More than a century has passed since W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the concept of “democratic despotism.” Just months into World War I, Du Bois put forth a claim about the political consequences of capitalism's evolution. As European working classes fought for higher wages and better working conditions in their home countries, capital was compelled to pursue greater exploitation abroad. European workers had become conscripted into an inwardly democratic project that was outwardly despotic. This new European political form—what Du Bois described as a “democratic nation composed of united capital and labor”—required increasingly fierce battles for control of “the darker nations of the world.”1

Situated avowedly in the tradition of Du Bois, Inés Valdez's new book underscores that transnational networks of exploitation continue to be a condition of possibility for wealthy democracies. This is not a new revelation, clearly, but it is a line of emphasis that sorely needs amplification, especially among scholars working comfortably in the Global North. The book's most profound and original contributions derive from its distinctively materialist reading of several key concepts in democratic theory. Drawing widely on Black radical thinkers such as Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Martin Luther King Jr., Hortense Spi