Venezuela: 5 collective members killed by police

[Martin Luther]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/08/venezuela-militia-killed-police-violence-shield-revolution

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10950


Some grave developments in Venezuela. Another one of the well known grassroots leaders has been killed, this time by the police.

[Martin Luther]

This is the most disturbing part.


Though the exact circumstance of the activist’s death are unknown, photos circulating on social media show Odreman held captive by police officers, then a video shows him lying in a pool of blood, possibly dead.

It appears they simply executed him, in cold blood. Just before he died, he spoke to some reporters and denounced the raid on the collective which happened hours before in which the cops killed 2 other comrades, one in his bed. When he and two other collective members challenged the police, they were killed. The police claimed that Odreman had taken some security officials hostage in response to the raid.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

What? The police are turning on the armed extra-state bodies of the revolution?
Who could have possibly predicted this?

[Slavic]

What? The police are turning on the armed extra-state bodies of the revolution?
Who could have possibly predicted this?

The state always contends to maintain its monopoly of violence. If the state is cracking down on leftist militias then its painfully obvious the class makeup of the state.

[Martin Luther]

According to his sister, Odreman had 32 bullet wounds.

[Martin Luther]

The idea among chavistas is that some in the police are connected to the murder of Robert Serra, the up and coming leftist leader killed about a week ago. Someone in the collective knew something, and they went to kill them under a pretext of a raid as part of a murder investigation. Then the leader of the collective, Odreman, opened his mouth on television so they butchered him as well. When a reporter asked him if the police were connected to the Serra case, he said "the math doesn't fail".

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What? The police are turning on the armed extra-state bodies of the revolution?
Who could have possibly predicted this?

Only people who think there is a revolution in Venezuela, I suppose. Some revolution it is. Perhaps if a century or so passes they might get round to that entire "smashing the bourgeois state apparatus" thing.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Only people who think there is a revolution in Venezuela, I suppose. Some revolution it is. Perhaps if a century or so passes they might get round to that entire "smashing the bourgeois state apparatus" thing.

To clarify - I think there is a really interesting tension in Venezuela between relatively wide-spread popular organization (eg the "collectives") and the state which is run -at the legislative level - by subjectively pro-revolutionary parties even though the interests of the state as a whole remain fundamentally counter-revolutionary.

Hence situations like this, where the reactionary police who not long ago defended the state from middle-class reactionary populists today attack working class self-organization.

Side note: No state's sovereignty is in reality absolute - particularly not in Venezuela. For this reason, looking exclusively at the state is poor way to judge the advance or retreat of a communist project.

[Martin Luther]

What's important is that the government is not allowed to sweep this under the rug. For a long time the Maduro government has made grand threats and promises about the economic war, opposition subversion, and other problems, but in reality has shown only weakness in the face of attacks on the people and tolerance for corruption at all levels of state. The working class base must keep pressure and demand that there is no impunity whatsoever for such acts against collectives.

In Venezuela there is a vicious cycle of token measures being impemented against the "parasitic bourgeoisie", then these measures are watered down, then forgotten, after which the government goes back to groveling to the "business community". Soon there is another disagreement and it begins again.

This has lead to the emergence of a current within Chavismo which wants to finally transform Venezuelan society instead of staying in the quagmire of playing political games with the oligarchy until the day a right wing government comes to power. There is a growing understanding that Venezuelan state institutions are of no use to the revolutionaries and must be dismantled.