In the past 100 years, there have been attempts to build socialist societies in at least 24 countries around the world. Soviet socialism was different than the socialism in China, Yugoslavian socialism was different than socialism in Cuba, North Korea was different than Vietnam, and Albania was different than the German Democratic Republic. Without exception, every single socialist experiment has ended in failure.

But socialism, declared dead after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries in the early 1990s, is now experiencing a renaissance in many countries. In Peru, Pedro Castillo, leader of the Marxist-Leninist Peru Libre party, has now been elected president by a narrow majority.