VRƵ

William Clare Roberts

Academic title(s): 

Associate Professor

William Clare Roberts
Contact Information
Address: 

855 Sherbrooke St. W.
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2T7

Email address: 
william.roberts3 [at] mcgill.ca
Office: 
Ferrier 426
Research areas: 
Political Theory
Specialization: 

Political Theory

Areas of interest: 

In the history of political thought: Marx and Marxism, ancient Greek political philosophy, classical political economy, nineteenth century socialisms.

In contemporary ethical and political thought: republicanism, institutionalism and non-ideal theory, theories of power and domination, ideology.

In social theory and philosophy of the social sciences: social ontology, institutional economics, prudential rationality.

Current research: 
  • The Radical Politics of Freedom: Domination, Ideology, and Self-Emancipation. Book manuscript in progress.
  • Universal Emancipation and History: The Making and Unmaking of ‘History From Below.’ Book Manuscript in progress.
Selected publications: 

Book

  • ","(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. 276 pp.).
  • Winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize (2017)
  • Translations:
    • Turkish: Marx’ın Cehennemi: Kapital’in Siyaset Teorisi. Trans. A. Kadir Gülen. Fol Kitap, 2025. 424 pp.
    • Spanish: El infierno de Marx: la teoría política del capital. Trans. Javiera M. Mac Pherson. Edicions Bellaterra, forthcoming in 2026.
  • Reviews:
    • Jacobin. David Harvey, 𲹻徱Բ Capital,” 10 March 2017.
    • Choice. M. Perleman, May 2017, p. 1414.
    • Perspectives on Politics (15:2). Emanuele Saccarelli, June 2017, pp. 609-11.
    • Capital and Class (41:2). Nicholas Vrousalis, June 2017.
    • Marxism and Philosophy Review of Books. Sean Ledwith, 5 December 2017.
    • Political Studies Review (16:1). Alexander Tebble, December 2017.
    • H-Ideas. Amy E. Wendling, December 2017.
    • Disputatio (44:9). P. A. Raekstad, 2017, pp. 127-30.
    • International Socialism: A Quarterly Review of Socialist Theory (157). Sam Popowich, 8 January 2018.
    • The Nation. Daniel Luban, “,” April 30-May 7, 2018.
    • Review of Politics (80:3). Alex Callinicos, Summer 2018, pp. 564-68.
    • Contemporary Political Theory (17: Supplement 3). Christian Lotz, August 2018, pp 139–142.
    • The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory (26:1). Lucie Mercier & George Tomlinson, 1 November 2018, Pages 346–367.
    • Sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur Rundshau (77) Michael Brie, „Durch de Hölle“, February 2018.

Journal Articles

  • “.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.).

  • “.” The Review of Politics 87, no. 1 (2025): 107–9. Part of “A Symposium on Stefan Eich’s The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes.”

  • “.” boundary 2 (online), 30 May 2024.

    • Response by Jensen Suther: “Marxism as Idealism? Response to Roberts’s “Ideology and Self-Emancipation.” boundary 2 (online), 25 July 2024.

    • Rejoinder: “Three Varieties of Misunderstanding.” boundary 2 (online), 28 September 2024.

  • “.” Crisis and Critique, 10:1 (2023): 249-62.

  • “.” Radical Philosophy 213 (October 2022): 57–65.

  • “.” Analyse & Kritik 44:1 (2022): 41-60.

  • “” Polity 53:4 (Oct. 2021): 572-79.

  • "«Une barricade, non un gouvernement» Contrasting Views of Association in the Paris Commune."Nineteenth-Century French Studies49:3 (2021): 173-193..

  • "." The CLR James Journal26:1/2 (2020): 219-240.

  • .Contemporary Political Theory18:3(2019):448–476.
  • “ĜW󲹳 Was Primitive Accumulation: Reconstructing the Origins of a Critical Concept.” European Journal of Political Theory19:4 (2020): 532-552. .

  • Marx’s Social Republic: Political, not Metaphysical.” Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory. 27:2(2019): 41-58..

  • “The Idea of Emancipation after Postcolonial Theory.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 19:6 (2017): 747-763. .

  • “Compulsory Schooling: The University, the Market, and the Work Students Do.” Part of a “Critical Exchange on Education and Scholarship in the Twenty-First-Century Marketplace.” Contemporary Political Theory 14:4 (November 2015): 409-433.

  • “All Natural Right Is Changeable: Aristotelian Natural Right, Prudence, and the Specter of Exceptionalism.” Review of Politics 74:2 (Spring 2012): 261-283.

  • “The Reconstitution of Marxism’s Production Paradigm: The Cases of Benjamin, Althusser, and Marx.” Philosophical Forum 41:4 (Winter 2010): 413-440.

Book Chapters

  • “The French Reconstruction of Capital, 1872-1875; afterword to Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, eds. Paul North and Paul Ritter, trans. Paul Reitter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024).

  • 𲹻徱Բ Capital as Political Theory.” In Marx's Capital after 150 Years: Critique and Alternative to Capitalism, ed. Marcello Musto. Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, 219-231.

  • “Marx’s German and British Political Encounters.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Marx, eds. Jeff Diamanti, Andrew Pendakis, and Imre Szeman. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 231-40.

