6. The Superstructure: State Socialism

On the other hand, the regime that we are now about to examine does bear the characteristic stamp of socialism, for it is an attempt at the rationalization of society. Its author is man himself. It is he who conceived the plan and imposed it, and this plan tends toward the virtual absorption of the individual by the state) for the well being of the former is assured only as it leads to the aggrandize ment of the latter. We have adopted the term "state socialism" to describe this phenomenon in order to denote an organization of the 'whole of society to conform to a certain ideal to be realized by way of authority. To be sure, the doctrine of state socialism has not been formulated with much theoretical rigor. As expounded by Rod88 The Superstructure: State Socialism 89 bertus, Lassalle, or Wagner, it is loosely defined and appears primarily as a reaction against the Manchester School. But in spite of its vagueness it is based on the idea of the "regulative action of a central power in social relations." 1 Never has this action made itself felt more powerfully than in Peru, where demand was precisely calculated to meet implacably fixed needs, 'where supply was determined by a meticulous regimentation of production, and where the adjustment of supply to demand was assured by a system of statistical tables and reserve stocks.

In Europe the modern state socialists propose to respect the existing order, that is, 'private property and individual initiative. In Peru this same regard for established institutions led the Incas to preserve the agrarian communities, which represented the exist ing order of their time. Thus, in the Western Hemisphere, state socialism took on a much more pronounced form than it has in the countries of Western Europe, with their long tradition of private property. In Peru it rested on a foundation of collective ownership, which, to a certain extent, facilitated its establishment, because the effacement of the individual within a limited group prepared him to allow himself to be absorbed by the state. 2 Nevertheless, the Peruvian system cannot be called socialist without some quali fication, because the sovereigns not only spared the small enclaves of private property that were already in existence, but themselves contributed, by their gifts and grants, toward the formation of others. It was, rather, as C. Rist says, in speaking of state socialism, "a particular idea of the general interest," the feeling that the state has a function to perform in promoting "civilization and well-being." 3 In fact, it was an extreme form of interventionism, a veritable despotism conceived, not in the interests of the sover eign, but in. those of the entire people.

What is really extraordinary is that a rational and strictly planned empire could have been constituted at the beginning of the fifteenth century in a country whose terrain is badly broken up and whose people lived in communities that were shut in upon themselves. The establishment of an empire under such untoward circumstances serves to provide us with some measure of the achievement of its founder, the Inca Yupanqui, called Pachacutec, 90 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru that is, "the reformer of the world" (from pachaJ "world," and cutec) "modified" or "changed").4 The image of this sovereign dominates the whole preColumbian history of Peru, and his name is repeated by all the chroniclers. "The Indians had such a reverence and respect for this Inca," writes Garcilaso, "that they have not been able to forget him to this day." 5 We have already seen that the Inca Pachacutec intervened in the agrarian system, settling the territorial boundaries and making various officials responsible for gathering the Indians together and counting them, for having neglected fields cultivated, for seeing that irrigation canals were dug and terraces constructed, and for drawing maps of the provinces and towns. According to Betanzos, the distribution of land and the building of public granaries took five years, at the end of which time the Inca distributed gifts among those who had most distinguished themselves, and laid down the rules for compulsory labor and military service. A year later, he had the curacas summoned to Cuzco, ordered great festivals, and busied himself with the clothing of the Indians-the number, quality, and design of their garments-and with taxes and centers of provisions. Then he instituted the practice of obligatory mar riage. The same Spanish writer recounts how Pachacutec estab lished the class of the orejones) reformed the calendar, and had CUlCO rebuilt, and how he engaged in great military expeditions for the extension of the borders of his empire. According to Gar cilaso, it was this Inca too who commanded the people to speak Quechua, decreed sumptuary laws, regulated commerce, reformed the army, founded cities" and raised temples to the gods. His prodigious activity seems to have touched every department of life.6 The way in which the reconstruction of CUlCO was carried out is typical of this monarch's mentality. First, he had a plan in relief made of the city as he envisioned it. Then, he evicted the inhabi tants and settled them in the neigh boring provinces. Once the work was completed, he assembled the heads of families in a field near the capital and assigned each one a dwelling as shown on the plan, declaring that no other Indian would be permitted to take The Superstructure: State Socialism 91 up residence in Cuzco, since it was to remain a "city of distinc tion." 7 The Inca's way of dealing with his whole empire seems not to have differed from his conduct in setting up his capital. His pro cedure there too was marked by the elaboration of a rational pro g~am, its e:5tecution by authoritarian decree, and finally the laying down of regulations designed to prevent any occasion of dis turbance and to render the organization definite and permanent.

Naturally, this system, so logical in its plan, was bound to en counter obstacles in adapting itself to realities. We shall see how these obstacles were surmounted by the progressive assimilation of the peoples newly subjugated and by the arrest of the processes of natural evolution, i.e., by an economic crystallization. The information we have just presented provides a general picture of the superstructure of Indian society, but certain details need to be added. In the first place, we are assuming that the portrait of Pachacutec given us by most of the chroniclers is a faithfullikeness. 8 It is possible that some of their statements may be exaggerated and that several sovereigns should receive the credit for the measures of which we have spoken, since a number of different emperors seem to have borne the name of Pachacutec. But this in no way changes anything essential to our thesis. If the plan was elaborated little by little and put into effect gradually, the facts are less spectacular, but the picture of the organization of the empire remains the same.

