Characteristics of ancient small-scale peasant economy

1, with the family as the basic unit of production and life, intensive cultivation.

2. The combination of agriculture and cottage industry.

3. The products produced are used for self-consumption or tax payment, which is a self-sufficient natural economy.

Under the small-scale peasant economy, farmers have mastered the means of production and tools, and their enthusiasm for production has increased. Farmers operate on a small scale. Farmers have made great efforts to improve farming techniques on limited land, which has made important contributions to the intensive management of agriculture in China. However, under the heavy oppression and exploitation of the feudal landlord class, farmers suffered heavy labor, and the small-scale peasant economy was very fragile. Every time there is famine and plague, most peasant families will fall into poverty, lose their land or go bankrupt and go into exile.

Extended data:

Color development method

In agriculture, the individual economy associated with hand tools and engaged in the management of small plots of land. The yeoman in slave society, feudal society and capitalist society is a typical small-scale peasant economy, and the tenant farmers in feudal society also belong to the small-scale peasant economy.

Small-scale peasant economy has small scale and simple production conditions, and can survive and multiply under relatively barren natural conditions; Because it takes the family as the production and living unit, it is easy to achieve the balance between production and consumption through thrift, so the small-scale peasant economy has a stable side. However, due to the small scale of operation and insufficient ability to accumulate reserves, it can't stand the storm.

Under the conditions of serious natural disasters, heavy land rent and corvee of feudal landlord class, exploitation by merchants and usurers, and merger of feudal landlords, polarization often occurs. Except for a few people who can get rich because of superior production conditions, lighter family burdens or favorable market conditions, most people are often trapped in poverty and bankruptcy. So the small-scale peasant economy is very unstable.

Small-scale peasant economy of yeomen and tenant farmers is a common economic form in feudal society. The rise and fall of yeomen is of great significance to feudal economy. Generally speaking, through peasant wars or other forms of adjustment of production relations, the number of yeomen farmers has greatly increased and productivity has developed. In the opposite case, there will be the opposite result.

In capitalist society, there is still a small-scale peasant economy. However, with the development of the industrial revolution, in some industrialized countries, some individual economies in agriculture, although still based on family labor, have developed into socialized large-scale production linked with advanced technology and equipment, and do not belong to the category of small-scale peasant economy.

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