Refusal of Work, Workers' Inquiry and the Crisis of Capitalism

Robert Ovetz, Kevin Van Meter

Worker organizing, strikes and class conflict are on the rise. Worker interest in unionizing, salting, and striking is the highest it’s been in decades and reflects the development of new tactics and strategies. Autonomist Marxist thinker Harry Cleaver, Points of Departure (Common Notions 2026) provides us with a class analysis putting the refusal of work at the center of our struggles to disrupt and move past capitalism. Since capitalism organizes life around endless work, our struggles must make the struggle against work the central focus of our organizing. We will explore Cleaver’s methodology of examining the current class composition and practice using workers’ inquiry to inform our struggles against work at work. This panel begins with a short introduction to the ideas of Harry Cleaver about the strategy of the struggle vs. work to transcend capitalism. During this panel presentation we will have several short breakouts to turn, talk and report back and learn how to do a mini workers' inquiry to identify tactics and strategies for organizing the refusal of work.