Marcuse rejected gradualist two-phase Marxism for a leap directly into socialism

Evidence

Marcuse criticized the two-phase theory which distinguished between socialism as the first stage and communism as the final stage, and put forward the view that a belief in the necessity of technical progress overlooked the fact that capitalism would always have the better technology and that the socialist countries’ only chance of success lay in the experiment of abolishing class domination and making the leap into socialism. He then argued the case for a soviet republic, and welcomed anarchy, disintegration and catastrophe as the only means through which, in an act of revolutionary freedom, change would be achieved in the class structure of the productive apparatus and in human needs. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1676

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Marcuse’s later ‘One-Dimensional Man’ and his radicalization in the 1960s; also echoes the ‘leap’ language of Walter Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history. — connects to: Marcuse held bourgeois democracy’s blocked change justified extra-parliamentary direct action — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2672; Adorno rejected the deferral of socialism to a future state as bourgeois thinking — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1510

Broader Connections

• Adorno rejected the deferral of socialism to a future state as bourgeois thinking #corroborates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1510