Venezuela: The Constituent Assembly is a strategic decision
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By Carlos Eduardo Morreo, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

1. The Constituent Assembly is strategic

The initiative by the government of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to convene a National Constituent Assembly with ‘originary powers’, disrupts the dynamic of confrontation against the government by the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition and those who support this political instrument. After more than a month of street protests and mobilisations by the opposition, the constituent initiative may shift the spaces of confrontation, from the highways and the codes of violence, to texts, political negotiation and discourses regarding the Venezuelan state.
Standoff in Venezuela
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May 12, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal / Green Left Weekly — Venezuela has been rocked in recent weeks by almost daily protests and counter-protests, as right-wing opponents of socialist President Nicolas Maduro seek to bring down his government. While the media portrays these events as a popular rebellion against an authoritarian government, supporters of the pro-poor Bolivarian revolution initiated by former president Hugo Chavez say the country is witnessing an escalation in what is an ongoing counter-revolutionary campaign seeking to restore Venezuela’s traditional elites in power and reverse the gains made by the poor majority under Chavez and Maduro. Federico Fuentes interviewed Steve Ellner, a well-known analyst of Venezuelan and Latin American politics and a retired professor at Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente, to get his views on recent events.
What is to be done in Venezuela?
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South Africa's ANC: Mistaking consequence for cause
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By Dale T. McKinley May 12, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Pambazuka News — President Jacob Zuma’s recent Cabinet reshuffle is nothing more and nothing less than the latest instalment of a long-running story of the capture of the ANC and the post-1994 democratic state it has politically run. It is but a component consequence of a political, economic and social crisis that has been forged and fed by the ANC (and its Alliance partners) as a whole, in conjunction with capital. That crisis is not the result of actions taken by a small collection of conspirators, a select group of bad people or an individual.
What the world needs to know about Western Sahara
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By Amira Ali May 12, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Pambazuka News — For more than 40 years, Morocco has forcefully and illegally occupied Western Sahara despite provisions of international law that recognize the country’s sovereignty. The suffering but resolute Saharawi people, especially the younger generation, are getting impatient with endless colonialism. African people and all who value human dignity and freedom must stand up in solidarity with Western Sahara by demanding an end to Moroccan occupation.
Hats and men: Marx's faulty symmetry
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Local and mayoral elections in Britain: Brexit election delivers carnival of reaction
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By Phil HearseMay 11, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Unity — The huge Labour losses in the local council elections are just what the Labour Right was hoping for. Peter Mandelson said as much late last year, when he stated he was hoping for Theresa May to call an early election that would result in a disastrous Labour defeat and therefore the removal of Jeremy Corbyn. It’s exactly what all Corbyn’s reactionary detractors in the press and television wanted as well.
French left statements on presidential election outcome: Melenchon, Ensemble!, French Communist Party, New Anti-Capitalist Party
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Below, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is publishing statements from various French left groups on the outcome of the May 7 French presidential election which saw centre-right banker Emmanuel Macron defeat the far-right candidate for the National Front, Marine Le Pen. These include statements by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from France Unbowed; Ensemble! (Together!); the French Communist Party (PCF); and Philippe Poutou, from the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA).
Britain: The Tories, the general election and neoliberalism’s second phase
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By Neil FaulknerMay 9, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Unity — ‘Ignorance never yet helped anyone.’ So raged Karl Marx as he leapt from his chair and thumped the table so hard that the lamp shook. The occasion was a meeting in Brussels in 1846 of the newly formed Communist Correspondence Committee – the tiny acorn from which, over the next 150 years, so many mighty oaks would grow. The target of the tirade was a somewhat vacuous activist called Wilhelm Weitling, who professed to believe that socialist theory was unnecessary. This was, Marx fumed, ‘equivalent to vain dishonest play at preaching which assumes an inspired prophet on the one side and only gaping asses on the other’. Theresa May’s decision to call a general election should not mean that socialists stop thinking and mumble platitudes. To become uncritical cheerleaders for a cack-handed reformism can only foster illusions and false hopes at the expense of equipping activists with the understanding they need in the struggle to change the world. Left websites which are simply shouting support for a Corbyn victory – without discussing any of the contradictions in play – are the modern Weitlings. Corbyn is not a prophet, activists are not gaping asses, and a general election should not be the occasion for putting our brains in deep freeze.

'The Kurds': Internationalists or narrow nationalists?
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Julius Nyerere: Legacy and defeated dreams in Tanzania
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By Alan Broughton May 8, 2017 –– Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal –– Julius Nyerere is regarded as one of the greatest African political leaders. He was a visionary for African unity, socialist development and self-reliance in the aftermath of colonialism, and still commands great respect. Though much of his vision failed to materialise he leaves a legacy of ethnic and religious tolerance and peace in his East African country, Tanzania.
New Catalan political space: one hurdle cleared on the road to left unity
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