In this talk, Ben Gliniecki discusses the history of the capitalist state and the police, and why a workers’ state would offer a clear socialist alternative to the repression and violence seen under capitalism.

The ruling class has always tried to give the state and the police an appearance of neutrality and justice – a force for preserving peace and stability. But since 2008, the crisis of capitalism has destroyed the economic and political equilibrium. And the present crisis will make this much worse.

In these conditions, the brutality of the state and its repressive apparatus have become more and more obvious. This real, ugly face of the capitalist state has been plainly revealed by the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent mass movement against police violence in the USA and internationally.

Rather than acting as a force for peace and stability, the state’s “armed bodies of men” – in the words of Friedrich Engels – are provoking radicalisation and revolution.

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