The Land that Time Forgot

Welcome to the lad where it’s always 1923:

the field of 12 presidential hopefuls contains six candidates to the left of the Socialist Royal, including “three Trotskyists [and] a Communist.” You know a country is serious about Marxism when there are so many Marxist candidates that the Trotskyists are listed separately from the garden-variety Communists.

But these fine distinctions are apparently still taken seriously on the far left. The World Socialist Web Site, for example, published a broadside against Olivier Besancenot, the presidential candidate of the Revolutionary Communist League. Accusing him of denying Marxism by publicly disassociating himself from Trotsky, the website quoted Besancenot as voicing tolerance for different strands of communism “such as libertarianism and syndicalism.”

It’s certainly touching to see that French presidential candidates are so inclusive, embracing everything from communist libertarianism to communist syndicalism. Amazingly, that’s not even the full extent of the anti-capitalist choices on the French ballot. Voters can also choose Jose Bove, a sheep farmer and anti-globalization crusader. Candidate Bove preaches ''an electoral insurrection against economic liberalism'' and ''a social, feminist, democratic, anti-racist and ecological revolution'' -- a program rarely advocated outside American university classrooms.

But the most puzzling anachronism about the pre-cambrian European left is the absolute lack of attention to their own world view. For example, it’s perfectly okay to refer to a female candidate in the most condescending sounding and entirely maternal terms:

Royal's bedside manner leaves the French voters cold

A word here, a handshake there, a smile everywhere. This is what Mme Royal is supposed to be good at: retail politics; bringing the aloof, ruling classes of France closer to real people and real issues.

That is the theory. In truth, Mme Royal is not particularly good at it. She is not a natural, I-feel-your-pain, bear-hug politician like a Jacques Chirac or a Bill Clinton. There is something stiff about her, something almost haughty, like an old-fashioned hospital matron doing her rounds.

"I tried to talk to her but she just smiled and walked on," said Louise, 43, a nursing assistant."I do like her, or I want to like her, but I just don't know. I am just not quite sure who she really is."

Ruling classes? Are they kidding? Never. They’ve been using the same barbaric terms for a century, and in the hothouse free from reality will continue to.