Communists Write to Maduro

There is still a Communist Party in the United States, and it has translated (or at least approvingly published) an open letter to the government of Nicolás Maduro written by the Venezuelan Communist Party. Once you wade through the jargon, the message really is that all moderates need to be kicked out and radical forces should clamp down hard on all non-radicals. Then you've got "peace" (I will leave you to decide what "peace" means).

At the same time, in the context of a wavering and indecisive petty bourgeoisie in power, we call upon the most class conscious and militant sectors of the popular and workers’ movements, the peasantry, the middle strata, the revolutionary intellectuals and the patriotic officers to forge a block of forces to lead the wide patriotic, anti-imperialist alliance. Such and alliance must halt the seditious plans of the pro-US right and displace the reformist-appeasement sectors in government, which tend to favor the interests of the big capitalists and form pacts with social democratic elements of the right wing.  

Only an broad, popular unity, led by the organized and conscious working class can guarantee the defense of the Bolivarian nation and the deepening of the revolutionary changes towards the real construction of socialism on strong scientific foundations.

This is a step that Chavista leaders have never wanted to take, perhaps because the current system allows so much self-enrichment. But Hugo Chávez himself talked about "21st Century Socialism" as distinct from the 20th century, and therefore not in line with the Communists. At this point if the government cracks down harder, it's out of desperate self-preservation rather than ideological purity.