Thus it is that we can say that the capitalist world economy has now entered its terminal crisis – a crisis that may last up to 50 years. The real question before us is what will happen during this crisis, this transition from the present world system to some other kind of historical system or systems. Analytically, the key question is the relation between the Kondratieff cycles I first described and the systemic crisis of which I have been talking now. Politically, there is the question of what kind of social action is possible and desirable during a systemic transition