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I don't think you need to share many of his theoretical presuppositions to understand and evaluate the passage I quoted. You can just read his description of the phenomenon and see if you think it's accurate or not.
Well, there's not a one-to-one direct causal link, no. I think there can be surprising interrelations between seemingly disparate domains of life and culture though. I wouldn't be surprised if there's something that could be said here.
(For what it's worth, I'm not a Marxist, and I don't believe in the urgency of "revolution" in the way that Marxists do, so my investment in this question would be quite different from Marcuse's.)
I don't think it's that at all. In fact I think it's just the opposite - psychoanalysis provides a lot of clarity and insight into why people do the things they do.
To give a very simple personal example: every year, my mother hosts a rather large Christmas party for our extended family. Every year, she swears she'll never do it again, because it's too much stress, because her family is taking advantage of her generosity, because they don't appreciate all the work she does, etc. And yet every year, she continues to host the same party right on schedule.
What is the reason for the discrepancy between her words and actions? I used to think, well maybe she's just too meek to tell everyone "no", maybe she's just that selfless, maybe she just doesn't want to upset people. But psychoanalysis gave me an alternative explanation: she keeps doing it because she enjoys it! Meaning she enjoys all the parts of the process that are allegedly such a "hassle" to her. She enjoys the feeling of being stressed, she enjoys feeling like all the work is being unfairly shoved on her, she enjoys being judged by our extended family, even if she's not consciously aware of enjoying it.
Psychoanalysis posits that, when someone keeps doing the same thing over and over, the most parsimonious explanation is that they're doing it because they want to. It's possible that someone can want to do something even when they claim to not want to, and even when the pleasure of the act takes on the superficial form of pain. (This has immediate applications to politics - why do leftists find cishetero patriarchal oppression under every rock they turn over? Because they want to, it's what they're hoping for. They want the feeling of being oppressed - that's the whole point. It's just the same patterns that Freud observed in his "hysterical" female patients, inflated to a societal scale.)
You might say that this is just obvious, or that it's common sense, or whatever - that's fine. But I can't recall this point being made anywhere else as forcefully and clearly as it is in psychoanalytic thought.
Witchcraft also gives us an alternative explanation: she keeps doing it because she is under a witch's spell! She may not even be consciously aware of it!
Having more alternative explanations does not necessarily give you clarity and insight. Having more alternative explanations to choose from could just as well confuse you, and having more explanations that are wrong can lead you away from insight.
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