Militant research and theoretical interventions for new worlds!
About Class Compositions
Class Compositions: A Common Notions Series is dedicated to publishing the best militant research and theoretical interventions around from dynamic historical reproductions to cutting edge dispatches from new worlds just beginning to emerge. Our books draw on the rich autonomist tradition to aid militants and working-class intellectuals, political collectives and study groups using methods of workers’ inquiry and class composition to identify the “invading socialist society,” take on the “planetary work machine,” further “working-class self-activity,” and refuse the imposition of work as it “is still the central issue” we confront in our daily lives.
Series editor: Kevin Van Meter in close collaboration with Common Notions Press.
Series Launch
Common Notions and Red May celebrated the launch of Class Compositions during Red May 2026 with an all-star panel. Charmaine Chua, Sarah Jaffe, Kieran Knutson, and Peter Linebaugh examined past struggles, present-day power, and our tasks ahead with an all-star cast. Facilitated by Kevin Van Meter.
Forthcoming, ships September 2026
Harry Cleaver
Edited by Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter
Capitalism / Labor / Philosophy
Class Compositions
End capitalism before it ends us.
Harry Cleaver is one of the most expansive Marxist theorists of the global class struggle over work of the last fifty years. Points of Departure is the definitive collection of Cleaver’s best unpublished, translated, or lesser known writings—both historical and current—on working class refusal, class composition, unwaged work, debt, and what he calls the “inversion of the class perspective.” This book puts an essential theoretical weapon into the hands of a new generation of militant workers and organizers re-energizing the class struggle. In these essays, Cleaver rereads Marx to address the crisis of capitalism, articulate strategy for the international anticapitalist movement, and to advance our collective search for points of departure from capitalism, so we can end it before it ends us.