Beautiful Cities Built Through Strict Regulation
The prize was worth the effort. Pizarro and his men were struck by the fantastic achievements of the Incas. Their capital city Cuzco was as advanced as any major city in Europe, and this without the advantages of iron or centuries of evolving European technologies.
The Incas had marshaled their people and resources to build magnificent fortresses, temples, palaces, paved roads, bridges and aqueducts. Giant blocks of stone weighing 10-12 tons each were fitted together for walls with such carved precision that even a knife blade could not fit between them. Cuzco was the center of everything, and was connected to the empire with excellent roads, cut as needed, through solid rock, or that spanned gorges with suspension bridges. Foot messengers ran the routes to keep Inca informed of the doings in his kingdom.
Central Storehouses
All the Inca storehouses were full of food and supplies. Llamas did the heavy labor and also provided meat and wool. Weapons, clothing, houses, utensils, and tools were finely developed and orderly—an amazing achievement considering the people had only wood and stone with which to work.
Caste System
The Inca society was organized into a three-level caste system. At the top were the Inca rulers, the direct descendants of the original tribe. This class provided leadership at all levels, but the levels were highly regimented. Each official could communicate only with his direct supervisor and those directly beneath him, thereby designating immediate accountability for all things good and bad.
The next level down were the peasants and workers. This vast majority did all the work to support the empire. They were the soldiers and defenders of the empire. When a village was conquered, these people were sent to set up the Inca way of life. They also sustained the kingdom with everything from farming, raising llamas, and producing clothing and other handcrafted items. And, they also provided their young daughters for human sacrifice. The Inca gods were hungry for such rituals, especially at the great festivals when a new Inca was installed as leader.
At the lowest level were the state slaves. The largest of this slave class apparently descended from an earlier group that once tried to rebel against Inca. They were condemned to die but legend says Inca’s wife pled for their preservation and the tribes were instead made slaves in perpetuity.
No Individual Rights
Inca owned everything, and allowed no private land ownership. He loaned out land as needed for farming, but the produce went to the ruling class. When a peasant married, he received a parcel of land that was large enough to sustain him and his wife. When children were born, the family received more. When the man died the land went back to Inca.
Low-level administrators supervised the peasants working the land. Work began each day with the sound of a conch, and everyone filed out to his or her assigned duties. Their labors included building the temples, repairing the palaces and roads, working the gold and silver mines, or any other state project assigned to them.
Tightly Organized
The people were grouped as families into 10s, 50s, 100s, up to 10,000. Each group had an assigned official watching them closely. Houses were all the same size and design—doors had to be open to anyone. They all ate at the same time, and they were forbidden to change anything from the standardized size, look, and feel, or they would be executed. If anyone wanted to leave a village for any purpose at all, permission was always required.
Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits
The Incas devised an excellent policing system for runaways. They forced everyone to have certain haircuts and uniform styles of clothing. The only variation in these appearances was from province to province. This smothered the temptation of vanity to use style, clothing, and looks to appear better. Also, if someone tried to run away, those in other districts could spot them immediately because of their different hair style, and the cut and color of their cloak.
“Bristle While You Work ...”
The laws exacted constant production from everyone. Men’s lives were divided into ten periods with appropriate duties and requirements for each period. Women had similar duties, and when en route from here to there, they were expected to take along some wool to spin along the way. The elderly or infirm had work assignments suited to their abilities. If slaves had no work to do, their masters would give them useless chores such as moving rocks from here to there or digging pits and filling them again. Work, work, work—no slackers allowed.
Intimate Family Life Regulated
Marriage was strictly programmed. Once each year in every village, a ruler would conduct marriages for all those who had reached a certain age. If they had not paired off, they would be forced to. A man might express a preference, but a woman could never say no. Objecting to the ruler’s choices was punishable by death.
There was no sharing of wives but a man could have concubines in addition to his first wife. Depending on the man’s place in the caste system dictated how many concubines he could have—10, 20, 40, or more.
When children were old enough for school, only those of the upper class were allowed to learn. Education among the lower classes was punishable by death. The privileged children learned their nation’s history, laws and culture, as well as hymns that conveyed similar messages that were recited around the campfires. A village scholar was assigned the duty to teach the children.
Food for the Gods
Females were treated like disposable property. Every year, representatives of Inca visited all the villages to choose out girls eight years old. They were taken from their families and raised in a commune. Also every year, those who turned 13 were taken to Cuzco and presented to Inca himself. He picked a third who would attend to matters of Inca worship. Another third was given away as wives or concubines to the nobility class. The last third was reserved for human sacrifice. If parents grieved over their daughter’s selection for the sacrifice they could be punished with death.
