ABSTRACT
There has been a surprising silence within mainstream economics on the structural roots of racial and caste oppression. From the liberal point of view, race/caste/ethnic inequalities are incompatible with the logic of markets and can only be explained in terms of individual actions, preferences and traits. The larger dynamics that connect class, non-economic identities and imperialism are largely ignored by these individualized explanations. This silence surrounding identitarian concerns, it might be added, can also be found in the writings of several influential Marxists. In this context, this chapter focuses on the works of two stalwarts of Latin America and India, José Carlos Mariategui and B.R. Ambedkar, and assesses their writings on race and caste, respectively. It focuses on how the two thinkers theorized the structural roots of racial and caste-based oppression and how they saw freedom from social oppression as constituting a key pillar of a post-capitalist future.