  • “Feuerbach and the Left and Right Hegelians.” InThe History of Continental Philosophy, Volume Two: The Revolutionary Responses to the Existing Order (1840-1900), edited by Daniel W. Conway, general editor Alan D. Schrift. Stocksfield, UK: Acumen, 2010, 17-34.

  • “Abstraction and Productivity: Structures of Intentionality and Action in Marx’sCapital.” InMarx and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Andrew Chitty and Martin McIvor. Harmondsworth, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009, 188-203.

  • “The Origin of Political Economy and the Descent of Marx.” InMarx, Critical Theory, and Religion: A Critique of Rational Choice. Edited by Warren S. Goldstein. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2006, 31-58. (Paperback edition, Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009.)

Selected talks and presentations: 

“No longer shackled, not yet free: Emancipation as movement and as struggle,” at the American Political Science Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, BC, September 2025.

“Translating Capital for the Twenty-First Century.” At the Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts—Amherst, May 2025.

“Freedom and Control at Work.” At the CUNY Graduate Center Political Theory Workshop, City University of New York, May 2025.

“The Agency Trap.” At The Ohio State University, Department of Political Science, September 2024. The Mike Davis Memorial Lecture at the Marxist Institute for Research Summer Seminar, University of California Sagehen Creek Research Station, August 2024. At DePaul University, Department of Philosophy, April 2024.

“Ideology and Social Opacity: Destutt de Tracy, Marx, and the Fate of Enlightenment.” At the Kadish Center Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory, University of California—Berkeley, September 2023.

“Ideology before Ideologiekritik: Ideology and the Paradox of Self-Emancipation.” At the University of Amsterdam, Department of Political Science, May 2023. At Research in Political Philosophy and Ethics Leuven (RIPPLE), KU Leuven, May 2023.

“Towards a Radical Political Theory of Freedom.” Keynote address at “Critical Emancipations: An International Conference,” Research in Political Philosophy and Ethics Leuven (RIPPLE), KU Leuven, May 2023.

“Ideology and political economy: Social opacity and markets in Destutt de Tracy and Marx.” The Political Economy, Philosophy, and Politics Program, University of Wisconsin—Madison, February 2023.

“Making Sense of Capitalist Class Domination.” At the Political Theory Research Workshop: “Capitalism and Its Critics,” Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, February 2023.

“Class in theory, class in practice,” at the American Political Science Association Annual Conference, Montreal, QC, September 2022.

Co-organizer (with Arash Abizadeh): “Power and Domination: An International Research Workshop.” VRƵ, Montreal, QC, August 2022.

“Disaggregating Marx’s critique of the market.” At the “Workshop on Marx and Critical Theory,” Dartmouth College. Hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth Ethics Institute, and the Political Economy Project. May 2022. At “Politique, valeurs, art : Perspectives en philosophie politique allemande / Politics, Values, Art: Perspectives in German Political Philosophy.” Hosted by The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies / Le Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes. Montreal, QC. April 2022.

“Orthodoxy and heterodoxy,” at the American Political Science Association, on Zoom, September 2021.

“After the Commune.” At “Vive la Commune! Communalism as a Democratic Repertoire.” Conference hosted by Radboud University, Nijmegen (on Zoom), May 2021.

“Leadership in CLR James's history of the Comintern.” At the Social Philosophy Colloquium, Freie Universität Berlin (on Zoom), December 2020.

“Science, Rhetoric, and Structure in Capital.” The Franke Lectures in the Humanities at the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University (on Zoom), November 2020.

“Marx’s Contribution to Constitutionalism.” Seminar on Marx and the Young Hegelians with Douglass Moggach (Ottawa) and Magnus Møller Ziegler (Aarhus), VRƵ, December 2019.

“A Barricade, Not a Government: Contrasting Views of Association in the Paris Commune.” At "La Commune n’est pas morte…!/Commune’s Not Dead!” Conference hosted by the The Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, NH, October 2019.

“A Barricade, Not a Government”: The Paris Commune and the Universal Republic,” at the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 2019.

“‘Centralism is a dangerous tool’: On CLR James's history of principles,” at Historical Materialism 2018, SOAS, University of London, London, UK, November 2018.

“Marx’s Social Republic: Then and Now.” The Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture, at Historical Materialism 2018, SOAS, University of London, London, UK, November 2018.

“Marx’s Politics of Freedom.”Invited lecture at The Seminar in Contemporary Marxist Theory, King’s College, University of London, London, UK, November 2018. Max Weber Occasional Lecture, at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, November 2018.

“Ideologies of domination and democratic theory,” presented at “Political theory in/ and/ as political science,” VRƵ, Montreal, QC, May 2018.

“The Perspective of Liberation.” At “The Radical Critical Theory Circle,” Mandraki, Nisyros, Greece, 2-6 June 2017.

“Powers, Counter-Powers, and Projects of Liberation.” At The New School, New York, NY, 2 May 2017.

“Radicalizing Republicanism: Freedom from Below.” At the Leftist Political Theory Workshop, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, August 2016.

“The Past, Present, and Future of Primitive Accumulation,” at the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, September 2016.

“Unfree Agents: Emancipation and Domination after Postcolonial Theory,” at the Western Political Science Association, San Diego, CA, March 2016.

Group: 
Associate Professor
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