Books: sociology: Anarchist Cybernetics

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+[[!meta title="Anarchist Cybernetics"]]
+
+* https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/37597/1/2016swanntrphd.pdf
+* https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/phir/staff/thomas-swann/
+* https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.686573
+* https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/37597
+* https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/12/1642612/-Anti-Capitalist-Meetup-Swann-s-Way-anarchist-cybernetics-amp-organizational-dynamics-in-politics
+
+## Excerpts
+
+    goals. The metaphor of a dance with complexity echoes the way Ashby describes the
+    process of control as being similar to a fencer facing an opponent. ‘(I)f a fencer faces an
+    opponent who has various modes of attack available,’ he writes, ‘the fencer must be
+    provided with at least an equal number of modes of defence’ ([1958] 2003, p. 356; see
+    also Ashby, 1962)). Control and regulation are processes of responding to the
+    unpredictable moves of another dancer (again, the complexity can be threatening or, in
+    the case of a dance or in fencing, it can be more of a friendly game or a negotiation). 11
+    Control is not something enacted by an entity, be it an individual or a group, over an
+
+    [...]
+
+    Self-organisation is a sticky concept for cybernetics. Ashby, for example, argues that it
+    cannot exist. He bases his argument on the second-order cybernetic position that
+    viability or effectiveness is always determined as such by an observer of a system. Self-
+    organisation suggests that a system responds effectively by itself to complexity. Along
+    these lines, self-organisation is not a property of the system itself but of the observation
+    (1962; see also von Foerster, [1960] 2003; Duda, 2012, p. 89). While this may apply to
+    mathematical, biological and engineering applications of cybernetics, it is
+    fundamentally at odds with organisational cybernetics and the cybernetics of social and
+    political organisation more generally. A more fitting account of self-organisation, one
+    that is applicable to both the cybernetic need for control and the specific nature of social
+    and political organisations, is the more common one of a group of people deciding
+    amongst themselves, to achieve some goal(s). Stewart Umpleby (1987) highlights this
+    simple definition by contrasting two situations:
+    A teacher can organize a class into groups by assigning each child to a specific group and
+
+    [...]
+
+    One of the core ideas in cybernetic thought when it comes to communication is that of
+    feedback. Beer in fact highlights feedback as ‘the most important concept of all’ ([1981]
+    1994, p. 32). Feedback explains how information, 12 from the environment but also the
+    internal workings of the organisation itself, plays a role in how the various parts of the
+    organisation operate autonomously. Beer is keen to stress that feedback does not mean
+    what it is commonly thought to mean, i.e. a response to something. Instead, feedback
+    refers to the way in which information about the changes a part of an organisation or
+    system faces are used to help that part maintain an agreed level of operation or to work
+    towards an agreed goal. Information coming into an operating unit of an organisation or
+    system about what is happening, both internally and externally, allows it to direct its
+
+    [...]
+
+    account of the free market as a tool for allowing order to emerge from chaos (Cooper,
+    2011; see also Gilbert, 2005). Hayek was of course one of the key architects of the
+    theories that supported neoliberalism and, in a sad irony, was involved in advising the
+    dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that had toppled the government of Salvador Allende
+    in Chile that Beer had become so invested in (Harvey, 2005). While complexity has
+    been discussed thus far in relation to the potential for self-organisation in a way that
+    may well run parallel to radically political accounts (see also Maeckelbergh, 2009, pp.
+    203-210; Purkis, 2004, pp. 51-52), it is important to note that there is a competing
+    narrative around complexity theory, one that takes it in a dramatically different
+    direction.
+    Autonomy and ideas of self-organisation and horizontality, too, have been subject to
+
+    [...]
