Marx and the study of the racial issue

elements for an analysis from Latin America

Abstract

In this article I point out some elements about the importance of the theoretical elaborations of Karl Marx and Method of Historical Dialectical Materialism (MHD), for the study of the racial question. Therefore, I situate the battle of ideas around the debates about racism, showing that the dispute goes beyond epistemologies or mere narratives, they are political disputes, of societal projects. It was also necessary to “clear the ground” in relation to Marx and Marxism, in order to make explicit the order of the difficulties in appropriating the MHD in relation to studies on racism. Finally, in view of the Leninist maxim of “concrete analysis of concrete reality”, I make some mediations about the paths necessary to apprehend the complexity of racism in social relations under Latin American dependent capitalism, seeking to clarify the inseparable relationship between racism and overexploitation.