Just like the Federation
The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
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Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 mig…
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.
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#63Another hypothesis, which is probably mostly wrong but still extremely interesting, is that put forth by Julian Jaynes: that the Incas, and most other early peoples, were not conscious (by Jaynes' very specific definition of "conscious"), but instead were unconscious agents guided by hallucinations, and that attempts to reason about them with modern models of volition and awareness are doomed.
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#64I believe the point is the "missing" markets. In the old world markets arise all over the place, using some form of currency, for example cigarettes in prisons, laundry detergent-driven drug market in the US etc.
Probably no Incan had gotten around to inventing the concept of token economies yet. I don't actually believe this lack of markets benefited them. It must have been an awkward way to run a society with a couple of thousands of members.
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#65A 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. T…
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.
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."
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#66A 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. T…
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
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/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.
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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.
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saw a documentary about Gauls where they reshaped the view on what was said to be a simple civilisation (~hunters) where in fact they had a non trivial economy based on manufacture of goods (amphoras) backed by recent discovery of burried factory remains.
Sounds good... link please!
You're lucky someone put it online http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8S4BbWhayk
Some additional info from the tv channel who broadcasted it http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/047580-000/les-gaulois-au-dela-d...
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lost me at "Marxists". 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.
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.
But almost every implementation of Marxism in recent history involved totalitarianism and ignored the part about decentralization of power post-revolution.
I recently came across a very interesting thought, which is that this observation (which I also believed until coming across that thought) is induced by a kind of selection bias. The original article in which I encountered this thought is here: http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/men_make_their_own_history_...
The synopsis is this: Communism tended to develop in poorer (and therefore militarily weaker) countries, and communism was vehemently opposed by the ruling elite in capitalist countries. The worldwide interference of the CIA is probably the clearest evidence of this. So from the start, communist countries had to defend themselves against powerful adversaries.
Given that communist movements were attacked quite violently by foreign interests, it stands to reason that those countries which implemented a "softer" approach to communism did not survive. Foreign propaganda, wars, and coup d'etats sponsored by capitalist nations killed communism in many place where it had been democratically legitimized and could in principle be sustained with the consent of the people.
But, to put it bluntly, the consent of the people may not be enough when what really counts is a handful of oligarchs in the US.
So the examples of communism that survived are those that were able to defend themselves ruthlessly against equally or even more ruthless aggressors. This defense then grew abominations like secret police and what have you.
The secret police was thus not a function of communism, but of the paranoia caused by foreign aggressors. Look at what secret state organizations in western capitalist countries are doing these days, and the idea that the development of secret police is related to economics starts looking a bit far-fetched.
I am not certain that this is the ultimate answer in this debate. However, it is a plausible enough story which has a lot of historical facts on its side.
Re: The greatest mystery of the Inca Empire was its strange economy (2012)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also sounds a lot like communism.
Not at all. Incan society had a caste system, nobles, royalty, etc. Nobles owned estates and laborers. Workers did not own the means of production.
Well, theoretically, workers own the means of production in communism, but that's now how it happened in practice. In practice, the Party owned everything, and its high ranking members were effectively nobility. Workers in communism were nothing more than indentured servants.