Marcuse and Virno

I'll just pick on one of Virno's points, "Thesis 1" that states: "Post-fordism (and with it the multitude) appeared, in Italy, with the social unrest which is generally remembered as the movement of 1977". However, the association of new labor relations with new ways of defining potentially revolutionary social groups was not, uhm, new. Marcuse had challenged traditional Marxist concepts of class conflict and capitalist crisis back in the 60s. Here's a relevant quote, taken from a posthumous collection called The New left and the 1960s (sorry, I don't know how to do footnotes here):

"It seems to me that the concept of the new working class simply comprehends and anticipates tendencies that are going on before our own eyes in the material process of production in capitalism, namely that more and more highly qualified salaried employees, technicians, specialists, and so on, occupy a decisive position in the material process of production. And even in orthodox Marxian terms, just in this way become members of the industrial working class. What we see, I submit to you, is an extension of the potential mass base over and beyond the traditional industrial working class to the new working classes that extend the rage of the exploited."

Marcuse had argued as far back as in One-Dimensional Man for the revolutionary potential of (racial, sexual, ethnic) minorities, radical intellectuals and non-integrated groups in general. Since "multitude" as opposed to "people" represents plurality as opposed to collective integration, could we make connections between Marcuse and Virno? Or am I simplifying things too much?