The peasant was working for their master a lot less because if the master asked for more, the peasant would literally starve to death, because he wouldn't have enough hours in the day to work for himself.
The ruling class will happily soak up all spare productive capacity - and as the amount of work necessary to keep someone clothed, sheltered, and fed went down, that spare productive capacity grows, and more of it flows upwards.
Landlord was lending land to peasents - rich peasents, because bottom cast did not even have a chance to talk to landlord.
For the land peasents got, they had to work for the landlord specific number of days in a week. For some time it was 1-2-3-4-5 days per week. Most common was 3 days.
Thing is - the peasent was not obligated to do that work himself. He could have sent a son, family member or even hire someone.
That way it was super easy to keep his agreement with the landlord while mostly focus on his own farm.
Who had it terrible were bottom, poor peasents that worked for other peasents.
They did not have their own land and were at mercy of their “master peasents”.
They most likely had to work whole week or 5-6 days.
They were more of a slave than a peasent tbh, but its a hard disregarded truth.
Current middle class in our times could be translated to “master peasents” back in time. Slave peasents would be the slave-wage ppl.
When I discuss or compare medival peasents to current corporation workers I always compare master peasents to corposlaves.
And master peasents had it super better than corposlaves do now.
The ruling class will happily soak up all spare productive capacity - and as the amount of work necessary to keep someone clothed, sheltered, and fed went down, that spare productive capacity grows, and more of it flows upwards.