People responded to the devastating economic crisis by looking for alternatives on both the far left and the far right. Steel company Corus is already trying to cut 6,000 jobs and close factories. Bosses are putting pressure on workers everywhere to work longer hours, increase productivity and hold back demands for a decent pay rise. They will step this up if the stock market falls continue and a recession hits. This is the reality of the free market that New Labour worships.
Socialists argue there is an alternative.
Some 200 multinationals control a quarter of the world's output. They are run in competition with each other for the profit of a handful of billionaires. If the workers in these multinationals took over control of these factories then we could have production for need and economic crisis would not occur. This would be the socialist alternative to capitalism that puts people's needs before profit, and stops the rich forcing poor people across the world to pick up the debt for their stock market gambling.