Obey or Else
Punishment for disobedience was extremely severe. Breaking the law was viewed as a direct affront to the Inca’s authority. Even the most minor infractions, such as picking berries or catching a fish on state-owned property, resulted in death. Other capital crimes included causing an abortion or seducing someone of a higher class. In some cases, the law allowed forced labor instead of execution, and punishment could extend beyond life to include punishing the criminal’s descendents. However, these laws did not apply equally to all. The elitist Incas often got off with just a scolding and a sour look, while the slaves were beheaded.
Executions by stoning, hanging by the hair, being thrown off a cliff, or dropped into a pit of snakes wasn’t necessarily the worst of it. The Incas had underground prisons that housed meat-eating animals or deadly scorpions. An accused conspirator’s guilt was tested by throwing him into just such a prison. If a person was guilty, the creatures would kill him—if innocent ... well, it was a miracle.
Ignorance and Fear
With all things identical, all things regulated, and all things standardized, the Incas were conditioned to be naturally suspicious of anything out of the ordinary—an eclipse, an earthquake, the birth of twins or triplets, strange anomalies in nature—these were feared and shunned as manifestations sent as warnings from the evil gods.
Crushing the Human Spirit
The Inca system of socialism weakened the people terribly. It took away their drive to achieve and initiate anything from their own creativity. They became indifferent, apathetic, and stopped thinking for themselves. They lost the connective tissue and emotional bonds in their family circles. They apparently didn’t care about elderly parents who were no longer able to care for themselves. They didn’t care about the suffering by those closest to them. They didn’t care about the Inca state. They had become accustomed to being told by someone what to do, when to do it, and when to do it over if things didn’t measure up.
Socialism Erupts on Its Own
The interesting message from the rise and fall of the Inca empire is that nearly every element of socialism that was promoted in Plato’s “perfect” Republic or More’s “ideal” Utopia were independently invented and implemented among the Incas—with devastating and miserable results. Also important is the fact the Incas didn’t have access to the writings of western philosophers—they came up with the horrible ideas of socialism all by themselves.
This leads to the conclusion that socialism as a set of tyrannical aspirations needs no precedent to come into existence. Lacking any better code of moral existence, tyranny will rise of its own accord. Not benevolently, but with blood and horror. The seven despotic pillars of socialism in Europe or the Americas cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence or accidental commonality. They are the magnification of mankind’s natural desires to survive at any cost, including the extermination of his fellow beings.
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202 For more information, see Louis Baudin, A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru, 1961; and, William H. Prescott, History of the conquest of Peru, with a preliminary view of the civilization of the Incas, 1883, in two volumes.
Chapter 32: Jesuit Priests Socialize Paraguay
In the name of Christianity, Jesuit missionaries socialized native converts with baptism, the whip, and Ruler’s Law.
In 1609, Jesuit priests rode into the jungles and valleys of central South America to search for converts.
The regional Spanish governor was in favor of these evangelical labors because there was a frontier border that needed protection. He granted the Jesuits permission to proselytize provided they would organize the people into hamlets at strategic points along the Paraná River. The Jesuits agreed and went about their missionary labors.
In a fascinating description provided by Yves Guyot in his book, Socialistic Fallacies (1910),203 this is how socialism worked among the natives of Paraguay—
It took only a few hundred Jesuits to conquer villages. They would invade the selected tribe, set the huts on fire, and take men, women and children as their prisoners. They divided the people among their missions to prevent them from combining again to form a rebellion. Some of the settlements (called a Jesuit Reduction) controlled as many as 3,500 with just 2-3 Jesuits as overseers.
A native was considered baptized when the Jesuit touched him or her with a damp cloth. A record of this baptism was sent to Rome. After the baptisms, things relaxed a little—each tribe was ruled by a spiritual leader and a temporal leader. There was no uniform or formal law put in place—the only laws were those set by the whim and wit of the Jesuits in charge.
All possessions were held in common—there was no private property. There was no inheritance to pass along or, for a while at least, no property boundaries to define or debate. The children were also communally raised by the village.
Even though the natives had to labor exactly as ordered, the Jesuits found things went smoother if they gave them a small piece of land the people could farm two days a week. They also allowed fishing and hunting, provided the people returned a gift of fish or game to the missionaries.
Regimented Life
Before sun-up, the entire village met at the church for hymns, prayers, and roll call. After lining up to kiss the hands of the missionaries, they were served a broth of barley meal without any fat or salt. Salt was scarce, so was meat, and very little of either was served except maybe on an occasional Sunday. Then, off to work.
The natives could never ride the horses, and had no money or commerce outside of the set boundaries. The men went to the fields or shops, the women worked over the fires, roasting a day’s worth of corn. Later, they went to work spinning at least an ounce of cotton. At lunch, the same broth was served but this time thickened up with peas, beans, some flour and maize. After lunch, they again kissed the missionaries’ hands and headed back to work.
