“The first rule” of France's paperworkers was “to be the despotic masters of their bosses.” Journeymen across early modern Europe forged associations to control hours, output, and the identity of their shopmates. Short-lived or venerable, these combinations turned the world of production upside down. An anonymous mémoire from France raged that “the master [papermakers] are like slaves of the journeymen and workers.” In 1771, an alarmed observer recast this levelling in political terms: “The journeymen paperworkers form a sort of little republican state in the midst of the monarchy.” This muscular republic had deposed the hierarchy formally inscribed in the craft. The state was concerned, too. Writing in 1772, a provincial official in the Auvergne worried about “a republic of inferior workers, accustomed to laying down the law to the masters.” He knew that the paperworkers' association defined their social responsibilities and shaped their patterns of mutual assistance. It was the journeymen's civic body, and the persistent measure of more than one civic tradition in the trade. Master papermakers and journeymen did not perceive themselves as members of a craft community with a single set of interests.

For Putnam, medieval craft guilds were distant nurseries of effective political reform in modern Italy. More precisely, in his influential study, Making Democracy Work, Putnam contends that the craft communities were incubators of social capital. As he understands it, social capital amounts to the “norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement” at the base of responsive, democratic government. These connections, he argues, were egalitarian in texture and operation.