Marcuse. In fact, one student radical claimed later in life that he probably read too much Marcuse back then. While many student radicals identified as Marxists, it was instead Marcuse's version of social change that they embraced.
The late 1960s and 1970s also provided fertile ground for Marcusean ideas to be applied. Firstly, there were multiple movements surrounding the rights of disadvantaged minorities, including the civil rights movement, second wave feminism, and so on. This fit in well with Marcuse's aforementioned idea of harvesting various groups' wishes for social change to build a new movement for radical change, in lieu of the original Marxist plan of a revolution started solely by workers. In fact, Marcuse embraced the second wave radical feminist movement late in his life, and this was controversially received by feminists, because some of them saw that he was only using the cause of women's rights as a catalyst for his program of social change.
The Marcusean Influence on LGBT Activism One of the emerging social movements during the 1960s and 70s was the gay rights movement. The contemporary gay rights movement is often considered to have begun with the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Naturally, Marcusean-style radicals established a foothold in the emerging movement early on. The fact that most mainstream politicians refused to even consider the idea of decriminalizing homosexuality back then 73
