28 SOCIAL SCIENTIST in which he generalizes his observations into a whole new category in economic history, which he terms "the peasant economy". In the course of our critique of Chayanov we will also discuss the modern models of "peasant equilibrium" developed in India, which are virtually identical with Chayanovian model. Relation of Theoretical Concept to Statistical Analysis. The basic analytical unit that Chayanov adopts, like all Populists, is "the family farm", alternatively also termed "the labour farm", though the first term is more frequently used. This is an agricultural production unit in which a certain area of land (held through commune, owned, or rented) and means of production are possessed by the family which does not hire any outside labour and works the land with family labour alone for the purpose of satisfying consumption needs. Under certain circumstances the family may also engage in "non-agricultural crafts and trades". (Thorner extends this definition to include households which do hire outside labour provided the extent of such hiring is less than days worked by family workers). Thus "the family farm" so defined is nothing but the petty agricultural producer of Marxist theory, in class terms consisting of the small-scale tillers. (On Thorner's looser definition, the class of middle peasants would also be included). The important point is that, for Chayanov, no class other than that constituted by the family farms exists within the peasantry; the latter is conceived of as a more or less perfectly homogeneous entity. No relations bind his "family farms" to any other category such as rich peasant, semi-proletarian, and so on, because for Chayanov these other categories simply do not exist. The peasantry is economically undifferentiated. In his general theoretical essay, On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems, Chayanov goes on to construct "the peasant economy" which is made up of innumerable such economically identical family labour farms ^rd suggests that the laws of a capitalist economy would not apply in such an economy (surely, a somewhat otiose proposition: if capitalism is assumed away its laws can hardly remain operative). It is clear that the basic analytical concept, "family labour farm" used by Chayanov to the exclusion of all other concepts, immediately puts him against the whole of the Marxist analytical tradition. The latter also analyses the "family labour farms", but only as one class among others within a peasantry which is in the process of differentiating. The "family labour farms" did at one stage in history make up all or almost all holdings, but that was under classical feudalism, and the holdings in question were serf holdings. With the dis. integration of feudalism and in particular the transition to money rent from labour services and rent in kind, a well-documented process of economic differentiation within the serf peasantry started in Europe and was accelerated by the secular price inflation of the sixteenth