It is highly disputed whether Marx ever produced an analysis of racism. While some scholars argue that Marx developed the basics of a historical-materialist theory of racism others claim that Marx ignored the issue of racism, was a Eurocentric thinker, or even held a racist worldview himself. As Wulf D. Hund has shown elsewhere, there is solid reason for the thesis that Marx never engaged theoretically in racism; that he uncritically shared some of the racist prejudices of his time; but that he nevertheless never abandoned his unconditional commitment to emancipatory politics. Moreover, a critical reading of his opus magnum “Capital” offers the opportunity to connect it with the discussion of racism, especially the rudiments of racial thinking, and to understand racism not only as an ideology but as a form of social relation. By reading the most famous formula of the critique of political economy as a sociological instruction, this paper shows that, why, and how a historical materialist foundation of the analysis of racism helps to overcome some of its supposed ambiguities, especially concerning the relationship between race and class.