Guerrillas of Desire (Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible)

“Guerrillas of Desire is an important exploration of the revolutionary possibilities of our time.” —George Caffentzis, author of In Letters of Blood and Fire

“Beautifully written, Guerrillas of Desire shows the power of the refusal of work of those capitalism has subjugated.” —Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch

Behind the smiling faces of cashiers, wait staff, and workers of all sorts, a war is going on, usually without the knowledge of official political and labor organizations. Guerrillas of Desire begins with a provocation: The Left is wrong. It’s historical and current strategies are too-often based on the assumption that working and poor people are unorganized, acquiescent to systems of domination, or simply uninterested in building a new world. The fact is, as C.L.R. James has noted, they “are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention”: pilfering, sabotaging, faking illnesses, squatting, fleeing, and counter-strategizing. Kevin Van Meter maps these undercurrents, documenting the history of everyday resistance under slavery, in peasant life, and throughout modern capitalism, while showing that it remains an important factor in revolution and something radicals of all stripes must understand.

Kevin Van Meter is an activist-scholar based in the Pacific Northwest. He is coeditor of Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States.