11 ms·

A comment from a Peruvian friend of mine, who I passed the article onto: "This is incredibly misleading. There was no market because that culture was run by th

A comment from a Peruvian friend of mine, who I passed the article onto: "This is incredibly misleading. There was no market because that culture was run by theocratic totalitarian blood thirsty central planners. The vast majority of people were a form of slave and trapped in basically a completely rigorous caste system. They were a mix of India and NK, ruled by a Mao "god" Inca who had total control of everything. The article gets right that people had to pay tax as labor but in some cases also as a percentage of the food they gathered, and a non-trivial percentage was stored in "tambos" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambo_(Incan_structure) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambo_(Incan_structure)) to support the military and state-controlled trading routes. OTOH the Spanish monarchy was totally evil, purposefully wiping out millions of people and creating basically what amounts of royal satraps in the new world from which to extract cheap/free labor and tons of gold and other wealth. That said, the Incas were also primitive--no real written language and barely a minimum system for tracking amounts and numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu). I took 12 years of Peruvian history and it wasn't until recently that I realized how utterly terrible the Incas were. They were proto Marxists."

PavlovsCat 13y ago
Lost me at "Marxists". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism edit: this came out kinda snarky, sorry.. I found all of that very interesting and insightful, just not the very end of the ending.
- dmix 13y ago
  It definitely didn't share Marx's original concepts of decentralized states and communal distribution. But almost every implementation of Marxism in recent history involved totalitarianism and ignored the part about decentralization of power post-revolution. So it's a fair statement, if taken as the commonly held meaning.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    Well, I think the commonly held meaning is nonsense, and that it's commonly held doesn't really change that. "almost every implementation of Marxism in recent history involved totalitarianism and ignored the part about decentralization of power post-revolution" Then how are any of these an actual implementation of Marxism? There have been implementations of totalitarianism claiming the label of Marxism, sure. You might also said it got co-opted real quick, and that that still reaches into today, when people equate, say, Stalinism with Marxism. I wouldn't even want to guess the ratio of people having a negative opinion about Marx' ideas, and the people who read Marx.
    - sologoub 13y ago
      I don't think that there were any real/complete implementation of Marx's theories. Bits and pieces were collected together and bound by authoritarian/totalitarian states. Lenin actually advocated a blended socialist/market approach, including private enterprises and private property, but that quickly disappeared when Stalin took real power even before Lenin's death.
    - Tycho 13y ago
      Well, some people view those sorts of totalitarian states as the inevitable outcome of trying to build a nation on Marx's ideas.
      - PavlovsCat 13y ago
        You could say the same about the Sermon on the Mount, and many other things as well. IMHO there is a difference between "totalitarian" and "all-encompassing".
    - dnautics 13y ago
      > Then how are any of these an actual implementation of Marxism? They may not necessarily be an 'actual implementation' of what Marx intended, but even early on, those outcomes were predicted as a logical conclusion of Marxism by other philosophers. reposting from a branched sub-thread: "First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official. Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage-payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly. Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx." Benjamin Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)
chrismealy 13y ago
You mean feudalists. It's been a long time since I've read any pre-Columbian history, but I seem to remember that in addition to infectious disease, a lot of the South American empires were easy to conquer because the subjects generally hated their rulers, and the Spanish had no trouble finding indigenous allies.
- moxie 13y ago
  The Inca were easy to conquer because they had no steel and no horses. The Spanish were so unimaginably horrible that I can't imagine their presence having anything other than a uniting effect. The book "The Last Days Of The Inca" describe a scene were ~20 armored conquistadors are in a town that's surrounded by mountains on all sides. The Incas managed to call in enough people that the hillsides were all completely covered with tens of thousands of people waiting to attack. When they did, the entire population was slaughtered by the 20 conquistadors on horseback (there were so many dead bodies that new waves of attackers had to struggle to climb over them), and the Incas managed to kill only a single conquistador. If you want to finally abuse yourself of the fairy tale notion that somehow justice will always prevail in the world, I recommend reading "The Last Days Of The Incas."
  - asdfdsa1234 13y ago
    That doesn't pass the sniff test. Slaughtering a few thousand stunned pigs would be exhausting. Killing that many people who are trying to kill you? Not gonna happen.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Especially given the types of firearms available to conquistadors of the age. They weren't crew-served weapons, or machine guns, or even breech-loaded rifles. If you were lucky it was a flintlock, and even with that you're not going to be firing very frequently or accurately.
      - kylebgorman 13y ago
consonants 13y ago
Sounds like feudalism to me. Your friend seems to have a tenuous grasp on what Marxism is, but still uses it as a pejorative; which is unfortunate. >There was no market because that culture was run by theocratic totalitarian blood thirsty central planners This implies that markets would have arisen in Incan society but were suppressed. Is there evidence of markets organically manifesting in Incan society?
- shuffleshuff 13y ago
  "Incan society" is a bit of a misnomer. "Inca" refers to either the ethnic group, or the ruler of the empire (so "Manco Inca" is roughly "King Inca"). About 100 years before contact with the Spanish, the Inca defeated the groups of people surrounding them (including the Chimu and Chanca), establishing the Incan empire. The last Inca to rule over a unified empire, Huayna Capac, was consolidating the rule in what is now northern Ecuador at the time of his death (probably from smallpox). His grandfather, Pachacuti, was the Inca who initially defeated the Chanca to establish the empire (or Tahuantinsuyu, as they called it). Anyway, the point is, some of the people the Inca conquered, like the Chimu, may have had the beginnings of markets. However, the conquest of the Incas (who tended to claim that anyone they conquered were uncivilized and barbaric), and then the Spanish (who also waged an informational war), and compounded with the smallpox (which may have killed 90% of the large urban populations of South America), meant that most oral history was lost, and the method of reading the written history (if there is any, there's some debate there) was seriously crippled. ANYWAY, getting to the point, there's some evidence but we don't really know.
sinkasapa 13y ago
Quipu are hardly primitive and it is still debated as to whether they encoded natural language. Here are a couple of good books that go in to detail on exactly how complex these devices were. Signs of the Inka Khipu by Gary Urton http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/urtsig http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/urtsig Signs of the Inka Khipu goes into detail describing the binary coding mechanisms used in quipu which included not just a dimension of relative placement of knots. Color coding, left or right twisting, sub threads and top or bottom position relative to the central cord were a number of other mechanisms used to communicate binary information. I think that if x86 or MIPS are primitive, so are the quipu. Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu by Marcia and Robert Ascher http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Incas-Code-Quipu/dp/0486295540 http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Incas-Code-Quipu/dp/048629... This is a demonstration and exercise book demonstrating some of the mathematical expressiveness of quipus. Again, it is hardly primitive. These devises were used for accounting, recording keeping and other ceremonial uses for an empire stretching most of the length of the South American continent at a time when the major communication mechanism was relay runners. These were likely detail documents, whether more like a spreadsheet or a database or also involving prose is debatable. The complexity and flexibility of the system could have supported both. Like a Turing machine, if there were an infinitely long quipu, there is nothing it could not calculate.
ekianjo 13y ago
> OTOH the Spanish monarchy was totally evil, purposefully wiping out millions of people As far as I know viruses imported from Europe to America wiped millions of people, not the Spanish themselves. It's well known that Pisaro's forces were minimal in the New World and the fights usually just involved a few hundred or thousands men. Viruses, OTOH, did wipe millions of people, and this was widely reported and observed in many tales of the New World.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

