Although Marx’s industrial reserve army (IRAL) theory suggests that Mexican Americans should be acknowledged by the capitalist class and perhaps resented by the white working class and middle class who compete with them in the labor market, the ideology and discourse of Trump and his supporters has labelled them as an illegitimate foreign body which pollutes the racial and cultural purity of America. In fact, this discourse has overshadowed earlier discourses that pointed to their contributions to local economies. Even capitalist business owners and major shareholders may give their commitment to this newly reinvented, but actually very old, discourse even when it goes against earlier ideas and their own self-interests. If anything, the discursive pattern of vilifying Mexican-descended people ensures their persistence—in the mind of capitalists—as a potential IRAL. We connect our ideas to related sociological events such as the establishment of “whitopias” and the whitening of the gated communities.
James et al. (2026) studied this question.