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Pre-industrial society refers to specific social attributes and forms of political and cultural organization that were prevalent before the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism.

A park interpreter demonstrates a typical rural kitchen of 1918 (Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead, a living history farm at the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site, Texas, United States). The woman's role seems pre-industrial, but the technology is already industrial.

The concept of "pre-industrial society" is widely used across the social sciences and it is preferred over similar concepts that are ideologically loaded. Pre-industrial society can be said to be "value free" as opposed to others (see objectivity). For example, it is commonly used and interchanged with the term: "traditional society", a term coined by Emile Durkheim in The Division of Labor in Society.[1]. One objection to this term is that tradition implies "stagnation". Durkheim himself used it to describe the logic by which community norms were governed.

Karl Marx, who gave the theoretical foundations to the concept, used the term "pre-capitalist society". However, it is not a neutral term since it implies that a transition to capitalism was a progressive or inevitable development (in Marx's view, necessary for a transition to communism). His followers (i.e. Louis Althusser) used "pre-industrial society" interchageably with that of Marx.

Other synonyms are "agrarian society"" and "pre-modern society". All of these concepts are related as they derive from Marx and Hegel's ideas. Nonetheless, each of these are not strictly "synonyms". Each has their own ideological and intellectual lineage, and deserve independent treatment.

There are several ideas that gave way to the term: "Pre-industrial society"":

• The Marxist and Hegelian idea that history progresses forward; always towards the improvement of the spirit (as in Hegel) and/or the social conditions (as in Marx).

• The Marxist idea that history progresses in stages of development. Although this notion of gradual movement was implied by Marx (The Grundrisse)[2]; it was explicitly developed by Friedrich Engels in 'his 'Dialectics of Nature[3] and in The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State.[4]

• In classic Marxist theory, there is the idea that the progression of human history is determined by its modes of production. (economic determinism,dialectics, historical materialism).

• The Pre-industrial stages proper are:
  • 1st stage. Primitive communism (no private property)
  • 2nd stage. Slavery (rise of private property)
  • 3rd stage. Feudalism (consolidation of authority)

The Industrial or Modern stages are: capitalism, Socialism (a transitional stage) and communism.

Contemporary political theory claims that capitalism, avoiding socialism and communism, has already transcended the industrial stage. Daniel Bell called the current stage as the "post-industrial society"; others (in example Foucault) call the actual stage as "post-modern."

Smoking woman in bicycle, circa 1900. The pre-industrial society is gone.

• Limited production (i.e. artisanship vs. mass production)

• Primarily had an agricultural economy

• Limited division of labor- i.e. Capitalism needs a vast amount of specialized knowledge and skills due to the complex nature of industrial production. In pre-industrial societies, production was relatively simple and, thus, the number of specialized crafts was limited.

• Limited variation of social classes

• Parochialism- Social theories hold that communications were limited between human communities in pre-industrial societies. Few had a chance to see or hear beyond their own village. In contrast, industrial societies grew with the help of faster means of communication, having more information at hand about the world, allowing knowledge transfer and cultural diffusion between them.

• Pre-industrial societies developed largely in rural communities. Capitalism developed largely in urban areas.

• Grinin, L. 2007. Periodization of History: A theoretic-mathematical analysis. In: History & Mathematics. Moscow: KomKniga/URSS. P.10-38. ISBN 9785484010011.

• modernization theory