The peasant imagines an unhand capped life, a life in which
he is not first forced to produce surplus before feeding himself and his
family, as a primal state of being which existed before the advent of
injustice. Food is a man's first need. Peasants work on the land to produce
food to feed themselves. Yet they are forced to feed others first, often at the
price of going hungry themselves.
However much a bad harvest is considered an act of God,
however much the master/landowner is considered a natural master, whatever
ideological explanation are given, the basic fact is clear: they who can feed
themselves are instead being forced to feed others. Such an injustice, the
peasant reasons, cannot always have existed, so he assumes a just world at the
beginning. At the beginning a primary state of justice towards the primary work
of satisfying man's primary need. All spontaneous peasant revolts have had the
aim of resurrecting a just and egalitarian peasant society.
