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The Incan Empire was restrained by one factor, namely the lack of horses. Without the horse as a domesticable animal, there were many technologies which weren't developed since they didn't need to and couldn't do that. Otherwise, their empire was quite fantastic.

I am curious about the masista analysis, since my own thoughts about the Incan history have been moving in similar directions.

Interesting points, I've always thought that the Incan Empire did not follow the Asiatic mode of production because it is too distinct economically from the eastern empires and it was definitely not feudal in any sense, nor could it be considered a Roman style slavocracy. However, I don't see it as a economic dead end, I just think that it is a unique mode of production that economic philosophers have yet to understand partially because it only existed for a few centuries (as a culture) and for less than 100 years as an empire. It would have evolved distinctly from the European nations but that does not make it a dead end and I do find the attack that it was an economic dead end to be a dangerous set of apologetics.

I feel that the empire wasn't really stunted by a lack or horses as it found ways around those, like the chasqui system for delivering mail. And in Europe horses essentially served two purposes transport and war. In terms of transport I doubt that the horse in particular would have been very useful to the Incas being that their empire was located in the Andean mountain range. And in terms of war, the Incas never needed to battle anyone with horses other than the Spanish.

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The reason why Eurasia got a competitive edge against Africa and the Americas was that it had many more domesticable animals, as well as a geography better suited for the establishment of empires.

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Feudalism has emerged and collapsed in other places of the world before it did so in Europe, without leading into capitalism. The Parthian Empire and the Zhou Dynasty were both feudal civilisations.

The Incans are, by far, my favorite civilization - they just did things so differently than every other premodern empire. It seems ridiculous, in my opinion, to say that the Spanish conquest was objectively progressive because Tawatinsuyu was in a dead-end mode of production - it was still expanding and growing more sophisticated when Europeans arrived. Who knows what it might have evolved into?

If we define the fSU and friends as "bureaucratic collectivism" - a category that includes a number of economies with very different setups - what places the Four Regions outside of that category?

Ancient Egypt and the Incan Empire really represent pre-modern examples of planned economies. The main difference from the Soviet Union - apart from technology - is that these two pre-modern civilisations legitimised their system with religious foundations, while the Soviet Union motivated it with the socialist mission for the future. Some would claim the latter also could be seen as a kind of religion though...

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This is fascinating, do you have any more information about this theory?

Dimento, do you know of any good resources on Egypt? I had thought of them as a sort of hybrid system - subjects of pharaonic planning during the floody season, traditional peasants during the rest of the year - but that's just a vague sense.

What I mean is: how do they define "bureaucratic collectivism" as a mode of production? I'm struggling to think of one that captures most state socialisms but not the Incan Empire; if Dimento is right and the biggest difference is ideological, coming up with a new name for it seems otiose. The biggest differences I can think of myself is that the Second World existed in the context of capitalist competitors, and that consumer goods were obtained (much moreso) through hierarchy-dependent rations rather than markets.

It may or may not mean anything that the most isolated and least consumer-market-y state socialist country - North Korea - has some striking ideological similarities. Hard to generalize from two examples.

If they already had an egalitarian society and didn't need what we call progress, I don't see the need of feudalism and capitalism in order to liberate them.

The Inca weren't egalitarian. A mass of laborers was directed by priest-bureaucrats, produced the opulence of nobles, and worshiped a living god-king. The empire was able to feed everyone, which is extremely impressive (and certainly preferable to what happened under the Spanish,) but they were hardly liberated.

The old, middle and new kingdoms of Egypt had central planning when it came to the flood seasons, centralised distribution of grain all around the year, and government operated "factories" (beer, tools, consumer goods, later on weapons and wheels). After the fall of the new kingdom, it became less and less planned, though they always kept a kind of centralised control over the distribution of grain.

"And in Europe horses essentially served two purposes transport and war."

Why are you separating transportation and war? truly (for instance) the US only became a millitary "superpower" because of the transportaion revolution.

Not really. The US became it for geographical reasons. Bordering an ocean to the east and an ocean to the west, a weak and scarcely populated neighbour to the north and another weak, chaotic neighbour to the south. That has allowed the United States to combine characteristics of a tellucratic with those of a talassocratic empire.