Western Democracy Was Born of Imperial Bargains — Inés Valdez's Historical-Structural Anatomy
Source
Why this was selected
Both theoretical sophistication and real-world relevance are outstanding. Valdez reconstructs the history of Western democracy as an 'imperial distributive bargain' — a historical contract in which the white working class exchanged its radical anti-capitalism for a share of colonial spoils alongside capitalists. The core thesis is that as this bargain collapsed under neoliberalism, the Western working class turned not to rethinking capitalism but to far-right populism targeting immigrants and non-whites. The introduction juxtaposing Trump's Capitol riot and the Key Bridge collapse (with immigrant workers as victims) sharply visualizes the 'bash and reap' strategy. In the Korean-language sphere, a translated text analyzing the imperial origins of Western democracy with this level of historical density is rare.
Context
10th paper in the Science & Society Imperialism Special Symposium series (on Chamsae). While William Robinson's Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC) theory (Curation #4) dissects class structure, Valdez dissects the imperial roots of the concept of 'democracy' itself — the two papers form a complementary theoretical pair. It provides an analytical framework directly linked to the Trump administration's hardline anti-immigration enforcement and tariff wars, the rise of the far right in European countries, and Korea's political debates on migrant workers. Based on Valdez's recent book Democracy and Empire.