IAS/AK Press Books

Interview with Shane Burley, Editor of No Pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis

Paul Messersmith-Glavin: Talk about what was going on in the world four or five years ago and what motivated you to put this collection together. I think I first came up with the idea in 2018 when I was at a bar with Kim Kelly … Read more

Intersectionality and Class: with Julie Greene and Michael Reagan

Video Discussion

In the last fifty years, work on racial capitalism, materialist feminism, and Black feminism have transformed scholarship and activism on class and capitalism. But social movements and scholars have struggled to adequately grapple with the complexity of class and class struggle and what these ideas … Read more

Intersectional Class Struggle: Theory and Practice, Michael Beyea Reagan, from the IAS & AK Press!

This innovative study explores the relevance of class as a theoretical category in our world, arguing that leading traditions of class analysis have missed major elements of what class is and how it operates. It combines instersectional theory and materialism to show that culture, economics, … Read more

Representing Radicals: A Guide for Lawyers and Movements

by the Tilted Scales Collective, with a Foreword by Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. Representing Radicals helps lawyers understand ways to work with radical defendants, with an explicit focus on how to help them achieve ends that go beyond traditional legal goals. For … Read more

Anarchist Studies Reviews Guerrillas of Desire
by Robin Jervis

Guerrillas of Desire begins with a self-confessed provocation: the left misunderstands resistance. The implications of this claim, which forms the central thesis of the work, have huge significance for those with an interest in both Marxist or anarchist approaches to resistance, and the book goes a long way towards building bridges between these two approaches, highlighting the contribution made to the understanding of class conflict by autonomist Marxists.

Between Everyday Resistance and Overt Rebellion: Revolutionary Possibilities!, A conversation between Alexander Riccio and Kevin Van Meter

Alexander Riccio, a labor organizer based in Corvallis, Oregon who co-hosts the podcast LabourWave Revolution Radio, talks with Kevin Van Meter, author of Institute for Anarchist Studies/AK Press book Guerrillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible, available here!
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Alexander Riccio: Some have read your book, Guerillas of Desire: Notes on Everyday Resistance and Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible, as an attack on organized labor in general, or as one that poses an either/or decision between supporting Left organizations, such as unions, versus championing forms of everyday resistance. What do you say to these criticisms?
Kevin Van Meter: I don’t see my work as an attack on organized labor per se, but as a critique of where organized labor has been and how it is currently functioning. I think one of the major problems with organized labor, at least in regards to business unions, is their inability to innovate, their inability to learn from their own historical lessons, and their inability to listen to the actual needs and desires of the working class outside of the union’s organizational frame.
Unions have a very particular way of going about organizing: a steward system, a contract vote, provide services, conduct a corporate campaign. For thirty years, labor unions have hired people predominately out of college rather than from within their own ranks, and during the same period, there has been a focus on corporate campaigns rather than building substantive relationships on the ground. The fact is that building relationships on the job and in communities is necessary for the Left to bounce back, pass legislation, organize unions, and be successful in the streets against forces like fascism. All of that means it’s necessary to reweave the social fabric, but unions have largely ignored this necessity.