+
+    This initial affinity between anarchism and organisational cybernetics comes through in
+    how Kropotkin characterises centralised, top-down forms of government as being not
+    only politically and morally objectionable but at the same time ineffectual. Kropotkin
+    writes (1927, pp. 76-7) that ‘in all production there arise daily thousands of difficulties
+    which no government can solve or foresee.’ Against the plans of those socialists who
+    wish to use the state to manage this complexity, ‘the governmentalists’ to use
+    McEwan’s term, he argues that ‘production and exchange represented an undertaking so
+    complicated that the plans of the state socialists, which lead inevitably to a party
+    directorship, would prove to be absolutely ineffective as soon as they were applied to
+    life.’ 21 As an alternative to centralised attempts at attenuating variety in society (which
+    would lead to an oppression of individuals’ right to live their lives as they see fit) and
+    amplifying variety in the state as an organising body (resulting in a massive
+    bureaucracy), Kropotkin proposes that the workers themselves and their unions
+    administer production in an autonomous manner. 22 As political science scholar Marius
+
+    [...]
+
+    22
+    An alternative approach to anarchism and cybernetics that focuses on feedback loops can be found in
+    Roel van Duijn’s Message of a Wise Kabouter (1972). In a conversation I had with van Duijn in 2013 he
+    suggested that he had come to cybernetics as a result of discussions between himself and Murray
+    Bookchin in the 1960s. Bookchin does use the term ‘cybernetics’ but does so to refer to high-technology
+    and links it to a centralised, authoritarian corporate state (e.g. 1985), so it seems that he had not engaged
+    with the cybernetics of Wiener and Beer. Van Duijn may have been put onto cybernetics through reading
+
+    [...]
+
+    John Duda (2013, p. 64) describes the approach to anarchism of McEwan as ‘a shift
+    away from a moral vision of anarchism, outraged at the scandal of domination’ towards
+    a paradigm focussed on the ‘superior productivity of anarchist organisational
+    methodology’, but I would suggest that it in fact tries to show that anarchism trumps
+    top-down government on both counts, without prioritising one over the other. Indeed,
+    the fact that it is present in Kropotkin’s work supports the view that it is not a shift that
+    took place in light of anarchist engagements with cybernetics but is a dual-perspective
+    that is present in at least some forms of anarchism from relatively early in the canon.
+    This could be thought of as ‘the two sides of the anarchist coin’. On the one hand there
+    is the ethical and political concern for autonomy, while on the other there is the
+    functional concern for effective organisation.
+    The connections between anarchism and cybernetics were also picked up on by one of
+
+    [...]
+
+    While this is framed within a typically-hierarchical organisational structure with an
+    executive and a receptionist, the point Pask is getting at is that the hierarchy is also one
+    of levels of language. The highest level in the hierarchy involves a metalanguage that is
+    used to talk about lower levels, which too have a metalanguage to talk about levels
+    lower than them. Although this is clearly a hierarchy such that a level thrice removed
+    from the top, for example, would have difficulty communicating directly with the top
+    and vice versa given the difference in languages, Pask is very clear that this describes a
+
+    [...]
+
+    She goes so far as to point out that System Five in the VSM, the part of the organisation
+    involved in defining the identity and overall goals of the organisation, can be ‘just a
+    routine or an activity’ and ‘does not necessarily need to be an extra set of people’ (2013,
+    p. 12; see also 1999).
+    McEwan follows Pask’s account by making explicit the distinction between the two
+
+    [...]
+
+    command such that each level is subordinate to the levels above it and where the top
+    level has overall control over decision making in the organisation. Functional
+    hierarchy, however, applies to an organisation where ‘there are two or more levels of
+    information structure operating in the system’ (McEwan, [1963] 1987, p. 44).
+
+    [...]
+
+    the working groups consider their activities and adjust them if necessary in line with the
+    decided-upon goals of the organisation. Crucially, for an anarchist cybernetics and
+    VSM, everyone involved in the working groups can, potentially, be involved in the
+    General Assemblies and so in these System Three discussions. The same individuals
+    step out of their functional role as working group members and into that of reflecting on
+    their practice within working groups. System Four involves the same individuals again,
+    and also in the General Assemblies, reflecting on the activities of the working groups
+    and the organisation as a whole as well as its overall strategy in relation to events in the
+    outside world. Adjustments to both tactics and strategy can be made in light of changes
+
+    [...]
