In this ambitious book, Sewell argues that the development of capitalism in eighteenth-century France led to the rise of civic equality and its triumph in the Revolution. He calls this work a Marxian analysis, but not that of mid-twentieth-century Marxists. His approach is not like that of Albert Soboul, whose The French Revolution, 1787–1799: From the Storming of the Bastille to Napoleon (New York, 1975) viewed the Revolution as the capture of the state by the bourgeoisie. Rather, his understanding is that commercial capitalism led to the expansion of “commodity-based social relations” in which goods and people were regarded alike as items in a market (7). These new relations challenged and eventually overthrew the old régime of ranks, orders, and privileges.
Sewell builds on Habermas’ theoretical analysis to describe how an urban public emerged in the eighteenth century.1 Publishing, theater, music, art, restaurants, cafés, and fashion became public by...