Marginal outcasts are revolutionary even without revolutionary consciousness

Evidence

However, underneath the conservative popular base is the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable. They exist outside the democratic process; their life is the most immediate and the most real need for ending intolerable conditions and institutions. Thus their opposition is revolutionary even if their consciousness is not. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2584

However, underneath the conservative popular base is the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable. They exist outside the democratic process; their life is the most immediate and the most real need for ending intolerable conditions and institutions. Thus their opposition is revolutionary even if their consciousness is not. Their opposition hits the system from without and is therefore not deflected by the system; it is an elementary force which violates the rules of the game and, in doing so, reveals it as a rigged game. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2584

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the orthodox-Marxist proletariat-as-revolutionary-agent thesis; connects to Horkheimer’s shift of hope to criminals and the insane (ch52). — connects to: Revolution produces revolutionary consciousness, not the reverse — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1126; Marginalized groups can no longer occupy the proletariat’s revolutionary role — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 749; Intellectual originality can be a product of marginal social position — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 10 (+4 more)
• SEED: Angle: the intellectual genealogy of ‘the excluded as revolutionary subject’ from Marcuse through to 21st-century readings of the precariat and Black Lives Matter street politics.
• DEFINE: Defines Marcuse’s theory of marginal groups: revolutionary action does not require revolutionary consciousness when objective exclusion already positions a group outside the system’s absorbing power.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2584

Broader Connections

• Revolution produces revolutionary consciousness, not the reverse #contradicts (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1126
• Marginality from the world undercuts the rootedness art and thought require #contradicts (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 290
• Marginalized groups can no longer occupy the proletariat’s revolutionary role #contradicts (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 749
• Intellectual originality can be a product of marginal social position #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 10
• Revolutionary rhetoric can galvanize mass imagination without any concrete preparation #expands (0.70) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 76
• Revolutionary parties can be verbally maximalist while unprepared to act #expands (0.70) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 87