+
+    Elsewhere, Bakunin similarly argues that ‘all organizations must proceed by way of
+    federation from the base to the summit, from the commune to the coordinating
+    association of the country or nation’ (1971b: 82-83, italics in original). Here we have a
+    picture of a federated form of organisation in which smaller local organisations, free
+    associations or cooperatives, link up with one another at the level of the commune.
+    Communes then link up in a regional council and so on to the level of an international
+    council. This too is reflective of the recursivity that is essential to the VSM: any viable
+    system is itself a part of another viable system and has within it multiple viable systems.
+    Not only does the decision-making structure of an anarchist federation relate favourably
+    to that of organisational cybernetics, but so too does the very principle of federated
+    organisation, something Wiener in fact hints at (1961, p. 155) and of which Beer is
+    sometimes quite explicit in his support (see Medina, 2011, pp. 159-160).
+    McEwan, in his Anarchy article, makes this link between this syndicalist model of
+
+    [...]
+
+    Importantly, this is not enough for an anarchist version of cybernetics. A more explicitly
+    ethical and political autonomy, which values autonomy as an individual and collective
+    good over-and-above its role within organisational structure, needs to be introduced.
+    This brings into play a crucial distinction between the firm, as Beer conceives of it, and
+    radical left and anarchist organisation. While the firm may be viable on cybernetic
+    terms by including a functional autonomy, whereby individual operating units have
+    some scope for self-organisation and independent decision making, it will be shown that
+    radical left and anarchist organisation must combine this cybernetic demand with the
+    ethical and political demand that values individual and collective autonomy in and of
+    itself. The two sides of the anarchist coin, as I have described them above, must be
+    brought together. For now it is enough to note that while Beer’s work focusses on the
+    firm and, one can argue, takes that as a model of social organisation in general, an
+    anarchist cybernetics highlights a distinction that must be made between the firm, which
+    takes as a necessary condition autonomy as a function, and radical left and anarchist
+
+    [...]
+
+    Thinking about cybernetics and organisation along these lines, the work of science and
+    technology studies scholar Andrew Pickering (2010) becomes extremely important.
+    Rather than being focussed on representing an external reality with accuracy,
+    Pickering’s cybernetics is instead involved in performance. Performance is understood
+    as the actions we undertake in the world that demand a pragmatic and constructed
+    knowledge as opposed to a detailed representation of reality. 24 He describes this as a
+    ‘performative epistemology’: ‘a vision of knowledge as part of performance rather than
+    24
+    This owes something of a debt to the American Pragmatism of Pierce, Dewey and others, although this
+
+    [...]
+
+    as an external control of it’ (ibid., p. 25, italics in original). The cybernetician, therefore,
+    is not engaged in unpacking and describing a reality (be it a machine, an animal, a
+    human being or a social phenomenon) but in facilitating performances or practices that
+    he or she is a part of. Cybernetics, in this regard, is committed to action and not simply
+    theorising about the nature of knowledge. This is evident in the work of Beer who, as I
+    have shown in the second chapter, was throughout his life heavily involved in practicing
+    cybernetics. Pickering highlights the fact that the very definition of cybernetics as
+    steering shows this connection with performance and practice (ibid., p. 30). It is a
+    science not of representing the objective mechanisms of control and communication but
+    of doing control and communication.
+    Interestingly, this turn towards science as performance in fact brings to the fore another
+
+
+    [...]
+
+    He also speaks of the importance of ‘radical transformation and listening’ (2010, pp. 42-
+    43). While many more could be added, these seven goals (mutual respect, cooperation,
+    egalitarian decision-making, promotion of radical democratic vision, deconstruction of
+    borders, radical transformation and listening) will serve to demonstrate how a virtuous
+    anarchist mode of research can be conceived. In order to act virtuously as an anarchist, a
+    researcher must act so as to embody these goals. The researcher should aim to: (1) be
+    respectful of participants in research; (2) encourage cooperation in the research on the
+    part of the participants; (3) engage in egalitarian relationships with the participants; (4)
+    promote the radical democratic ideal of anarchism; (5) conduct the research in a
+    borderless fashion; (6) be radically transformative (i.e. live as radically transformed);
+    and (7) listen to participants. It should be noted that according to the prefigurative virtue
+    ethics outlined by Franks, these virtues and goals are negotiable and specific to
+
+    [...]
