Ridding society of the police is both a practical demand in the struggle against oppression, and an integral part of socialist revolution. brian bean’s new book, Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition, is an excellent intervention in the debates on a future without state violence. As bean argues, the movement to abolish the police is really the movement to abolish capitalism.

The history of leftist efforts to realign the Democratic Party demonstrates that strategies like the “dirty break” and the “party surrogate” are not ways forward for the left, but traps instead. Beyond sabotaging left Democrats like Zohran Mamdani and their proposed reforms, a greater danger is the party’s ability to absorb them. Instead, we need an independent socialist workers’ movement.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City has caused excitement on the left due to his democratic-socialist politics and his support for Palestine. Such excitement has historically led to disorientation and disillusionment when reformist Democrats — such as AOC and Brandon Johnson — inevitably betray the left. Revolutionaries must retain our opposition to all Democrats and executives of the capitalist state.