The past two years have seen huge shifts in political consciousness in the United States. A recent poll circulated by rabidly anti-communist organizations shows that 51 percent of American millennials want socialism and an additional 7 percent say that they want to live under communism – that makes 33.2 million socialists and a further 5.3 million “communists”! The mainstream bourgeois media is confused and asks: “Why is socialism suddenly so popular?” and “Why are there suddenly millions of socialists in America?”

 The fact that the main Venezuelan opposition parties have decided to boycott the December 10 municipal elections has opened the space for candidates representing the revolutionary wing of the Bolivarian movement to stand against official hand picked candidates from the ruling PSUV party. The bureaucracy and the state have responded by using all sorts of tricks to prevent them from running. The campaigns of Eduardo Samán in Caracas and Angel Prado in Simón Planas (Lara) have brought out the simmering contradictions within chavismo.