A Dangerous Development in France--the Rise of Communism

The Communist Left is gaining power in the run-up to the French elections and it is a dangerous thing. In the Independent today, this article and the news on the television here in the Vendee, carried the bad news on the anti-American, anti-capitalist Melenchon is gaining ground.

The second factor upsetting all calculations is the surge of support for Mr Mélenchon's high-energy, anti-EU, anti-American, anti-big finance campaign. Mr Mélenchon, an ex-Trotskyist and ex-Socialist, has swept up most of the support that normally scatters in the first round over candidates of the "further left". His call for a people's revolution, overturning existing financial and political institutions, has united – unexpectedly – some Greens, the remaining Communists, various Trotskyists, and the anti-globalist "alternative" left.

I am concerned this will happen all over Europe. The seeds have been there waiting for the correct conditions. This period reminds me of the time before the revolution in Russia.