Although every economist knows that any economic model relating to a village where all households enjoyed equal living standards would be preposterously unrealistic, the pressure exerted by the amorphous word peasant often enhances the belief in the appropriateness of the notion of an average (typical or modal) household which is, in any case, built into marginalist orthodoxy. So, as we saw in Chapter 2, the search for universal generalizations about individual rural communities is normally expressed in terms of ‘ordinary households’. It is considered entirely respectable to search for general motivations, such as ‘risk-aversion’ or ‘profit-maximization’, without any regard for the fact that the motivations of cultivators with one acre are bound to be very different from those with five, twenty or forty acres.

Behind the presumption of uniform motivations lies a largely unconscious Golden Age fallacy, which is shared by marxists and non-marxists alike: the sentimental belief that there was a time, often not long ago, when egalitarianism reigned in the village, possibly being associated with communal farming – a meaningless expression, which no one ever attempts to define. The false presumption of what may be called ‘equality at the base date’ then accounts for the very common idea that outside influences must always have been responsible for disturbing the ‘aboriginal equilibrium’. If that is so, it is then regarded as necessary to look beyond the village for the basic causes of economic inequality within it.