When a native became a convert and “confessed,” he or she was forced to become an informer on others. Lashes with leather whips punished men in public and women in private for neglecting their duties or from committing other crimes.
The problem of “all things in common” ignited the passions of some missionaries who took advantage of the native women and girls. The Jesuits were confessor, legislator and judge, and supervised everything. The natives complained of many abuses, but were powerless to act.
Lifeless Automatons
Before the Jesuits were expelled in 1768, observers reported the populations had become spiritually dead. They theorized it was a leftover from the horror of the Inca, a so-called Inca Affect. Some 70 workers could hardly perform what eight or ten mediocre Europeans could perform in the same allotted time. The natives loathed their wretched lives. Even a nightly bell rung by the Jesuits to signal the start of sexual relations to repopulate their numbers failed to produce an increase. Disinterest in their spouses was the last and most horrible testimony of the smothering impact of the socialistic life. After 160 years of ruinous regimentation, the Jesuits left behind an entire people in misery, stagnation, and broken spirits.
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203 Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies, 1910, Chapter V: Paraguay.
Chapter 33: Jamestown: Socializing the New World
It was 1607 when the ancient ideas of ‘all things in common’ began to wreak havoc in North America.
STORY: The first English settlement in America landed the seven pillars of socialism into the “new world” with a painfully lethal thud.
After Sir Walter Raleigh’s attempts to establish a colony in Roanoke had failed, a group of investors obtained a charter to try again somewhere along the Virginia coastline. In 1607, a group of 104 entrepreneurs and explorers tied off at an island about 40 miles inland from Virginia’s Atlantic coast. They had discovered a natural deepwater port that was easily defendable.
Imposing Ruler’s Law
Once ashore, their first chore was to divide the colonists roughly into thirds—a group to build a fort, another to start a farm, and the remainder to look for gold. A central storehouse was established to receive all food supplies from which each could take as needed. Each man was required to put back all that he could. Marx would later codify the regimen as “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”204
Did it work? Not at all. The lack of incentive to work for each other, even to avoid starvation, left them severely hurting for food. By Christmas the death toll was high—66 had already died from starvation and disease. The remaining 38 suffered through the winter while they waited on England to deliver food, supplies, and a fresh crop of settlers.
Socialism Flops Again
Why did this first group of settlers fail to provide for themselves? A host of modern voices point to everything for the colony’s miserable failings except to the antagonistic assault on human nature that was used to coerce labor. Threats, deprivations, punishments, and even execution couldn’t stir the men to work. They hated working for others as if they were slaves or servants.
The following year a few hundred more settlers arrived. They faced the same problems. The promised free handouts from the central storehouse couldn’t supply the people’s needs. Only 40 of the men did any appreciable work while the others shirked their duties. That winter, death by starvation nearly wiped out all of them.
The Starving Time
In 1609, another 500 settlers arrived. Unfortunately, this didn’t solve anything because the principles of socialism continued to be in operation: no private ownership, top-down contro
l, total and complete regulation.
That winter, their journals record a horrid time of suffering they named the “starving time.” The unfortunate entrepreneurs initially exhausted their stores of food and had to turn to eating their work animals. When those were gone, they ate any small rodents they could find. When that failed to satisfy, they finally resorted to boiling shoe leather. With the leather gone they ate the bodies of the dead. By the spring of 1610, only 60 were left alive.
Property Rights to the Rescue
This communal misery of “all in common” was finally abandoned with the arrival of Sir Thomas Dale. He brought whips and cruelty to the village, and a code he called “Articles, Lawes, and Orders—Divine, Politique, and Martial.”205 It was tyranny of the worst kind. He imposed capital punishment for trivial crimes. For example, one of his punishments for a man caught stealing food was to tie him to a tree to starve to death as a message to others about Dale’s new strict and strait ways.
However, Thomas Dale brought salvation to the colony in a most unexpected way: It was the miracle of private ownership. After two years of imposing force to make the settlers rebuild and become industrious about their plight, Dale was troubled that the men had no investment in the colony. So, he abandoned the communal farming plan in 1613, and handed out parcels of land—private ownership. For those longest settled, he granted three acres of land. Smaller plots were given to the newer arrivals. In return, he asked for 2-1/2 barrels of corn for the central storehouse.206
The settlers were delighted. They dropped their half-hearted communal labors and raced to improve their own property. With their own little farm to work, plow, and plant, the settlers came alive, putting in a new level of anxious enthusiasm they had lacked under the old system. That fall, private land ownership had unleashed an industry of labor that resulted in enough food production for the colony to survive on all through the winter, and the storehouse was stocked with plenty.
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