Chicano/a literature may not excel in representing labor movements, but the literature itself has been influenced by, and is often a response to, various labor struggles. Of the labor movements that have had an impact on Chicano/a literature, the farmworkers movement has been the most significant. Even though Mexican American farmworkers throughout the 20th century played a significant role in building an agricultural empire in the United States, they have not been properly credited with this accomplishment, nor have they prospered equitably from the economic gains of agribusiness. Historically, Chicano/a farmworkers have been physically visible in the workplace but not socially recognized—needed for their labor, but not always wanted as participatory citizens. The farmworkers movement led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) during the 1960s and early 1970s contributed to the emergence of the Chicano movement during those same years. The movement in turn served as a catalyst for the emergence of Chicano/a literature. The farmworker has been a central figure in Chicano/a literature since its inception, but representations of farmworkers in the literature have changed over time—from Tomás Rivera’s groundbreaking novel . . . y no se lo tragó la tierra in 1971 to Salvador Plascencia’s fantasy novel The People of Paper in 2005. One of the reasons for these changes has been the rise of neoliberalism, a politico-economic system that has debilitated, and in some cases destroyed, labor unions. Neoliberalism has also contributed to the deterioration of living and working conditions for the working class, especially for those at the bottom of the economic chain, such as farmworkers. Thus, contemporary Chicano/a farmworker literature tends to oscillate between nostalgia for a time when the farmworkers movement was powerful and cautious optimism that a strong movement can once again be built.

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Marxist dialectics continue to be relevant for both the study of society and political practice -a premise based on an analysis of selected works by Herbert Marcuse. In Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, published in 1941, Marcuse draws on Hegelian dialectics to defend Marxism, and he criticizes Marxists who have abandoned the dialectic and, consequently, their revolutionary goals. By the 1960s, however, Marcuse himself had shifted from a Hegelian-Marxist standpoint to a New Left rejection of dialectics and class struggle. Even though his work was immensely popular during the 1960s among intellectuals, students and activists on the left, his anti-dialectical theories weakened the analysis and contestation of capitalism during that time. His theories were also symptomatic of a larger trend among New Left intellectuals to abandon Marxism. This critique of Marcuse's later works suggests that for our contemporary moment dialectical Marxism is more strategically viable than Marcuse's 1960s theories of one-dimensionality and the techno-industrial society. I N THE PREFACE TO THE 1960 edition of Reason and Revolution:Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, originally published in 1941, Herbert Marcuse looks back two decades to explain that "this book was written in the hope that it would make a small contribution to the revival, not of Hegel, but of a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated: the power of negative thinking" (1960, vii). 1 1 The preface to the 1960 editionof Reason and Revolution, entitled "A Note on Dialectic," was not included in earlier or later editions. It was, however, included in Arato and Gebhardt, 1982, 444-51.

Marcial González, Greg Meyerson, and Richard Ohmann worked together on these three articles. We spoke on a panel organized by the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association for MLA's 2014 convention. Our topic was “Teaching About the 1%, the Rich, the Upper Class, the Ruling Class . . . . " As that list suggests, we meant to explore common ways of conceptualizing the wealthiest people in the U. S., and in capitalist society generally. We argued that the best way is to see them structurally, as integral to a class system. And we sketched out ways for teachers to do that.

There’s no denying that the Occupy movement, aside from everything else it has accomplished since 2011, created ample opportunities in college classrooms for teaching about the super wealthy, or the 1%, and their role in reproducing social and economic inequalities in the United States and around the world.  In my own courses, however, I have tried to emphasize to students that there is a marked difference between teaching about “the rich” and teaching about “class.”