The economy of the Inca Empire, which lasted from 1438 to 1532, established an economic structure that allowed for substantial agricultural production as well as the exchange of products between communities. It was based on the institution of reciprocity, considered the socioeconomic and political system of the Pre-Columbian Andes. This model has been variously described by scholars throughout the 20th century, but an academic consensus has emerged using the general frameworks of Austrian economist Karl Polanyi.
Inca society is considered to have had some of the most successful centrally organized economies in history. Its effectiveness was achieved through the successful control of labor and the regulation of tribute resources. In Inca society, collective labor was the cornerstone for economic productivity and the achieving of common prosperity. Members of an ayllu (the basic unit of socio-territorial organisation) developed various traditions of solidarity to adapt to the Andean environment. The economic prosperity of the Inca State caused the Spanish conquerors to be impressed by the foreign forms of organisation. According to each ayllu, labor was divided by region, with agriculture centralized in the most productive areas; ceramic production, road construction, textile production, and other skills were also tasks distributed among members of an ayllu. After local needs were satisfied, the state apparatus gathered all surplus that is gathered from ayllus and allocated it where it was needed. Populations of local chiefdoms in the Inca Empire received clothes, food, health care, and schooling in exchange for their labour.
The economic organisation was based on local traditions of "solidarity" and "mutualism", transported to an imperial scale. The Sapa Inca governed by means of personal relations with the rulers of the local states, adopting the ethnological concept of "reciprocity" or "exchange".
Classification The Inca economy has been the subject of scholarly debate. Darrell E. La Lone, in his work 1982 The Inca as a Nonmarket Economy, noted that 20th Century scholars have previously described it as "feudal, slave, [or] socialist", as well as "a system based on reciprocity and redistribution; a system with markets and commerce; or an Asiatic mode of production."
In the 1960s, John Victor Murra criticised the welfare-hypothesis as a "socialist illusion", and theorised a redistributive model named the "vertical archipelago" based on the substantivist economist Karl Polanyi. This model has seen widespread acceptance, but has also been criticised. The ethno-historian María Rostworowski has argued that vertical redistribution was subordinated to the horizontal system of reciprocity. According to Chris Beyers, the substantivist framework can continue to be used, but it needs to be revised.
Reciprocity The custom of reciprocity was the foundation of the socio-economic ties of chiefdoms in large parts of the Americas, in the Pre-Columbian Andes, the "intermediary zone" stretching from the Colombian Andes to the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, and north-America, where the Potlach ceremony took place. The custom of reciprocity is observable worldwide, and other cases are notably found in Oceania.
In anthropology, the term "chiefdom" describes a non-egalitarian society of hunter-horticulturists, founded on rules of reciprocity (obligation to give, to receive, and to give back), and composed of multiple lineages in a hierarchy, at the top of which was a chief. In the Andes, the system of reciprocity and redistribution was likely installed by the Wari State, between 500 and 800, who based the system on the exploitation of several vertical eco-zones of the Andes by local communities to limit the activity of merchant networks and markets. This system of exploitation of multiple eco-zones to access resources and avoid climate catastrophes has later been named "territorial discontinuity" or "vertical archipelago". While basic necessity products circulated through tribute, merchants, especially maritime ones, continued to sell luxury products for the chiefs and priesthood. This model of reciprocity represented a network of economic exchange and commercial relations, that contradicts previous theories of socialist thinkers that there was no system of exchange of goods and services within the Inca Empire. All institutions of labour and social classes were founded on relations of reciprocity, the idea that "each service […] lent called for a return". By giving something, an individual "proved his economic and moral capacity to separate from his possessions", and the act was seen as a sign of altruism. According to rules of etiquette, the giver presented his demand as a request, however it was meant as an order. Receiving a gift established trust, and implicitly obligated the receiver to engage himself to give a similar service back. In some circumstances, "asymmetrical reciprocity" was practiced, notably between individuals of different rank, where an individual gave a service to receive a service different from the original one back. Due to this inequality, some modern ethnologists describe the phenomenon as "exchange" rather than "reciprocity". The French anthropologist and sociologist Marcel Mauss was an important figure in studying reciprocity in the Americas, as well as the Ukrainian-American anthropologist John V. Murra who coined the term "vertical archipelago". Nathan Wachtel finds that an early form of reciprocity, practiced locally, that served ideological functions to justify new social relations, was later replaced under Inca rule by a reciprocity that served the growth of the state apparatus. The Inca state benefited from its subjects' services, and redistributed the accumulated surpluses. Reciprocity, a horizontal form of interaction between local peoples and the central state, was combined with redistribution, a vertical form of interaction between central authority and local entities, and the former was the ideological justification for the latter. According to Nathan Wachtel in La Vision des vaincus, the Inca state economy is defined as "the combination of two principles: those of reciprocity and redistribution", theoretically opposed but complementary, as "two movements, centripetal and centrifugal, define economic life: Gathering of products from the groups to the center, then distribution of the products from the center to the groups".
