John Monks is general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. The views expressed are his own

What kind of society will emerge from this deep recession? Will it be a return to business as usual when “happy days are here again”? Or can we build from the ashes of today a fairer, more responsible, more sustainable future?
With the notable exception of Germany until recently, European governments and the European Commission have moved with generally commendable speed to tackle the worst effects of this recession. Germany was slower as it combines a strong economy with a pre-Keynesian, Protestant approach to borrowing when it really needs to give a major boost to spending.
Banks have been recapitalised (including in Germany) and public spending has been increased to boost demand as the private sector has dried up. Intervention has replaced the non-interference, “hands off” policies of old; ideology has been replaced by Keynesian pragmatism.
It’s not all working. The banks, while living on public life-support systems, are hoarding cash and avoiding risk to restore the levels of their assets in order to prop up their own shaky positions. So we have had in the UK the bizarre situation of the wholly nationalised Northern Rock being the most aggressive bank in repossessing properties whose owners cannot pay their mortgages.
In other countries, too, banks have been hoarding cash and refusing new loans to many customers, so prolonging the credit crunch and causing accelerating bankruptcies and job losses. The French government have been driven to threaten full scale nationalisation unless matters improve, and there have been hints of similar steps in the UK.
But while this new state activism received general public support initially, it is evident that over the past weeks, a reaction is developing. Cries now are about “how can we afford to pay for all this intervention?”.  Their consequent warnings about levels of public debt mark a new
challenge to the consensus for state action. Interestingly Chancellor Angela Merkel has felt it necessary to commit the German government to pay back as quickly as possible the debts being incurred with the rescue plan.
At the same time, incredibly, even some New Labour disciples in the UK are nervous about the proposed new top tax rate of 45 percent proposed by Chancellor Alistair Darling; they are talking about no return to the “politics of envy”, rather than about the need for all parts of society to bear fair shares of the burden in the fight to combat recession and restore growth.
The stark fact is that the established wisdom of the past 20 years of seeking a smaller state and the application of market principles to as wide a range of the nation’s economic and social life as possible simply does not work in the present crisis and those who spout that old time religion are being marginalised for the moment.

There are many comparisons being drawn with 1931 and the Depression then. At that time, government spending cuts made the collapse far worse. This time, at least, governments are rightly acting to boost spending and to create new demand for goods and services.

No-one knows whether and to what extent it will work but there are no right-wing alternatives.
But while the immediate action must be directed at fighting the frightening recession, there is also a fight about what this means for state action in the future. This is where there are some looking to return to business as usual with a smaller state, much lower public spending and freeing up the private sector.

This is where I draw parallels with another year - 1945 and post-war reconstruction. In that era, people looked to the state for help and rescue as they sought to rebuild shattered and impoverished societies. Of course, it’s not that grave now but expectations of the state are building up.

A queue is forming headed by car companies and building enterprises. To this, will be added large numbers of unemployed and people whose houses are repossessed, as well as other industries desperate for survival.
I believe that governments will have to be as pragmatic in dealing with these challenges as they are with trying to deal with the banks. In the European Union, there will need to be flexibility in the interpretation of the single market as well as the Stability and Growth Pact which controls spending levels. Exceptional circumstances could well be with us for several years to come.

Over this period, the case must be made for a new kind of economy, one in which there is a better balance between industry and the financial sector which has become an overblown, over mighty and irresponsible burden on nations especially in the English speaking world.

We need to fight for a society where efforts to build up productive businesses are supported and rewarded but where short-term speculation and all the spivery that we have seen in financial markets is relegated to the margins. Think for a moment. Companies which had developed reserves in the form of cash deposits and owning their own property so that they could ride out economic storms and fund their own investments, became ripe targets for takeovers so that their assets could be stripped out and sold on, and their debt levels heavily increased.

Even solid, market leading companies like Microsoft and Toyota were pressed to do this. And now the cold winds are blowing hard, many companies are vulnerable and fragile. That’s no way to run society.
In future, we want a society in which long-term perspectives flourish, and where the fruits of growth are much more evenly shared than has been the case over the past 20 years when levels of inequality reached Victorian levels.

We know the Right are planning to slash public expenditure in the future to tackle the “bloated State” and “feather bedded” public services.

Our approach must be to argue the positive case for a new society based on sustainability, responsibility and greater equality, with no return to the ‘business as usual’ of the past 20 years. “Business as usual” has brought the banks - and many of the rest of us - to our knees.

British trade unions had a disastrous year in 1979 with the so-called “winter of discontent” and we have never been allowed to forget it. 2008 has been the banks’ 1979 and they must never be allowed to repeat the damage they have inflicted.

For us, a huge battle has begun.