Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Episode: Brian Bean, "Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition" (Haymarket, 2025)
Date: November 4, 2025
Host: Michael Stauch
Guest: Brian Bean – Organizer, writer, founding editor of Rampant Magazine, activist based in Chicago

Episode Overview

This episode centers on Brian Bean’s new book, Their End is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism and Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2025). The discussion probes Bean’s argument that police and policing are inseparable from the maintenance of global capitalism and structural racism. The episode explores the connections between abolitionist politics, historical and international perspectives on policing, the limitations of reform, and the necessity of envisioning a fundamentally different, more democratic, and equitable society.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Meaning Behind the Title and Core Argument

• Brian explains the title's origin as a suggestion from comrades, then dives into the main thesis: The police exist as tools for the maintenance of stark social inequality, oppression, and the enforcement of capitalism's order, often against workers and the poor.
• Quote:
  "The title, the End of the Police, is the very beginning of us all taking up the creative task of making that world together collectively." (Brian Bean, 05:13)

2. Abolition vs Reform: Navigating the Political Terrain

• While Bean’s ultimate goal is abolition of the capitalist state and policing, he emphasizes the pragmatic importance of engaging in reform struggles as steps within a broader revolutionary trajectory.
• He draws from Marxist and abolitionist traditions to argue for reforms only if they ultimately link to abolition and deeper mobilization.
• Notable Quote:
  "The goal ... is to link every demand to a revolutionary objective, make use of every partial struggle to teach the masses the need for general action ... Fighting for every demand in a way to try to lead to continual mobilization, engaging more people in the struggle, with that final aim being how can we get rid of the police altogether." (Brian Bean, 07:23)

3. Intellectual & Activist Roots: Synthesizing Marxism and Abolitionism

• Bean traces his own radicalization from anti-death penalty organizing in North Carolina, through Marxism (Luxemburg, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Lenin), to working with abolitionist thinkers like Mariame Kaba and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
• He highlights the historic anti-capitalist strand within abolitionism, particularly among Black radical women from the 1960s onward.
• Quote:
  "...Angela Davis talks about ending capitalism, there is a firm strand of abolitionist thinking that has been pretty explicitly, from the get go, anti capitalist." (Brian Bean, 10:03)

4. Historical and Global Origins of Policing

• Bean challenges simple, linear narratives about policing’s origins (such as exclusively British or slave patrol roots). Instead, he situates police as the product of transnational ruling class experimentation, designed to manage new urban masses and control labor, colonial subjects, and enslaved people.
• Instances from London, Charleston, Paris, Rio, and Tokyo are cited to demonstrate this evolution, including the transfer and adaptation of control practices internationally.
• Quote:
  “All the ruling classes internationally were experiencing a similar problem ... and through kind of comparing and mixing together different elements ... they arrived at essentially the modern police.” (Brian Bean, 17:22)

5. The Need for an International Analysis and Movement

• The institution of policing is global, as is the cooperation between police systems, such as US- and Israel-linked "technology/technique exchanges." Thus, anti-policing struggle must be internationalist.
• Quote:
  “We also have to see our movement for abolition, for socialism against capitalism, as also having to have that international character ... their side see it too.” (Brian Bean, 20:11)

6. The Intertwining of Racism and Policing

• Bean asserts there’s no form of capitalism absent racism (“racial capitalism” is simply capitalism), and policing is the direct tool for enforcing racial divisions and oppressing racialized working class populations. Citing disparities in incarceration rates and police killings, Bean argues the police’s role is maintaining racist social order.
• Quote:
  “If we think about why the polices are a racist institution ... it is playing the role of a tool which is to reproduce and maintain the systems of racism that divide the working class.” (Brian Bean, 23:25)

7. Myths About Crime and Policing

• Bean systematically debunks mainstream narratives about police:
  • Crime as primarily harmful to society, when the legal system shields ruling-class crimes (war, pollution), but criminalizes survival acts.
  • Police preventing or solving crime — statistical evidence shows negligible links between policing levels and crime, and police solve a tiny fraction of serious cases.
  • The notion that without police, chaos would ensue — real-world slowdowns and strikes show otherwise.
  • Police as guardians of safety — instead, their presence often escalates danger, especially for marginalized people (e.g., mental health crises, domestic violence).
• Notable illustration:
  "You have a greater chance of taking a deck of playing cards and on your first try pulling out an ace of spades than having a cop solve a serious crime." (Brian Bean, 28:53)

8. The Power and Purpose of Storytelling

• Bean intentionally centers the lived experiences and names of victims of police violence, both to humanize the issue beyond statistics and acknowledge the martyrs of abolitionist movements. The book’s illustrations echo protest visuals such as hands and flowers (“presente”).
• Quote:
  “There's such a beautiful people who have been torn from this world because of the violence of police. And so centering that humanity ... was something that was important to me.” (Brian Bean, 34:12)