In the second place, we have noted that the Incas found an environ ment favorable to the establishment of socialism, without which they would probably have failed. The limitation of demand, for example, was imposed by the niggardliness of Nature, which restricted the sup ply. The execution of a master plan was greatly facilitated, on the one hand, by the need for communal labor in barren areas without do mestic animals, tools, or slaves, and, on the other, by the persistence within the ayllu of an actual community not all of whose members may yet have been invested with individual rights. But this in no way diminishes the originality of the Peruvian system, which consisted in co-ordinating existing elements by working them into a plan on an imperial scale, and it is certainly a distortion of the facts to view these 92 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru elements, as H. Castro Pozo does, as themselves the motive forces that brought the plan into being. 9 After all, other peoples have found them selves in a situation similar to that of the Quechuas and have adopted very different solutions. Thus, the Chibchas, under conditions quite like those of the Incas, had recourse to a system other than that of the Peruvians and were acquainted with the institution of private prop erty.10 Thirdly, it is obvious from what has been said in the two preceding paragraphs that the plan of imperial organization very probably did not spring complete and fully formed from the brain of Pachacutec like Minerva from the head of Jove. In this respect G. Munoz Puglise vich is right, but why does he then proceed to exaggerate by writing that the Inca system was due to a combination of different factors "like a process independent of the human will"? He adds, nevertheless, his acknowledgment of the influence of eminent individuals or powerful personalities and states that he does not mean to dim the glory that belongs to Pachacu tec as the organizer of the empire. 11 Fourthly, having defined the sense in which we understand the word "socialism," we are at a loss to comprehend the stubborn opposition of certain critics to the use of this term. "It is an obvious error," writes Emilio Romero, "to try to apply the terminology of the modern social sciences to the facts of the ancient past." 12 This mode of reasoning is inadmissible. Should we forgo the right to characterize as communistic the city of the future envisioned by Plato, on the ground that Greek society differed from our own? What, then, should we call it? Are we to be forbidden to speak of the controlled economy in Egypt in the period of the Lagides because we are dealing with a time that ante dated the Christian era? Sr. Romero believes he is being relativistic, but in fact he is stultifying science by preventing the observer from drawing comparisons between one era and another. The definition of an economic system is and must be independent of historical circum stances. Whether there are machines or not, whether we are concerned with agriculture or with industry, whether men make use of horses or llamas, makes very little difference in this respect. 1S Finally, an even worse error is committed by a socialist who writes: "Autocracy and communism are incompatible in our era, but they were not so in primitive societies." 14 Socialism-and especially com munism, which is the most stringent expression of it-is authoritarian by definition, by reason of its internal structure. Not only are autocracy and communism compatible; they are necessarily connected. Recent The Superstructure: State Socialism 93 German and Russian experience should be enough to enlighten us in this regard. This author states that the Peruvian regime was despotic, and he is right; this is all the more reason for affirming its socialist character .15 Let us now take UP, point by point , the work of Pachacutec , the Peruvian prototype of Sesostris, the Egyptian king who is sup posed to have divided the land among his subjects, giving an equal

square plot of ground to each.16 Before individuals are condemned to be nothing more than numbers, they must be made as nearly alike as. possible-an un promising project in a country where every tribe had its own dialect. 17 The first concern of a reformer who wants to build a durable structure is to avoid the fate of the men who raised the tower of Babel. Hence, Pachacutec required all the Indians to speak one and the same language-the language of Cuzco, that is, Quechua. The chroniclers. called it the "lengua genera1." 18 It was a lan guage marvelously adapted to the civilizing role that had been entrusted to it, being extremely rich and euphonious. It makes use of a large number of affixes, which, in modifying the meaning of verbal roots, render it possible to express all the nuances of thought, including the most abstract ideas; and it lends itself to a very special rhythm, which is created, not by the alternation of short and long syllables, nor by accentuation, but by a symmetrical alteration of vowels.19 To propagate its use, Pachacutec decreed that teachers be sent into every province and resolved that no dignity should be conferred upon anyone who did not speak Quechua. Moreover, the sons of the curacas of the conquered provinces were already being brought up at Cuzco, where they learned the usages of the court as well as the language. But since a large part of the empire had been reduced to submission only a short time before the coming of the Spaniards, the peoples of these areas had not yet forgotten their own tongue, and since, in addition, the Incas frequently settled in newly annexed provinces tribes coming from a considerable distance away that had not lost the use of their native language either, the result in certain local94 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru ities was a triple superposition of dialects. Thus, in the province of Puruha the native language, the compulsory Quechua, and the Aymara of the transplanted ayllus all existed side by side at the same time. 20 The men who did the most to spread the Quechua language were, in fact, the Catholic missionaries., who, unable to master a hundred different dialects for preaching the Faith, taught the catechism in the language of CUZCO. 21 Calancha reports that in certain villages at the time of the Incas almost every family had its own language, so that the preachers were reduced to silence, and he saw in this strange situation an ingenious stratagem on the part of the Evil One. 22 Today Quechua still continues to struggle against Spanish and is spoken throughout the inter-Andean pla teau. 23 Meanwhile, a great many Quechua words have passed into Spanish, without, however, affecting its syntax. 24 It was naturally easier to impose uniformity in the economic domain than it was to achieve linguistic unity, since the resources of the soil were very limited and the entire population of the plateau was engaged in agriculture. The people had already be come accustomed to a frugal existence; the Inca had only to com plete what Nature had begun. "It is incredible that people can live on so little," remarks Del HoYO.25 Pachacutec established and enforced sumptuary laws forbidding the hatunruna to eat anything but common fare or to wear clothing of fine wool, ornaments, or jewelry. The Indians were thus obliged to speak the same language, eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothing, follow the same mode of life, and worship in the same faith. The only break in this uniformity was the variety of insignia used to distinguish peo ple of different provinces or different social rank. For the mass of the population it was a true leveling.

We shall analyze the Inca system by successively examining demand and supply and the equilibrium established between them.