has not been free at all but has been propped up by public subsidy all along. Sheridan continues:

‘In fact, if the states across the world did not intervene with ordinary workers' hard-earned cash - the system would have collapsed already. Capitalism, contrary to its slick PR campaign parroted in the minority-owned media, is a subsidy junkie. The only difference now is the size of the fix required.’

It is clear now more than ever that working people, the real foundation to our society and economy, must be protected and valued, and a genuine, truly democratic socialist alternative must be found.

Alex Salmond at the recent SNP conference in Perth laid the blame for this ‘age of irresponsibility’ solely at the feet of Gordon Brown:

"Where did this age of irresponsibility come from? Who broke down the barriers in the financial sector? Who presided over the inflation of asset values? Sub-prime? More like sub-prime minister."

Unfortunately for Alex, the SNP and he have been promoting a capitalist vision of independence for Scotland that had a lightly regulated financial sector at its heart. Swinney and Salmond have close connections to the rich Edinburgh financiers that brought the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS to their knees.

Gordon Brown, on the other hand, has used the government bail out opportunistically as a means to attack aspirations towards Scottish independence. The £37bn rescue package “would not have been possible with a Scottish administration” he said, ending the already fragile truce between Edinburgh and London.

However, it is clear that it is Brown’s neo-liberal policies that are at least partly responsible for leading us to this point in the first place. An independent Scotland would have had access to a large public oil revenue fund which could have been used to take the banks into public ownership. An independent socialist Scotland could have developed a different kind of economy and a different kind of society, whilst maintaining stability through a publicly owned and democratically controlled financial sector – organised on a wholly new basis and with a strong sense of social responsibility at its heart.

Socialists need not be fearties in championing independence in these times. Or, as Alasdair Gray says much more eloquently:

“Pessimists will say there is now nothing left in Scotland for Home Rule to improve. I deny that, if we work as if in the early days of a better nation.”

Unionist New Labour fully intends that the private bankers who got us into this mess in the first place buy back the government shares once taxpayers’ cash has restored to the banks their viability and profitability. Ditto the American bail out plan. Gordon Brown has repeatedly stated that the government has no interest in running the banking system and that the banks should continue to operate ‘as commercial organisations’.

This has already led to the absurd obscenity that Northern Rock, effectively a state owned bank, has massively increased its rate of repossessions so that the remaining private shareholders can pay back their government loan as soon as possible. At the time of writing Brown and Darling seem ready to water down the initial conditions of the banking bailout – made under the pressure of public opinion - that the taxpayer would receive money back prior to dividends being issued to existing private shareholders.

In contrast to this cowardice and timidity before the social power of capital, Solidarity has called for the following measures to make sure that the majority benefit from the huge public stake in OUR banks:

· No repossessions to pay for the banker’s crisis. Publicly owned banks to renegotiate mortgage terms where necessary and to offer new 'not-for-profit', low interest mortgages to householders and first time buyers

· State owned banks to fund the public takeover, under worker and consumer control, and at minimum cost, of failing companies in the forthcoming recession. Minimise job losses and develop a new democratic socialist economy.

· Open the books to public scrutiny. Where there is evidence prosecute those responsible for playing Russian roulette with our savings and pensions

A time of crisis can also be a time of opportunity. Working class people in Scotland and across the world will face increasing pressure as the crisis deepens. A renewed left must be there standing shoulder to shoulder with (extra) ordinary folk, defending them from attack and helping them defend themselves.

But this is also the time to be spelling out the case ‘for a newer world’, for a new and reinvigourated socialism, shorn of the errors of the past and claiming democracy, liberty, science, and the environment as our own, as well as the more traditional territories of workers rights, social ownership, anti-imperialism and wealth redistribution. All socialists, but particularly pro-independence socialists, need to make this crusade their common cause.

Capitalism in the current crisis has been exposed in all its brutal splendour and contradiction; a light has been shone on its shaky and rotten foundations and its impermanence illuminated for all to see.

We are living through history, and future history waits. To paraphrase the Spanish civil war fighter, anarchist Buenaventura Durruti:

The capitalists may blast and ruin their own world before

they leave the stage of history, but we have a new world,

here in our hearts.

It is growing this very minute.