Socialists in Power In 1981, after the Socialists “ were in, I could hardly wait to get back to France. It’s difficult to imagine the actual excitement, the energy level, the rising expectations, especially from isolated America, except, perhaps, to recall the vigor that Jack Kennedy released in idealistic young Americans some twenty years ago. France’s leap into the socialist experiment stimulates all kinds of ecstasy, ridicule, bemusement. or invective from American journalists these days, and I quake for Mitterand and his risks. But the level of interest is magnified a hundredfold for the French themselves, watching, sometimes exhilarated, sometimes lamenting. “What will happen?” is in every thought. I had only 10 days this time and stayed with people who, much to my surprise, were right in the thick of it. Florence works for a Socialist depute (equivalent of a U.S. senator or congressman) at the Chambre des Deputes (parliament). Florence’s mother works for Pierre Joxe, the depute who heads the Socialist delegation with its overwhelming majority in the Chambre. Florence’s godmother is executive secretary to none other than Franpois Mitterand. Well! thought I. What extraordinary luck! Lest I be overwhelmed at such proximity to the action, I headed off first thing in search of Brice. The headquarters of Aujourd’hui I’Ecologie are a cavernous lofttype building housing not only Brice’s ongoing staff but also numerous other ecology associations. Even with no election pending, the campaign continues, in much the manner of an archaeological campaign where, as Brice describes it, you dig in the earth for one month and then think about what you found for the rest of the year. The presentation and surroundings at headquarters are casual and comfortable, sans the usual French concierge-dike reserve, and Robert — the ecology cat — sleeps on any desk he chooses. Walking with Brice from the office to a local cafe and then sitting in the cafe with him for several hours was, if anything, a medieval experience. He is known and addressed by everyone, and the mode of address is that of a relaxed and enlightened populace that expects help and leadership from a rather beloved and human noble. And Brice is comfortable throughout. It’s a far cry from the shy, awkward Brice of years past who used to hate public moments, working himself up into such a frenzied pitch that crowds used to shout at him, “Enunciate! Slow down!” A political dislike for individual attention-getting used to cause him extreme discomfort when the spotlight was focused on him, so much so that his first book about the ecology movement, Quand Vous Voudrez (Whenever You’re Ready), was written in the third person and had no personal references in it whatsoever. Absorbing the roasting he got for that choice to be impersonal, Brice wrote Riding the Green Wave in the first person. It is a passionate and convincing personal testament, much in the time-honored French tradition of first-person political philosophical treatises. Would he like to be President of France? “Perhaps,” he laughs, “but that’s hardly a goal. We do the elections because we have to. And I finally decided I should go ahead and be the candidate as much as anything to block the politicization of the movement along traditional lines.” Very much in the vein of those who believe that politics is too important to leave to politicians, Brice believes at least part of his success is due to the constant domination of public life by the huge political parties settling their debts with each other, a spectacle far from the concerns of the public’s real life. Leaping to the philosophical level, he talks of the linear rise of literacy as contrasted with the zig-zag, back-and- forth movement of history and events. “Rhetoric, or abstraction, or just plain literacy mean relying on a system of signs outside of yourself to tell you what to do,” says Brice. “And technocracy is really a further exaggeration of that distancing process. Technology can even create nature now, which means that we are forced to live in the shadow of a system designed by thinking machines. Even Plato wrote about that!” Many of the Socialists I met were shocked I knew and was talking with Brice. Interesting doubletakes abounded when the “news” made itself known. Everyone asked questions about Brice, and I began to understand how much of an anomaly he is. The resentment and belief that each of his votes had literally been stolen from the Socialist Party are deepset. The latter is probably not true, although Ecology politics clearly present a revolutionary configuration. Indeed, when I sat through sessions of the Chambre des Deputes, where all the legislators are seated according to their politics, from extreme right to extreme left, I wondered where an ecologist would even sit. On the chandelier? One of the strangest consequences of the Socialist victory in parliament, aside from the difference in the kind of people elected (much, much younger, for one thing), is the fact that nearly all the deputes are there, actually present at the sessions. There’s naturally g g o d . Still serving the best bowl of soup in town with our homemade cornbread! 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