Socialism in the Inca Empire historical note

On Sat, 1 Oct 2005, oldpif

Yes, I was wondering if anyone but myself and the author of the book would notice that. Of course, the analysis of how the foreign invaders (plus the effects of diseases also brought, unknowingly, by them) conquored the Incas (as well as the Mayans, Aztecs, Toltecs, Mixtecs and a couple other Xtecs) is a story based, from what I've learned, on a version of "shock and awe" exploited by the Conquistadors who, actually did some homework and read some reports from other conquistadors about how to surprise the "Indians" with surprise attacks, etc., and "play into" the disorganization and confusion that the surprise would induce. At least a good lesson in the need to have intelligence on an enemy or potential enemy.

Back to the socialism: Durant mentioned some periods of socialism in ancient China, brought about by certain emperors who, interestingly, were well aware of exploitation by landlords of peasants, monopoly formations by the rich, controls by the merchants and factory owners, and a few other "evils" of such heirarchies which placed serfs and peasants at economic disadvantage. In the few paragraphs that Durant wrote about these periods, these periods of socialism only lasted maybe a decade or two or three. What interupted them? rest or overthrow of the emperor, floods and earthquakes (that placed unforseen stresses on the infrastructure), and--guess what--old fashioned corruption (i.e. bribes and under-the-table money).

An interesting side note: The part of Durant's book on the Roman Empire around the time of Julius Caesar (JC) mentioned some interesting things. JC, in an earlier period of his life, went on an empire-building spree, expanding the empire, killing and conquoring people, and generally (like many emperors), doing not very nice things. But, in a later period of his life, he became quite liberal. I can't remember all of the things that Durant listed, but it included such things as giving, outright, captured money to all of the citizens of Rome. It also included such things as building schools, libraries, museums, bath houses (a lot of emperors built public bath houses). JC also started making new laws. One included that it became illegal to mistreat Jews in Rome (and, evidently, there were quite a few Jews in Rome at the time, too). Another one altered land ownership in a way that recognized that rich landlords were buying out, for cheap, peasant farmers' lands if the peasant had a bad crop and could not make payments on their land (and isn't that a story as old as the hills?). What JC did was make it illegal for peasant owned land to change breastle for something like 20 years which would interfere with rich landlords getting their hands quickly and easily on these smaller parcels and thus become land barrons (actually, only a few people owned most of the land anyway back then, as it is even today). One day I might go back to those 2-3 pages and make a list of the some dozen far reaching and very liberal changes he made for the benefit of the citizens. So, what else does this relate to? Its pretty easy to speculate that the rich and powerful clbutt was not happy with these trends which would undermine the status quo (i.e. the rich and poweful were on their way to seeing their priviledges taken away from them) and this led to his asbuttination by Cbuttius, Brutus, & company, who themselves were not only generals commanding quite large armies but, themselves were also fabulously rich (very many of the big names in society in ancient times were also very rich) and owned lots of land! And, so, in 44 BC, he got the backstab.