by Robert Ovetz
Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: The Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver is a definitive collection of Harry Cleaver’s best unpublished, translated, or lesser known writings on the refusal of work, class composition and “inversion of the class perspective,” the crisis of capitalism. He shows the ongoing necessity of re-reading Marx theory to understand, find points of departure from, and finally end capitalism before it ends us. The reader is co-edited by Robert Ovetz, author, organizer, lecturer and former long-time student of Cleaver, and author and organizer Kevin Van Meter.
Points of Departure will be released on Common Notion Press’s new Class Compositions series in September 2026. A special edition has been released to coincide with the June 2026 Labor Notes conference in Chicago and will have a full release in October 2026. Copies of the special edition of the book will be available for the talk.
Harry Cleaver has developed a global following for his decades of work contributing to what he calls “autonomist Marxism,” a Marxism that focuses on the self-organized struggles of workers against capitalism. His classic book Reading Capital Politically (1979) reinterprets Marx to provide an alternative, autonomist perspective not only to more traditional interpretations but also to others working in the tradition of what today is more commonly known as Italian workerism. Reading Capital Politically (1979) has been translated into eight languages, including Korean which was banned by the South Korean government, and appeared in two editions. Harry has taught at the l’Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, the New School for Social Research in New York City, and the University of Texas at Austin where he taught for 36 years until his retirement in 2012. He has also published 33 Lessons on Capital: Reading Marx Politically (Pluto 2019), Rupturing the Dialectic: The Struggle Against Work, Money and Financialization (AK Press 2019), and The Fragile Juggernaut: Marx & Engels on Capitalism, Class Struggle and Crisis (Brill 2025). The third English language edition of Reading Capital Politically will be published in 2027 by Common Notions.
Robert Ovetz holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas–Austin where he studied with Harry Cleaver for about a decade. Robert 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 nine languages. His writings can be found at sjsu.academia.edu/RobertOvetzPhD.
Kevin Van Meter 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. Kevin is the editor of the Common Notions Class Compositions series.
Pre-release June 12, 2026, available for pre-order under the folowing link: