“Essentially his problem was the same as the one Lenin faced: if the working class isn’t up for socialism, where do you find a new proletariat to bring it about? Marcuse knew that modern industrialized countries like America couldn’t assemble the types of landless peasants and professional soldiers – the flotsam and jetsam of a backward feudal society – that Lenin relied on. So who could serve in the substitute proletariat that would be needed to agitate for socialism in America?”
