Victor Anderson on Populism in France
Now, the People!: Revolution in the 21st Century by Jean-Luc Melenchon published by Verso
Jean-Luc Melenchon could become President of France next year, given the very divided nature of French politics and the need to vote for someone to stop Marine Le Pen. Melenchon is the Leader of La France Insoumise, the largest party on the French Left. He was third in the Presidential election of 2022.
Although he has been compared to Jeremy Corbyn, this book shows him to be a very French figure (at least as seen from my English perspective). “Now, the People!”, which has recently appeared in English in paperback, has a vast historical sweep, setting today’s problems in a context reaching at least as far back as the Bronze Age. No prominent British politician has done that. Secondly, in the country that brought us Capital-R Revolution in its classic form, Melenchon appears obsessed with Revolution, and any revolt or reform is seen in that context, as some form of step towards, or miniature version of, the real deal, i.e. the next French Revolution.
This is connected with a key problem about Melenchon’s politics. He is clearly on the Left, committed to a more just society, but he is also a populist. The word “populist” has multiple meanings, but in his case it is about celebrating virtually every kind of revolt. He refers to two that have been particularly important in France in recent years, with no word of criticism about either. One is Les Gilets Jaunes, the protest movement in 2018/19 sparked off by a rise in road fuel tax and attracting support from elements on both Left and Right. The other is the revolt in 2023 against Macron’s attempt to raise the retirement age to 64. Without knowing about the details, this seems to me a legitimate judgement call based on the state of the public finances and people living longer.
For Melenchon, however, both movements look like they prefigure the Revolution. His enthusiasm for revolt and “the people” doesn’t leave enough room, in my view, for distinguishing between good and bad revolts, given that the far right, in Britain as well as France, does represent some people, and is perfectly capable of organising its own revolts and demonstrations. This form of populism is like the leftist celebration of the internet in books like Paul Mason’s ‘Why It’s All Kicking Off Everywhere’, a mood that didn’t last long when the Right caught up with the Left’s internet skills and started up bots and troll farms, with then Musk taking over Twitter and the big tech CEOs cosying up to Donald Trump.
All that makes Melenchon’s book look behind the curve. Admittedly, it was first published in 2023, took two years to be translated and one more to appear in paperback. It already feels like a record of a past politics whose time has come and gone.
Fortunately, however, there is another aspect to this book, which is its ecological perspective, highlighting the climate crisis and nature loss. Although this part of his politics is forward-looking, the reason for that is how far he looks back. The sweep of human history, with rising population, production, and pollution, makes it look like our current ecological problems were inevitable, which indeed they are if there is no change of course.
The key to that change, according to Melenchon, comes in a few tantalising pages at the end of the book. He outlines two paradigms that have dominated thinking for centuries. One was the fundamentalist Christian paradigm, from the Garden of Eden to the Apocalypse, which came to grief with the rise of science, particularly evolutionary biology, and the discovery of the Americas, continents not mentioned in the Bible. The other is the paradigm that looks to science, technology, information, and economic growth, with its origins in the Renaissance, fuller expression in the Enlightenment, and worked through in versions ranging from free market economics to Marxist development of the forces of production. Other versions of Christianity and Marxism are available, and Melenchon appears to see both in some ways feeding into the unfolding new paradigm, which is going to be about “one earth”, harmony with nature and the unification of the human race, drawing on thinking ranging from the 1987 Brundtland Report to the heretical Jesuit palaeontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin.
That is an agenda of hope and vision. Now the problem is putting it together with “the people”, many of whom want something very different.