The Inca state was not the utopia imagined by Europeans however, as most redistributed products were "consumed by the system of reciprocity, by which the state was under constant obligation to renew great "gifts" to the various ethnic lords, military chiefs, the huacas. [...] To meet these obligations, a system of state storehouses was built". According to the Peruvian ethno-historian María Rostworowski, the Inca state depended on "enormous quantities of accumulated goods", and without these, "it would not be able to meet either administrative requirements or the constant demand for "gifts" required by the institution of reciprocity".
Redistributive system
The basis of the Andean socio-political organisation was the ayllu, a group of families united by real or mythical kin ties, and separated into a male and a female line. The ruler of an ayllu was the kuraka, or chief, called kamachikuq, and was part of the class of common people ("Hatunruna").
Each ayllu owned a marka, or village. The vertical archipelago, adopted by the Lupaqa chiefdom, was occasionally used by the Inca Emperors. Depending on its geographical position, each ayllu was specialized in exploiting certain eco-regions. Agricultural ayllus were situated near fertile land and grew crops that were suited to the soil type. Their production would be taken by the state apparatus, who would then transfer it to other regions of the country where the resource was unavailable. Excess was kept in storage houses near urban centers, along roads and highways. Other ayllus would specialize in pottery, clothes, or jewelry production; skills were passed on from generation to generation within the same ayllu.
According to Valensi, cited by María Rostworowski, redistribution occurs in societies functioning around a political center, "that collects goods, stores and redistributes them to reward its supporters". Reciprocity, which "intervenes in the production, labor services, and periodic distribution of lands, as well as in the apportionment of goods produced, in the practice of gift-giving", can be combined with redistribution, as reciprocity is the horizontal and redistribution the vertical model of relations between local peoples and central authority.
Socio-political structures The socio-territorial structures were scaffoldings of chiefdoms, organized pyramidally and segmentarilly, according to interpersonal relations (individualized and institutionalized) and possession of land (owned collectively).
Ayllus were federated into chiefdoms (also called curacazgos or huarangas), governed by kurakas called Apu kurakas, and small chiefdoms were organized into larger chiefdoms, governed by apu kurakas called Hatun kurakas. The grand chiefdoms, in adopting redistributive systems of reciprocal exchange (by exchanging liberalities, often in the form of feasts, for workforce, allegiances, and a significant reduction of sovereignty) with the local rulers, represented the highest level of integration reached in the pre-Hispanic Andes, while the Inca Empire did not introduce an imperial-wide integration, instead governing on the basis of local hierarchies. Inca expansion – possibly initiated by the acquisition of Chanka war booty following the Chanka–Inca War, which gave an initial economic advantage to the inca chiefdom — added a new sphere to the redistributive system established in the Andes, with the Inca ruler exchanging the newly acquired goods for the workforce and the allegiance of the neighbouring rulers, and therefore multiplying reciprocal relations and slowly dominating the local socio-economic system.
Land possession in the Inca Empire The land of an ayllu was owned collectively. As the ayllu's delegate, the kuraka redistributed the property among families. The land's measurements were calculated in tupus, a local measuring unit, and differed depending on the agricultural condition of the region.
A married pair would get one and a half tupus, with one tupu for each male child and half a tupu for each female child. When the children started their own family, the additional tupu was transferred to the family of the son or daughter. The property was used by the families of the ayllu, but they did not own it. The farm was used to supply the family with subsistence food.
Collective labor tribute Under the Inca Empire, officials routinely conducted a census of the male population to determine if labor conscription was necessary. Individuals, including adolescents, were obligated to work in different labor capacities on a revolving basis, whether it was livestock, building, or at home. Inca officials received two-thirds of a farmer's crops (over 20 varieties of corn and 240 varieties of potatoes).