brian bean, "Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition" (Haymarket, 2025)

Nov 4, 2025

Brian Bean, a Chicago-based socialist organizer and founding editor of Rampant magazine, dives deep into the roots of modern policing and its ties to capitalism. He argues for the urgent need to abolish the police, linking abolition to revolutionary change. Bean shares insights from global activists and critiques myths about crime and safety. He emphasizes the interconnection of racism and policing while envisioning a thriving, police-free society. His thoughtful perspective offers a compelling vision for a future rooted in solidarity and community empowerment.

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INSIGHT

Abolition As The Gateway To A New Society

The book links ending policing to starting a democratic, equitable society under socialism rather than mere reform.
Police are framed as the primary instrument that protects concentrated wealth and reproduces capitalist crises.

ADVICE

Connect Reforms To A Revolutionary Horizon

Link immediate reform demands to a broader revolutionary aim to teach mass need for systemic change.
Use partial struggles to build continual mobilization toward abolition rather than accept reforms as end goals.

INSIGHT

Policing Grew From Global Class Experiments

Modern policing emerged from global experiments in class and colonial control, not a single national origin story.
Ruling elites mixed colonial, slave-patrol, and urban watch models to craft patrol-and-crowd-control forces for capitalism.

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Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitates policing? In this clear and comprehensive account of why and how the police—the linchpin of capitalism—function and exist, organizer and author brian bean presents a clear case for the abolition of policing and capitalism.

Their End Is Our Beginning traces the roots and development of policing in global capitalism through colonial rule, racist enslavement, and class oppression, along the way arguing how police power can be challenged and, ultimately, abolished. bean draws from extensive interviews with activists from Mexico to Ireland to Egypt, all of whom share compelling and knowledgeable perspectives on what it takes to—even if temporarily—take down the cops and build a thriving community-organized society, free from the police. The lessons they offer bring nuance to the meaning of “solidarity” and clarity to what “abolition” and “revolution” look like in practice.

Featuring illustrations by Chicago-based artist Charlie Aleck, Their End Is Our Beginning is an incendiary book that offers a socialist analysis of policing and the capitalist state, a vital discussion of the contours of abolition at large, and the revolutionary logic needed for liberation.

Guest: brian bean is a Chicago-based socialist organizer, writer, and agitator originally from North Carolina. They are one of the founding editors of Rampant magazine. Their work has been published in Truthout, Jacobin, Tempest, Spectre, Red Flag, New Politics, Socialist Worker, International Viewpoint, and more. In addition to Their End Is Our Beginning, brian coedited and contributed to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, also published by Haymarket Books.

Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.

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