Two Long-shots, Same Struggle?

Last week Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced his candidacy for the French Presidency in 2017. This event passed with no notice at all in the US, and very little in France. Mr. Mélenchon (JLM in the French mode), will be a somewhat quixotic candidate, representing no party despite having founded the Left Party and organized the Left Front. Under the latter banner in 2012 he won 11% of the vote--a significant number, placing him 4th in France's multi-party system. But the Left Front (an affiliation with the vestigial Communist Party, certain Greens and other Left organizations) has largely sundered, JLM's Left Party has atrophied somewhat, and any candidacy to the left of the increasingly conservative 'Socialist' François Hollande will be seen as delivering the Presidency to the Right--to the despised Sarkozy, if not the more feared Marine LePen.

So one can say, condescendingly, that JLM soldiers on, except that such a phrase does a grave injustice to a remarkable figure. His campaign in 2012 was electrifying, especially to the young and alienated (the first of a number of parallels I will make to the current Sanders campaign). His speech in Marseille, looking out over the Mediterranean and evoking a multi-colored, multi-cultural France whose destiny lies more with North Africa than in the NATO alliance, was one of the great speeches in France's long Republican tradition. JLM is a proud bearer of the legacy that, as he often reminds his audiences, stretches from the Revolutions of 1789 and 1848 to the Paris Commune and the 1936 Popular Front, from Robespierre to Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum. It's a glorious legacy, and speaks to my own Jacobin instincts.

But JLM's candidacy is far from a museum piece or theatrical revival. His announcement evoked the need to rebuild a sustainable economy, with a re-imagined, decarbonized energy sector, support for localized, humanly-scaled agriculture, a reinvigorated maritime sector, and more. In short, his eco-socialism understands that in view of the grave crisis of the climate, only a massive overhaul of the economy--undertaken by the public sector because the private one is too entrenched in its old, unsustainable ways--can build a prosperous future. It's a program I find more rational, more contemporary than any of its more fashionable rivals, either in France or the US or any of the other old democracies.

JLM's ability to see a new world, democratically arising on the ashes of the old, reminds me in many ways of Bernie Sanders's 'political revolution.' JLM's economic transformations are more structural than Sanders's, but both share the goals of decarbonized sustainability, increased employment through opening new sectors for development, and justice through redistribution of unequally consolidated wealth. JLM imagines the vehicle for sweeping change to be a new  Constitution: a 6th Republic, with more popular accountability through referendums and a reduced Presidency. Sanders would achieve a comparable, though quite different structural reform by taking the US political process back from the billionaire donors. Both imagine a newer and more democratic politics, which helps explain why both have such appeal for young adults.

I don't think either of these men will be inaugurated President in 2017--but in many ways that's a tragic prediction. We need some measure of revolution on both sides of the Atlantic. Our political systems are decrepit, sclerotic, and our needs are urgent. Neither of these radicals--each a quite distinct product of his own political culture--is exempt from the charge of naiveté, and both receive more than their due of scorn. At the moment Sanders is riding high, JLM not so much, but fortunes change rapidly in our media-driven politics. They say you need to see the change before you can make it. Both of these candidates help me to do just that.