"1930s Territory" ?

Apparently the BBC Economics Correspondent said last night that if shares and the economic situation did not start to improve today then we are truly in "1930s Territory". This was presumably before the US Financial Bail out plan was torpedoed!

Things are moving very fast. Those of us who believe in democracy, sustainability, social justice and workers' organisation must be very ready for what is now coming over the horizon. Let us not be over dramatic, but the election result in Austria over the weekend, where the far right got nearly 30% of the vote to become "kingmakers" is a very ominous sign of the direction things might go.

Left Greens, ecosocialists, syndicalists and industrial unionists have the ideas and vitality (relatively untainted by the excesses of bureaucratic "state socialism/state capitalism") to offer viable alternatives and defensive structures in the coming period - let us not be shy in coming forward. We need to be at the centre of resistance to both the coming attempts of the ruling class and financial elite to make ordinary working people pay the harshest price for their crisis and to the perhaps now inevitable rise of right populist/fascist reaction.

The coming period will demand unity, cool heads and patient building up of networks, groups and capacity (not to mention bravery in some likely circumstances) - but there are now real prizes to be won as some of the barriers represented by the cocksure ideological grip of the neo-liberal version of capitalism have been blasted away by events, leaving the brutal and dishonest reality of the neo-liberal model in full view of many.