Summer marks the anniversary of many multiracial rebellions against police terror, from Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson (2014) to George Floyd (2020), and many more. These rebellions serve as inspiration for workers everywhere, but also begs the question: why do kkkops murder with impunity?
Anti-Black racism is at the foundation of the racist treatment and division of all workers. While racist violence hits Black workers hardest, it harms our entire class. State-sanctioned terror has propped up capitalism since the days of the slave trade. The super-exploitation of non-white workers nets the bosses super-profits and enables them to lower wages and living standards for all.
Capitalism holds no future for the working class, and especially for Black youth, except for imperialist war, unemployment, poverty, sexism and racist killings. Capitalists use the anti-scientific concept of “racial differences” to divide us and weaken our potential for fighting back. Only communism offers a solution to the hell of the profit system. Only a communist society can serve the needs of our class by eliminating the bosses who exploit us and reap profits from our labor. That communist-led workers’ society is what Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is fighting for.
State power rules
Police get away with racist murder because they are backed by the racist injustice system. Cops, courts, prosecutors, and juries—the whole state apparatus—are all controlled by the bosses. Consider:
In almost every case, murders by cops are completely legal. In Houston, grand juries haven’t indicted a cops since 2004; in Dallas, over a five-year period, grand juries looked at 81 cop shootings and returned one indictment (Daily Kos, 11/24/14).
Meanwhile, federal data shows that Black teenagers are six times more likely than white teenagers to be shot and killed by police ((Equal Justice Initiative, 12/2/20).
After so many rebellions over decades, how is it that less than two percent of kkkops are prosecuted (Vox, 4/2). The answer is state power — and who holds it.
Under capitalism, the “state”—including all levels of government, the so-called justice system, the police, the military, the schools—are instruments of ruling-class oppression and violence against the working class. As Frederick Engels pointed out in 1884, the state “is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel" (The Origin of Family, Private Property and State).  
Capitalism is a society based on exploitation, accumulation of profit, and private property. The modern state developed to protect the capitalists’ interests. Contrary to liberal misleaders like Joe Biden, the “democratic process” cannot possibly resolve the antagonisms within capitalist society. The state is no neutral player. While it appears to regulate conflicts from above the fray, its role is to ensure business as usual, regardless of how many workers’ lives are destroyed.  
During protests, every politician preaches non-violence and restraint, while preparing riot police who fire tear gas canisters, stun grenades, and beanbag munitions at protesters.
Under capitalism, “non-violence” means the working class accepts violence by the state and is not allowed to retaliate.   
From slave patrols to killer cops
Legalized killings and mass imprisonment are age-old capitalist tools to control the working class. The first modern police force in what is now the United States, beginning in South Carolina in 1704, was the slave patrol. These forces hunted down and punished runaway and “defiant” slaves; they were a form of organized terror to deter revolts that might threaten plantation profits.
The original Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1865, just after the end of the Civil War. As Eric Foner noted in Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, “In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy.”
In the mid-20th century, according to historian Diane McWhorter, the Klan formed alliances with governors’ administrations in states like Alabama and Mississippi. Throughout the South and Midwest, Klan members and local cops (often the same people) conspired to attack and murder civil rights activists.
So it’s not surprising that every year, media outlets “discover” links between rightwing groups and the police. “The Plain View Project, a database of public Facebook comments made by nearly 2,900 current and former police officers in eight cities, suggested that nearly one in five of the current officers identified in the study made public posts or comments that appear ‘to endorse violence, racism and bigotry…’” (Just Security, 6/1/20).
To this day, state-sanctioned racist terror against Black workers and youth is an indispensable weapon for the capitalist class.
In 1991 in Los Angeles, a gang of five cops beat Rodney King while other cops watched.
In 1997 in New York City, a cop assaulted Abner Louima by shoving a broken broomstick up his rectum.
In 2005 in New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a cop murdered Henry Glover before his fellow cops burned Glover’s body.
In 2012 and 2013 in Brooklyn, the cops killed Ramarley Graham, Shantel Davis and 16-year-old Kimani Gray, all without a single indictment.
In 2020, the cops murdered 1,021 people, including George Perry Floyd Jr. and Breonna Taylor.
According to the latest figures from Prison Policy, Black workers and youth account for 40 percent of the approximately 2.3 million people in U.S. prisons and jails, or about three times their percentage of the general population.
The problem with capitalist injustice isn’t about “a few bad cops'' or a few obviously racist prosecutors. The state apparatus is racist to its core, because racism is the lifeblood of capitalism. Bosses keep the working class divided by perpetuating racist ideology. Economic super-exploitation of immigrant workers pits them against Black and Latin workers, which in turn drives down the wages of all, including white workers.
As the sharpening global competition between U.S. and rival imperialists cuts into the bosses’ profit rates, racist attacks against workers are escalating. An economic crisis spells mass unemployment, budget cuts in education and healthcare, tuition hikes—and more killer cops. The capitalists need cutbacks to funnel their resources into the bigger wars to come. In their run-up to global combat, they are turning schools into jails with surveillance cameras and metal detectors. Their police are occupying Black and Latin working-class neighborhoods. They are spying on and detaining Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian youth.
Why are they doing these things? To intimidate workers and discourage fightback. The bosses fear that workers are fed up and won’t take their oppression much longer.
Revolution is non-negotiable
We didn’t negotiate out of slavery and we won’t negotiate our way out of capitalism. From slave patrols to the hyper-militarized cops of today, the bosses’ state is the sworn enemy of the working class. The rebels during the anti-police-terror fightback rejected passivity and dead-end electoral distractions. The capitalist state cannot be reformed — it must be abolished with communist revolution. For that we need organized, revolutionary violence. Under the communist leadership of the Progressive Labor Party, the movement against police terror can be the beginning of an all-out fight toward revolution. From Afghanistan to the United States to Haiti—smash racism! Smash the capitalist state!