Harry Cleaver

Harry Cleaver Jr.
Cleaver lecturing at the University of Texas at Austin
Born	(1944-01-21) January 21, 1944 (age 73)
Nationality	American
Occupation	Professor emeritus
Academic background
Education	Ph.D.
Alma mater	Stanford University
Thesis title	The Origins of the Green Revolution
Thesis year	1975
Doctoral advisor	John G. Gurley
Academic work
Discipline	Economics
Sub discipline	Marxian economics, Autonomist Marxism
Institutions	University of Texas, Austin, The New School
Notable works	Reading Capital Politically

Harry Cleaver Jr. (21 January 1944) is an American scholar, Marxist theoretician, and professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is best known as the author of Reading Capital Politically, an autonomist reading of Karl Marx's Capital. Cleaver is currently active in the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico.

Cleaver began his undergraduate studies at Antioch College in 1962, graduating with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1967. At Antioch, Cleaver became involved in the American Civil Rights Movement and began his lifelong engagement with political activism. From 1964-965, Cleaver studied abroad at the University of Montpellier where he engaged with the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France. In 1967, Cleaver enrolled at Stanford University to begin a Ph.D. in economics. While at Stanford, Cleaver was active in the Anti-war Movement. As a student activist opposed to the Vietnam War, Cleaver protested the Stanford Research Institute's alleged connection to the United States Department of Defense, which became the impetus for his dissertation research into the connections between the Green Revolution and social engineering. Cleaver's frustrations with mainstream economic theory during this period in his studies lead him to embrace Marxism.