Industrial Society

Industrial society is based on an economic mode of production that relies primarily on machine technology for the production of goods. Although the embryonic origins of the process of industrialization can be traced back to earlier periods—some historians push back to as early as the thirteenth century, while others move the date forward by some centuries—the period between 1750 and 1850 is generally considered to mark a watershed event of world historic importance, as the Industrial Revolution swept first through Britain and then elsewhere in Western Europe and North America. Although critics contend that the term revolution is inappropriate insofar as it implies rapid social change of an unprecedented and violent nature, social theorists have tended to side with the view advanced by social historian Eric Hobsbawm (1969), when he contends: “The industrial revolution marks the most fundamental transformation of human life in the history of the world recorded in written documents” (p. 13). Seen in this light, it is parallel in its monumental impact to the shift in preliterate times from hunting and gathering societies to agrarian societies.

Industrial society proved to be extraordinarily dynamic, encouraging rapid and ceaseless technological innovation and mechanization that led to levels of economic productivity never before realized. In a relatively short time, industrial society transformed work as self-sufficient artisans gave way to wage laborers working in the new factory system. This was part of the restructuring of the class structure and a new division of labor, which saw an explosion in the size of the working class and the consolidation of economic [Page 404]power in the hands of the emergent capitalist industrial class. The factory became the new locus of work, which was increasingly rationalized and subject to new modes of control and surveillance. At the same time, new modes of transportation and communication emerged, signalling the beginning of a process of reducing the impact of geographic distance on economic development. Industrialization was intimately related to urbanization, as the factory system was heavily concentrated in cities. This led to a major demographic transformation of society. The impact of these changes was not confined to the economic realm, but rather reverberated throughout the entire social order. Industrialization led to the rise of mass markets and thus to new patterns of consumption. It impacted politics and culture and penetrated into the intimate realm of domestic life. At the same time, in the interest of obtaining raw materials, cheap labor, and potential new markets for goods, it spurred a process of global penetration into nonindustrial parts of the world.

There were those who clearly benefited from industrialization and those who were losers. The major beneficiaries were the owners of industrial enterprises and the financiers who provided the capital for business ventures. This era witnessed the expansion of the middle class and a rise in its standard of living. Among the losers were the landed aristocracy, who did not sink into oblivion, but in the political struggles of the period saw their dominance erode. The economic viability of the artisans was undermined by industrialization, as the waves of machine-breaking episodes by members of this class between 1810 and 1830 attests. As empirical studies in the nineteenth century such as Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) and Charles Booth's Life and Labor of the People of London (1889–1891) indicated, the lives of the urban working class was characterized by low wages and poor work conditions, inadequate housing, crime, disease, and other manifestations of grinding poverty.

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