What do you think?
Rate this book
A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru
When conquistador Francisco Pizarro came across the Incan empire, he didn’t quite know what to make of it. So he merely destroyed it.
Ever since scholars have puzzled over what the Incan society was really like.
Economist and historian Louis Baudin makes sense of the Inca way of life in his classic 1928 work, L’Empire socialiste des Inka (The Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru), offering a key concept to our understanding of the Incan civilization: socialism.
Socialism, Baudin explains, entails “the substitution of a rational plan of organization, based to a certain extent on collective ownership, for the spontaneous equilibrium achieved by the operation of individual self-interest and the free play of competition [and] the more or less complete destruction of the mechanism of the pricing process.”
Though taking pains throughout to make his book non-ideological, Baudin ends with a warning: “It is incumbent upon us to take action if we do not wish to become the subjects of a new Inca empire.”
Ever since scholars have puzzled over what the Incan society was really like.
Economist and historian Louis Baudin makes sense of the Inca way of life in his classic 1928 work, L’Empire socialiste des Inka (The Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru), offering a key concept to our understanding of the Incan civilization: socialism.
Socialism, Baudin explains, entails “the substitution of a rational plan of organization, based to a certain extent on collective ownership, for the spontaneous equilibrium achieved by the operation of individual self-interest and the free play of competition [and] the more or less complete destruction of the mechanism of the pricing process.”
Though taking pains throughout to make his book non-ideological, Baudin ends with a warning: “It is incumbent upon us to take action if we do not wish to become the subjects of a new Inca empire.”
377 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 17, 2011
2 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Louis Baudin
30 books2 followersFrench economist, an outspoken classical liberal, and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He was elected member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1951 and president of the French Association of Economics from 1955 to 1964. He participated in the Walter Lippman Colloquium and was professor at the law schools of Dijon and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 8, 2020
More people should read this book. It's the best explanation I've seen of the Incan economy and government. The book also explains a lot as to why the current descendants of the Inca's tend to have the characteristics the author mentions. It's made clear that the system of socialism practiced by the Inca's still has consequences for the descendants today. It can take a long time to recover from the soul sucking loss of dignity that is the result of socialism.
The book covers a lot of areas of the incan empire such as food, farming practices, local governments, military system, penal codes, etc in brief. It doesn't go into an extreme depth because the point of the book is to see just how the Inca's were socialist and how they weren't.
What makes the book different from other analysis of socialism is how the Inca's made the system sustainable, albeit still horrible for the individual. Many have the intellect to understand why the Soviet Union collapsed, why Cuba is a poverty stricken wreck, and why the U.S. move towards socialism is bankrupting the U.S. government. So what you may wonder as I did, is how did the Inca system survived as long as it did? This book explains that religion, a local system of communal or clan based farming, and to some extent fear, helped to keep the inca system in place as long as it did.
I recommend this book because it's a good example of what life in a socialist society, even one that actually looked out for it's people, is really like. It's also a look at the Pre-Columbian cultures that seem to be ignored by many. (even though I think they're the most interesting)
The book covers a lot of areas of the incan empire such as food, farming practices, local governments, military system, penal codes, etc in brief. It doesn't go into an extreme depth because the point of the book is to see just how the Inca's were socialist and how they weren't.
What makes the book different from other analysis of socialism is how the Inca's made the system sustainable, albeit still horrible for the individual. Many have the intellect to understand why the Soviet Union collapsed, why Cuba is a poverty stricken wreck, and why the U.S. move towards socialism is bankrupting the U.S. government. So what you may wonder as I did, is how did the Inca system survived as long as it did? This book explains that religion, a local system of communal or clan based farming, and to some extent fear, helped to keep the inca system in place as long as it did.
I recommend this book because it's a good example of what life in a socialist society, even one that actually looked out for it's people, is really like. It's also a look at the Pre-Columbian cultures that seem to be ignored by many. (even though I think they're the most interesting)
September 19, 2023
I wrote the foreword to the Laissez Faire Books ebook edition of this important work.
January 4, 2018
An excellent attempt to uncover the realities of life in Inca Peru.
Well worth reading ... it provides interesting areas to think about in respect to the pros and cons of living in a socialistic society.
The author reveals the difficulties historians have in presenting a realistic and unbiased view of past events, especially in civilizations where no written records were maintained, but equally applicable to times in which records were kept because of the biases of the people who are keeping the records.
Well worth reading ... it provides interesting areas to think about in respect to the pros and cons of living in a socialistic society.
The author reveals the difficulties historians have in presenting a realistic and unbiased view of past events, especially in civilizations where no written records were maintained, but equally applicable to times in which records were kept because of the biases of the people who are keeping the records.
June 15, 2018
Review to follow.
April 1, 2014
I'm writing a foreword to a new edition of this book right now. When the book is published I'll put up a link to it on Instead of a Blog (www.insteadofablog.com).
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews