Petty-bourgeois anti-capitalist radicalism commanded majority support in early industrial Europe.

Evidence

The fully developed capitalist entrepreneurs formed a small minority… . The small shop-keeper or local master did not want an economy of limitless expansion, accumulation and technical revolution… . His ideal was the secular dream of all “little men,” which has found periodic expression in Leveller, Jeffersonian or Jacobin radicalism, a small-scale society of modest property-owners and comfortably-off wage-earners, without great distinctions of wealth or power… . It was an unrealizable ideal, never more so than in the most rapidly evolving societies. Let us remember, however, that those to whom it appealed in early nineteenth-century Europe made up the majority of the population, and outside such industries as cotton, of the employing class. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 233

Categorization

• XREF: The “secular dream of all little men” recurring in Leveller/Jeffersonian/Jacobin form connects to the reading on pre-state reputation systems and radical traditions; also a thread to the anti-capitalism of small property in later chapters.