Lost me at "Marxists". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism edit: this came out kinda snarky, sorry.. I found all of that very interesting and insightful, just not the very end of the ending.

dmix 13y ago
It definitely didn't share Marx's original concepts of decentralized states and communal distribution. But almost every implementation of Marxism in recent history involved totalitarianism and ignored the part about decentralization of power post-revolution. So it's a fair statement, if taken as the commonly held meaning.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Well, I think the commonly held meaning is nonsense, and that it's commonly held doesn't really change that. "almost every implementation of Marxism in recent history involved totalitarianism and ignored the part about decentralization of power post-revolution" Then how are any of these an actual implementation of Marxism? There have been implementations of totalitarianism claiming the label of Marxism, sure. You might also said it got co-opted real quick, and that that still reaches into today, when people equate, say, Stalinism with Marxism. I wouldn't even want to guess the ratio of people having a negative opinion about Marx' ideas, and the people who read Marx.
  - sologoub 13y ago
    I don't think that there were any real/complete implementation of Marx's theories. Bits and pieces were collected together and bound by authoritarian/totalitarian states. Lenin actually advocated a blended socialist/market approach, including private enterprises and private property, but that quickly disappeared when Stalin took real power even before Lenin's death.
  - Tycho 13y ago
    Well, some people view those sorts of totalitarian states as the inevitable outcome of trying to build a nation on Marx's ideas.
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      You could say the same about the Sermon on the Mount, and many other things as well. IMHO there is a difference between "totalitarian" and "all-encompassing".
  - dnautics 13y ago
    > Then how are any of these an actual implementation of Marxism? They may not necessarily be an 'actual implementation' of what Marx intended, but even early on, those outcomes were predicted as a logical conclusion of Marxism by other philosophers. reposting from a branched sub-thread: "First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official. Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage-payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly. Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx." Benjamin Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)

chrismealy 13y ago

You mean feudalists. It's been a long time since I've read any pre-Columbian history, but I seem to remember that in addition to infectious disease, a lot of the South American empires were easy to conquer because the subjects generally hated their rulers, and the Spanish had no trouble finding indigenous allies.

