Till recently, it was thought that capitalism created the conditions for democratization, and advanced capitalist countries had more stable democracies. The world today gives us plenty of reasons to doubt that common sense. Not only is liberal democracy under serious threat at the heart of the advanced capitalist world, the trajectory of capital accumulation in recent decades – whether it be the rise of oligarchic power, mass surveillance, or extractive imperialism – seem incompatible with, if not outright hostile to, democratic politics. In this course we will undertake a systematic exploration of the relationship between democracy and capitalism.