So as utilitarianism and functionalism had served as bases for those elements of the petit bourgeoisie enveloped by bureaucracy, commerce, and the professions—that is, the mainstream of a capitalist social order—socialism became the pennant of those members of the petit bourgeoisie appalled by the cruel lack of restraint and the chaotically foreshortened vision of the bourgeoisie.

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making o…, loc. 328