...they were able to disprove the long-held belief that the Maya depended on the elite class to tax and redistribute their food and other goods.Thanks Vigilanteman.
Those who have studied Karl Polanyi's landmark writing The Great Transformation (1944) understands that Marxists and their fellow travelers always assume big government is a necessary ingredient for advanced civilization.
The Mayan Culture was one of Polanyi's most cited proofs for this thesis. According to Polanyi, only an elite (to command fair redistribution) and servile class are needed to advance civilization.
A middle class often becomes an impediment to this progress. Hence, honest Marxists will openly admit a war on the middle class or bourgueoise in Marxist terms.
Thus, the explosion of their long-held contention that their model Mayan society had no markets, no middle class and a perfect command economy who ensured efficient redistribution is ground-breaking, to say the least.
It is pretty clear, however, that the Inca operated a system not far off what Polanyi postulated for the Maya. This is because the Inca were still around to have stuff written down about them. The Maya were well past their sell-by date by the time the Spanish showed up, so their economic systems had to be inferred.
The elite are necessary, but not for socialist redistribution. I was reading about some Eastern Mediterranean old civilization — one of the earlier lists of laws. One of the laws impressed me, it said robbing or harassing traders was a really, really bad thing. That’s what the elite did; they protected private property. If you protect private property, you will get rich. They understood.
Native Americans have always been a blank canvas onto which others project their own beliefs.
...they were able to disprove the long-held belief that the Maya depended on the elite class to tax and redistribute their food and other goods.Thanks Vigilanteman.
Now if only the GOP would become the party of the middleclass, then we’d see some real change!
