Marcuse pinned his slim revolutionary hopes on outsiders allied with the intelligentsia.

Evidence

At the conclusion of the book, Marcuse speculated that there was only a slight chance that the most exploited and persecuted outsiders, in alliance with an enlightened intelligentsia, might mark “the beginning of the end” and signify some hope for social change. He thought there was hope that the civil rights movement might produce ferment which would lead to a new era of struggle, and he held onto the concept of the “Great Refusal” of forms of oppresion and domination as his political ideal. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 54

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Great Refusal’ plus exploited outsiders foreshadows Octavia Butler’s Earthseed outsider communities rejecting wage-labor society; also resonates with Parable of the Sower’s Lauren who refuses the dominant order.