Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: The Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver (Class Compositions)

“Refuse work. Revolt against capitalism. Read Harry Cleaver. In that order. Repeat.”

This is a definitive collection of Harry Cleaver’s best unpublished, translated, or lesser known writings–both historic and current–on the refusal of work, class composition and “inversion of the class perspective,” the crisis of capitalism, and the ongoing necessity of re-reading Marx theory to understand, find points of departure from, and “finally end capitalism before it ends us.” Edited by organizers Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter to launch the Class Compositions imprint at Common Notions. 

Robert Ovetz holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas–Austin and is a senior lecturer in Political Science at San José State University, where he teaches labor relations in the MPA program and focuses on academic labor organizing and the labor movement. He is the author of When Workers Shot Back (Brill, 2018 and Haymarket, 2019), We the Elites (Pluto, 2022), and the forthcoming Rebels for the System (Haymarket), and is co-authoring a book on organizing against AI in higher education. Robert is co-editor with Kari Lydersen and Kevin Van Meter of Real World Labor, Vol. 4 (Dollars & Sense, 2024). He is also an editor and contributor to critical labor studies volumes, a labor writer for Dollars & Sense, and has been published widely in multiple languages. His writings can be found at sjsu.academia.edu/RobertOvetzPhD.

Kevin Van Meter holds a PhD in Geography, Environment and Society from the University of Minnesota, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Labor and Society, and is a union organizer and labor educator who writes on contemporary labor issues, labor history, and working-class self-organization. He is co-editor with Kari Lydersen and Robert Ovetz of Real World Labor, Vol. 4 (Dollars & Sense, 2024). He is author of Guerrillas of Desire (AK Press, 2017), co-editor of Uses of a Whirlwind (AK Press, 2010), and has two forthcoming books: Reading Struggles: Working-Class Self-Activity from Detroit to Turin and Back Again (AK Press) and The American Worker: International History, Reception, and Responses (Common Notions). His work has appeared in New Politics, Notes from Below, Dollars and Sense, Truthout, Labor Notes, Work-Bites, The Chief Leader, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, and other publications.

Harry Cleaver has developed a global following for his decades of work contributing to what he calls “autonomist Marxism,” or a Marxism that focuses on the self-organized struggles of workers against capital, the state, political parties, and unions. Following the New York City fiscal crisis of 1974–76, he joined the Zerowork journal collective alongside other militant scholars. The journal introduced the ideas of Italian operaismo (or Italian “workerism”) into the United States. He also was instrumental in helping introduce the Italian philosopher Antonio Negri to the English-speaking world by co-translating his collection Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse (Autonomedia, 1991).

Hired by UT-Austin in 1976 to teach Marxism–where he remained for 36 years until his retirement in 2012–Cleaver’s first book, Reading Capital Politically (Univ. of Texas Press, 1979) was the product of his class notes teaching Marx and ongoing involvement with activism within and struggles beyond the university. His decades of work on global working-class self-activity also preceded the re-emergence of self-organized worker struggles at Amazon and Starbucks, in the global gig work sector, and the current resurgence of global class conflict. Since retiring he has published three books The Fragile Juggernaut: Marx and Engels on Capitalism: Marx & Engels on Capitalism, Class Struggle and Crisis (Brill, 2024), 33 Lessons on Capital: Reading Marx Politically (Pluto Press, 2019), and Rupturing the Dialectic: The Struggle against Work, Money, and Financialization (AK Press, 2017).