The contemporary conviction that rural inequality necessarily derives from the outside urban world is partly based on a failure to appreciate the diversity of rural economic activity. A ‘peasant household’ is presumed to be basically dependent on patiently cultivating the soil, with hoe or with plough, households being inherently similar, except for the matters of wealth, size and farm-labouring. Even though some ‘peasant households’ might be classified as rich, some as middle, some as poor, this differentiation is regarded as a mere matter of degree – as though all were members of the same animal species, some happening to be bigger and more powerful than others.

Orthodox radical ideas on this matter have slipped into vast oversimplification since Lenin inveighed so strongly against the misuse of averages, ironically observing that all ‘false ideas’ about the differentiation of the peasantry would be ‘eliminated once and for all’ by the regular and exclusive use of average data on peasant farming. And who are the contemporary writers who accept that rural domestic industry is the ‘normal supplement’ of ‘peasant production’ – to the degree that it, rather than land, might happen to provide the basis of any system of rural differentiation?