9. Movements, Activism, and Writing

• Bean discusses his deeply embedded position in organizing and how activism—especially around Palestine—influenced the writing process and delayed the book’s completion. The real-world connection between state violence at home and abroad is a recurring theme.
• Quote:
  "While I was working on the book, October 7, 2023 happened, and I just threw myself into trying to organize against ... the genocide of the Palestinian people... I put the book aside until... January after that." (Brian Bean, 36:26)

10. Policing, Class, and Social Relationships

• Distinguishing “working class” by social relationships and power dynamics, not just income, Bean argues police are not, as an institution, part of the working class, but a repressive buffer managerial stratum whose job is to discipline and control workers and marginalized people.
• Quote:
  “Their entire working existence is that of repressing other people ... their entire existence is to discipline the people beneath them.” (Brian Bean, 41:27)

11. The Limitations of Reform and “Community Policing”

• Decades of attempted reforms (body cams, “better” training, community engagement models) have not curbed police violence or expansion. The only reforms worth fighting for are those that actively defund, disempower, or limit police presence and legitimacy.
• Scandinavian-style or British models may be less brutal, but the fundamental apparatus remains ready to be escalated during crisis (as seen in responses to migrants, protests, or Palestine solidarity work).
• Quote:
  "Anything asides from that training, body cameras, different tools, just in some ways give them more power and more legitimacy." (Brian Bean, 46:32)

12. Envisioning a World Without Police

• Bean insists that democracy, meeting people’s needs, and self-determination are both possible and already tentatively embodied in mass uprisings or fleeting protest occupations where police presence evaporates.
• Testimonies from places like Cairo, Oaxaca, Northern Ireland, and even data on crime in police-free periods, support the claim that “no police” correlates with feelings of safety, not chaos.
• Memorable Line:
  "The new world dwells already in Our hearts whispering amid the smoldering rubble and ashes of police precincts." (Brian Bean, 53:21)
  • "If we had all the people who are experts on mental health and crisis de-escalation, if they had the access to all the resources of society, they would be able to make a way better alternative..." (Brian Bean, 54:13)

13. Intended Audience and Movement Context

• The book is directed at people radicalized by Black Lives Matter, 2020 protests, young people disillusioned with mainstream institutions, and anyone “going down the path” of questioning capitalism, policing, and state power. Bean hopes the book aids those envisioning and struggling for global liberation.
• Quote:
  "I think there's a profound radicalization in society ... and I would like them to read this book because I think it tries to connect up these immediate aspirations... with ... the horizon ... of revolution..." (Brian Bean, 59:00)

Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:48 | Origin and significance of the book's title, central argument | | 05:30 | Abolition vs. reform, linking reform demands to abolitionist goals | | 07:58 | Theoretical roots: Marxism and abolition, intellectual influences | | 11:05 | Personal political journey: anti-death penalty activism to Marxist/abolitionist politics | | 13:17 | Historical and global origins of policing | | 19:37 | International analysis of policing and abolitionist strategy | | 22:17 | Racism and policing: “racial capitalism” and social control | | 26:05 | Myths about policing, crime, safety, mental health, and alternatives | | 33:43 | Importance of stories and naming victims in the abolitionist tradition | | 36:04 | Activism, organizing, and the lived process behind the book | | 40:29 | Class, working class, and policing: the "managerial" stratum analogy | | 44:40 | Reformism, police training, community models, abolitionist strategies | | 47:49 | Scandinavian policing, repression, and global shifts | | 51:50 | Slow violence, legal repression, and movement suppression | | 53:38 | Imagining a world without police: vision and historic examples | | 58:39 | Intended audience and global movement context |

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On core argument:
  "Getting rid of the police is, I argue, an essential task, a chief hurdle to get over, to even begin the process of making a new world of safety, democracy and equality." (Brian Bean, 04:47)

• On global policing:
  "...the importance of that is that we also have to see our movement for abolition, for socialism against capitalism, as also having to have that international character, because we're not going to just get rid of the police in one country..." (Brian Bean, 20:39)

• On crime myths:
  "You have a greater chance of... pulling out an ace of spades than having a cop solve a serious crime." (Brian Bean, 28:53)

• On reforms:
  "The only reforms that are good reforms are reforms that reduce the number of policing, reduce their funding, reduce... weaponry... Anything asides from that... just gives them more power and more legitimacy." (Brian Bean, 46:04)

• On abolitionist imagination:
  "...multiple people in Oaxaca, Mexico, in Cairo and in small towns in Syria and in Northern Ireland... said, 'Yeah, that was the safest I’ve ever felt.' ... It would actually be quite natural for us to figure out collectively and collaboratively, hey, how better can we organize society..." (Brian Bean, 55:03)

• On who the book is for:
  "I think there's a profound radicalization in society... I would like them to read this book because... the horizon is that of revolution... a full breaking apart and changing of a system globally." (Brian Bean, 59:00)

Conclusion

This conversation offers both a sweeping analysis and a grounded activist perspective on the historical, global, and present-day realities of policing as essential to capitalist power. Brian Bean urges listeners to connect everyday struggles against police violence and for reforms to a broader abolitionist, internationalist, and revolutionary vision—insisting that imagining and organizing for a world without police is not only necessary, but deeply possible.