We explore various ways in which small-scale peasants in the highlands of P
eru conceptualize the everyday concept of profit in the contemporary contex
t of neoliberalism. Through a process of approximations, we use the results
of a survey of potato fields in two comparable valleys in Peru to clarify
the differences between a strict business accounting procedure to establish
profits or losses and the procedure that peasants use to evaluate the prof
itability of cash crops. We suggest that peasants evaluate profits or losse
s of cash crops in terms of a simple cash-out and cash-in flow. We indicate
that this kind of calculus carries an implicit subsidy that permits market
participation but provides little or no long-run benefit under prevailing
productivity conditions and price levels. We also look at how farmers evalu
ate the status of their subsistence crops by showing that they ignore impor
tant cash expenses that are necessary to produce them. Finally, we describe
accounting procedures characteristic of Andean peasants to understand how
they monitor resource flows in their household-based farms. Analysis of the
data leads us to question the "subsistence first" model of peasant economi
es and to posit an interdependent relationship between subsistence and comm
ercial sectors in which money plays an important but perverse role as it cy
cles through the marker and the household.