Transition From Personal To Impersonal Relationships

The transition from agrarian societies to industrialised ones marked a shift from close-knit, face-to-face community relationships to more distant, impersonal ones. In rural areas, individuals typically knew their landlords or the people they worked for, leading to more personal work relationships. Contrastingly, urban industrial setups brought about anonymity in these relationships.

Division Of Labour And Alienation

Industrialisation led to the fragmentation of the production process. Unlike in agrarian settings where a farmer might see a product (like a crop) through from planting to harvest, in factories, a worker might only produce a component of a product without seeing the end result.

Marx viewed this detachment from the end product and the repetitive nature of factory work as ‘alienation’. Workers were not necessarily attached or invested in what they were producing. They were part of a system where they became cogs in a machine, working not for fulfilment but out of necessity.

This alienation was not just from the products they made but also from their own labour, other workers, and even from themselves.

Equality And Discrimination In The Industrial Age

Industrialisation brought about a form of standardisation where certain social distinctions became less prominent. For instance, public transportation and new public spaces like cyber cafes became arenas where caste or other traditional distinctions were less relevant.