Peasant.blog

“And in the absence of either compulsion or the chance of capitalist accumulation, there was no incentive to produce beyond the locally prevailing standards of subsistence and comfort. Beyond sufficiency in this respect, that is, there was no reason to increase the drudgery of agricultural production. The logic of this variant of peasant economy was worked out in convincing empirical detail by A.V. Chayanov, who, among other things, showed that when a family had more working members than nonworking dependents, it reduced its overall work effort once sufficiency was assured.

The important point for our purpose is that a peasantry – assuming that it has enough to meet its basic needs – will not automatically produce a surplus that elites might appropriate, but must be compelled to produce it.” – James C. Scott, Against the Grain, p.152.