Marcuse rejected two-stage Marxism because capitalism would always out-develop socialist technology.

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, 415

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization material elsewhere in the reader’s Frankfurt School notes; the technical-progress argument is the same current. — connects to: Marcuse rejected gradualist two-phase Marxism for a leap directly into socialism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1676
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that capitalism owns the better technology strips socialism of its productive justification — a paradigm-level revision of the Marxist case.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Marcuse rejected gradualist two-phase Marxism for a leap directly into socialism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1676