The aim of this article is to promote a dialogue about social struggles and state reactions, especially in the Brazilian case, using reflections that go from sociology and geography, in the understanding that social conflict is generated by inequality and therefore, it is an important category of analysis to understand social protests, the ways in which they occur and how the State faces them. To this end, we divided the article into two parts, in addition to the introduction and the final considerations. The first part, understands social struggles as part of the democratic process, and explores its multiple dimensions as a social practice, namely: communication; pluralism of demands; dissatisfaction with the political system; diversity of tactics and organizational forms; existence of a possible horizon; networking; predominance of the urban environment. The second part of the article explores the criminalizing view of social struggles, characterized as disturbances of order. It analyzes the origin of this reading, in the context of the crisis of public security and the historical militarization of the Brazilian state. Finally, we understand that a process of militarization of the state is advancing in Brazil, not only by the occupation by the military in strategic positions of the government, but fundamentally, by the repressive action and the presence of criminalizing ideas of social struggles.