We've been told for years that the capitalist free market is a self-correcting perpetual growth machine in which sellers always find buyers, precluding any major crisis in the system. Then the credit crunch of August 2007 turned into the great crash of September October 2008, leading one apologist for the system, Willem Buiter, to write of "the end of capitalism as we knew it." As the crisis unfolded, the world witnessed the way in which the runaway speculation of the "shadow" banking system wreaked havoc on world markets, leaving real human devastation in its wake. Faced with the financial crisis, some economic commentators began to talk of "zombie banks" financial institutions that were in an "undead state" and incapable of fulfilling any positive function but a threat to everything else. What they do not realize is that twenty-first century capitalism as a whole is a zombie system, seemingly dead when it comes to achieving human goals.

In this monumental book, Chris Harman achieves the impossible-a gripping history of the planet from the perspective of the struggling people throughout the ages. From earliest human society to the Holy Roman Empire, from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, from the Industrial Revolution to the end of the millennium, Chris Harman provides a brilliant and comprehensive history of the planet. Eschewing the standard histories of 'Great Men,' of dates and kings, Harman offers a groundbreaking counter-history, a breathtaking sweep across the centuries in the tradition of 'history from below.' In a fiery narrative, he shows how ordinary men and women were involved in creating and changing society and how conflict between classes was often at the core of these changes. While many pundits see the victory of capitalism as now safely secured, Harman explains the rise and fall of societies and civilizations throughout the ages and demonstrates that history never ends. This magisterial study is essential reading for anyone interested in how society has changed and developed and the possibilities for further radical change.

Chris Harman unearths the history of the lost revolution in Germany--the swastika entered modern history on uniforms of the counterrevolutionary troops of 1918-1923--and reveals its lessons for struggles for a better world. Chris Harman is the author of many books, including A People's History of the World.

In the Russian revolution of 1917, workers took control of a major country for the first time in history. To millions throughout the world, the Russian workers' state offered new hope. People everywhere turned from the grim alternatives of a declining capitalism - unemployment, poverty, the threat of new wars - to place their hopes in the government that the soviets, councils of working people, put into power in Russia. And for a short time, their hopes were realized. Never before had such sweeping changes in society been carried out in so short a time.