moxie 13y ago
The Inca were easy to conquer because they had no steel and no horses. The Spanish were so unimaginably horrible that I can't imagine their presence having anything other than a uniting effect. The book "The Last Days Of The Inca" describe a scene were ~20 armored conquistadors are in a town that's surrounded by mountains on all sides. The Incas managed to call in enough people that the hillsides were all completely covered with tens of thousands of people waiting to attack. When they did, the entire population was slaughtered by the 20 conquistadors on horseback (there were so many dead bodies that new waves of attackers had to struggle to climb over them), and the Incas managed to kill only a single conquistador. If you want to finally abuse yourself of the fairy tale notion that somehow justice will always prevail in the world, I recommend reading "The Last Days Of The Incas."
- asdfdsa1234 13y ago
  That doesn't pass the sniff test. Slaughtering a few thousand stunned pigs would be exhausting. Killing that many people who are trying to kill you? Not gonna happen.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Especially given the types of firearms available to conquistadors of the age. They weren't crew-served weapons, or machine guns, or even breech-loaded rifles. If you were lucky it was a flintlock, and even with that you're not going to be firing very frequently or accurately.
    - kylebgorman 13y ago

consonants 13y ago

Sounds like feudalism to me. Your friend seems to have a tenuous grasp on what Marxism is, but still uses it as a pejorative; which is unfortunate. >There was no market because that culture was run by theocratic totalitarian blood thirsty central planners This implies that markets would have arisen in Incan society but were suppressed. Is there evidence of markets organically manifesting in Incan society?

shuffleshuff 13y ago
"Incan society" is a bit of a misnomer. "Inca" refers to either the ethnic group, or the ruler of the empire (so "Manco Inca" is roughly "King Inca"). About 100 years before contact with the Spanish, the Inca defeated the groups of people surrounding them (including the Chimu and Chanca), establishing the Incan empire. The last Inca to rule over a unified empire, Huayna Capac, was consolidating the rule in what is now northern Ecuador at the time of his death (probably from smallpox). His grandfather, Pachacuti, was the Inca who initially defeated the Chanca to establish the empire (or Tahuantinsuyu, as they called it). Anyway, the point is, some of the people the Inca conquered, like the Chimu, may have had the beginnings of markets. However, the conquest of the Incas (who tended to claim that anyone they conquered were uncivilized and barbaric), and then the Spanish (who also waged an informational war), and compounded with the smallpox (which may have killed 90% of the large urban populations of South America), meant that most oral history was lost, and the method of reading the written history (if there is any, there's some debate there) was seriously crippled. ANYWAY, getting to the point, there's some evidence but we don't really know.

sinkasapa 13y ago

Quipu are hardly primitive and it is still debated as to whether they encoded natural language. Here are a couple of good books that go in to detail on exactly how complex these devices were. Signs of the Inka Khipu by Gary Urton http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/urtsig http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/urtsig Signs of the Inka Khipu goes into detail describing the binary coding mechanisms used in quipu which included not just a dimension of relative placement of knots. Color coding, left or right twisting, sub threads and top or bottom position relative to the central cord were a number of other mechanisms used to communicate binary information. I think that if x86 or MIPS are primitive, so are the quipu. Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu by Marcia and Robert Ascher http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Incas-Code-Quipu/dp/0486295540 http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Incas-Code-Quipu/dp/048629... This is a demonstration and exercise book demonstrating some of the mathematical expressiveness of quipus. Again, it is hardly primitive. These devises were used for accounting, recording keeping and other ceremonial uses for an empire stretching most of the length of the South American continent at a time when the major communication mechanism was relay runners. These were likely detail documents, whether more like a spreadsheet or a database or also involving prose is debatable. The complexity and flexibility of the system could have supported both. Like a Turing machine, if there were an infinitely long quipu, there is nothing it could not calculate.

ekianjo 13y ago

> OTOH the Spanish monarchy was totally evil, purposefully wiping out millions of people As far as I know viruses imported from Europe to America wiped millions of people, not the Spanish themselves. It's well known that Pisaro's forces were minimal in the New World and the fights usually just involved a few hundred or thousands men. Viruses, OTOH, did wipe millions of people, and this was widely reported and observed in many tales of the New World.