Peasantization

At the same time, a strategy of peasantization might reduce (but this is by no means certain) or postpone (perhaps for a generation or so) the more acute social and political conflicts which are inherent in the process of marginalization.

Indeed, in so far as the ‘peasantisation’ of the squires was in line with the basic peasant ideal of creating a society made up entirely of smallholding family farmers, it was even something to be welcomed.