Did the market or force of arms determine medieval organization of labor?

Fernand Braudel provides a very compelling painting by Jean de Wavrin on page 498 of The Wheels of Commerce. It shows 4 peasants hacking to death a knight in full armor seated on his horse. This painting challenges the generally held concept of a peasant class exploited by a small elite who appropriated the fruits of peasant labor, leaving only enough to keep starvation from the door.

Would this not have been the response of most peasants to lords if they had actually operated their manors in the manner generally believed? One lord in a sea of hundreds of half-starved peasants who see their children suffering from hunger would not sleep well or long if he were truly the cause of that suffering.

Any political system requires voluntary participation by all elements within the society. No minority in a society can long impose its will on the great majority. Even the KGB and gulags of the Soviet Union failed to keep Communist Party in power for much more than 70 years.

The manorial system endured for centuries, not through exploitation and force of arms of a military elite, but simply because it represented the best means of organizing society under the circumstances at the time. As those circumstances evolved, relationships among the various members of that society also changed.

For example, most peasants in the early medieval period owed work obligations to the lord of the manor in exchange for land that they farmed for their own account. Over time, peasants increasingly paid in currency rather than labor for their land.

Traditionally, most view the initial relationship as one of exploitation as the lords forced peasants to labor for the sole benefit of the lord of the manor. As peasants grew in power, they escaped enslavement by the lord and simply paid currency for land which they were better able to use for their benefit rather than that of the lord.

In reality, neither method of organizing labor results from the political or military power of the parties, but from the realities of market conditions and transaction costs in valuing labor and produce. In primitive market conditions, transaction costs in determining value of land, produce and labor suggested an exchange of land for labor. As market conditions improved over the centuries, the parties could more easily value land and labor in monetary terms.

Thus, changes in market conditions rather than a change in the balance of power among members of medieval socity determined how the parties organized labor.