I understand that agrarian and industrial societies are completely two different animals, but I've found it difficult to collect information to counter this example proficiently.
http://www.mises.org/books/Socialist_Empire_Baudin.pdf
I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
Why does many a man write? Because he does not possess enough character not to write. ---Karl Kraus.
The Inca's technology seemed to stagnant and archaic, but the Socialists will generally argue to the death that they really did have a writing system, certain technologies that outpaced the rest of the world (even though they lacked the contemporary ones, such as the wheel), and google furiously every web page; most of which contain no citations, and look like they were made by a twelve year old.
If the Incan empire were as powerful as your socialist friends claim it was, then why did it collapse so easily when invaded by the Spaniards?
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Igor Shafarevich has a chapter on the Incan Empire in his excellent book The Socialist Phenomenon. Basically it was vast slave empire. There were magnificent palaces and modern roads, but otherwise it was primitive. Despite reigning for two hundred years they never developed metal working or even the wheel. They could store a limited amount of information using a system of knotted strings, but they never developed writing.They had a rigid cast system consisting of three casts: the Incas or ruling class, the peasants, herdsmen, and artisans, and finally the slave cast. Which cast you were in depended on which tribe you were born into (wave that in the face of your socialist interlocutors).
Here is an excerpt from the book:
The law divided the life of the male peasant into ten periods and described the obligations of each age group. Thus, from age nine to sixteen, the peasant was to be a herdsman, from from sixteen to twenty, a messenger or servant in the house of an Inca, etc. Even the duties of the last age group (over sixty) were specified: spinning rope, feeding ducks, and so on. Cripples formed a special group, but they too, as Guaman Poma de Ayala reports, were designated for certain work. Similar prescriptions existed for women. The law required constant activity from the peasants. A woman on her way to another house was to take wool with her and spin on the way. According to the chronicle of Cieza de Leon, peasants were sometimes made to perform completely useless work simply so as not to be idle - for example they were forced to move a hill of dirt from one place to another. Garcilaso de la Vega informs us that work was found for cripples. He also cites a law against idlers - a man who tilled his field badly was hit several times with a stone in the sholders or flogged with a rod. The completely incapacitated and aged were maintained by the state or rural community.
For work, the peasants were joined into groups of ten families, five such groups into a larger group, etc., up to ten thousand families. There was an official head for each group. The lower members of this hierarchy were appointed from the peasantry; higher posts were occupied by Incas.
Not only work but the whole life of the citizenry was controlled by officials. Special inspectors continuously traveled about the country observing the inhabitants. To facilitate supervision, peasants, for instance, were obliged to keep their doors open during meals (the law prescribed the time of meals and restricted the menu) Other aspects of life were also strictly regimented. Officials issued every indian two cloaks from the state stores - one for work and the other for festivals. Within each individual province the cloaks were indistinguishable in style and color and differed only according to the sex of their bearers. The cloak was to be used until it was worn out. Changes in cut and color were forbidden. There were laws against other extravagances: it was forbidden to have chairs in the house (only benches were allowed), to build houses of a larger size than authorized, etc. Each province had a special obligatory hair style. Such prescriptions extended to other classes, for instance, the quantity and size of gold and silver vessels that an official of lower rank could posses were strictly limited according to his station.
And so on.
Doesn't that make us all want to swear off carbon and become Incas? Keep in mind the above is a description of the peasant or second class. Imagine what it must have been like to have been born into the slave cast.
Weren't the Incas a brutal empire and theocracy? The lefties can have 'em, because I certainly don't.
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