A Paris postman and four other radicals took to the airwaves yesterday to try to persuade France to make a stand against capitalism in the presidential election next month.

Olivier Besancenot, 32, a Trotskyite, and three other left-wing candidates are among the 12 contenders for the presidency. The so-called petits candidats are entitled by law to the same television and radio time as the frontrunners for the Elysée Palace: Nicolas Sarkozy, for the Right UMP; Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate; François Bayrou, the centrist; and Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the far-right Front National.

“I am an anticapitalist,” Mr Besancenot said yesterday in a 45-minute broadcast on France Inter’s flagship radio news programme. He blames Joseph Stalin for giving communism a bad name.

“Stalinism . . . set back for a whole generation the idea that there is a better alternative to capitalism,” the candidate of the Ligue Communiste Révolution-naire said.

Mr Besancenot’s party is not to be confused with Lutte Ouvriãre (Workers’ Struggle), another Trotskyite group, whose candidate is Arlette Laguiller, 66. Ms Laguiller, a veteran of every election since 1974, and Mr Besancenot, a history graduate who delivers mail in the western suburb of Neuilly, won a combined 2.8 million votes in the 2002 presidential election.

Ms Laguiller, a retired bank clerk, has long been a popular figure although her secretive party remains a mystery to many. Mr Besancenot’s boyish looks and constant smile have also won him many fans.

The revolutionary Left is well represented among the 12 who garnered the 500 endorsements from elected officeholders that are necessary to stand in the election that will decide who succeeds Jacques Chirac. Only two petits candidats come from the Right — Philippe de Villiers, an antiEuropean Catholic nationalist, and Frédéric Nihous, candidate for a countryside party.

In other nations, anticapitalist radicals might be dismissed as irrelevant to the political process, but not in France, which reveres its revolutionary past. According to a 2006 poll France distrusts capitalism more than any nation, including China and Vietnam. Interviewers and commentators treat the revolutionaries with the same deference accorded to the candidates who do not want to overthrow capitalism, demolish bourgeois democracy and install a dictatorship of the proletariat.

The two-round voting system enables ambitious individuals and small parties to join the race to raise their profile with so-called “witness candidacies”.

Les petits can sabotage the big candidates. In 2002 Lionel Jospin, the Socialist Prime Minister, was beaten after dissatisfied voters deserted to the so-called gauche de la gauche, as the radical Left is called. One quarter of the first-round vote went to the Communist, Green and anticapitalist candidates, allowing Mr Le Pen to reach the run-off with Mr Chirac.

Elysée Palace revolutionaries

Left-wing candidates include:

Olivier Besancenot, 32, postman, Revolutionary Communist League. Wants to nationalise economy and give workers control of the state. Poll rating: 2%

Arlette Laguiller, 66, Lutte Ouvriãre, (Worker’s Struggle). Promises to ban redundancies and impose draconian taxes on profits. Poll rating: 2%

Gerard Schivardi, 56, bricklayer, village mayor, Worker’s Party. Wants to nationalise public services, big companies and banks. Poll rating: less than 1%

Jose Bové, 53, farmer, antiglobalisation militant renowned for destroying a McDonald’s restaurant. Poll rating: 3%

Marie-George Buffet, 57, leader of Communist Party, former minister. Vague anticapitalist manifesto. Poll rating: 2.5%

Source: First round voting intentions, Sofres poll, March 15

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