+
+    While it is not the focus of cybernetics, such an ethical approach can also be seen in the
+    work of von Foerster. In line with the second-order cybernetic concern for the
+    researcher as ‘a person who considers oneself to be a participant actor in the drama of
+    mutual interaction of the give and take in the circularity of human relations’ ([1991]
+    2003, p. 289), von Foerster frames ethics as an understanding of the norms that govern
+    the practices we engage in. Rather than seeing scientific research as a practice involving
+    truth, von Foerster recasts it as involving trust, understanding, responsibility, reaching
+    out for the other and ‘a conspiracy, whose customs, rules, and regulations we are now
+    inventing’ (ibid., p. 294). 27 On this understanding, an ethics of research is
+    fundamentally an ethics of co-producing knowledge and von Foerster’s account of
+    second-order cybernetics links up well with the anarchist research ethics defined by
+
+    [...]
+
+    who wish to hinder and frustrate the movement with invaluable information about how
+    practices are organised. Franks (1992) warns that ‘the social sciences are the third
+    section of the intelligence gathering services. […] The state's liberal surveillance wing,
+    sociology, informs on what working class people are thinking and doing.’ He goes on to
+    say that sociologists aim to show ‘when working class people's actions and attitudes are
+    showing signs of becoming a threat to the stability of [the ruling] class’s dominant
+    position.’ This is a rather dramatic and perhaps unfair characterisation, but in general
+    concerns related to research as surveillance are warranted. There is a serious risk
+
+    [...]
+
+    associated with anarchist research that detailed information about successful anarchist
+    organising would be at the same time a guide to countering such organising. This is
+    perhaps especially true in the case of the research carried out here as this could provide
+    detailed information on the organisational dynamics of radical left groups and their
+    communication practices, and would allow security services to disrupt organisation and
+    communications at key points. In writing this thesis, care has therefore been taken to
+    reduce the risk of it being useful to those wishing to disrupt the movement. I have
+    allowed activists to review the transcripts of their interviews and highlight any details
+    that they would prefer to not be included or that they would prefer not attributed to
+    them.
+    This anarchist, prefigurative research ethics has much in common with ethics of care in
+
+    [...]
+
+    levels of an organisation is through the notions of tactics and strategy. Beer does just
+    this when he suggests that Systems One and Two are involved in tactics while System
+    Three is involved in strategy (ibid., p. 360; see also, e.g. Pickering, 2010, p. 245). This
+    is, I would argue, misleading as for Beer Systems Three and Four operate along similar
+    lines but with System Three focused on the internal environment and what happens at
+    Systems One and Two while System Four is focused on the external environment and
+    the potential future of the organisation. I want to think, therefore, of Systems Three and
+
+    [...]
+
+    important tactically to what radical left groups and activists do. In a social centre I used
+    to frequent there was a small model of a kitchen sink with written on it: ‘First the
+    washing up, then the revolution’. 41 The tactical repertoire of radical left groups includes
+    all this and more.
+    How does this distinction between tactics and strategy operate in anarchist organisation,
+
+    [...]
+
+    As an extension of the tactics-strategy dichotomy presented above, this suggests the role
+    of a third element of the politics of radical left groups and movements, what I want here
+    to refer to as ‘grand strategy’. The term ‘grand strategy’ was coined by American
+    military theorist John Boyd during the Cold War. 45 Boyd defines grand strategy as
+    pursuing ‘the national goal’ and amplifying ‘our spirit and strength (while undermining
+    and isolating our adversaries)’ (2005, slide 140). The notion of a ‘national goal’ is of
+    course very specific to a state-centred geo-political project such as a war and is certainly
+    at extreme odds with anarchism’s anti-militarism and anti-nationalism. Indeed, even the
+    idea of competition contained in Boyd’s definition of grand strategy is antithetical to the
+    relationships of mutual aid and cooperation. While ideas such as these are common in
+    some business and management accounts of strategy (see, e.g. Carter, Clegg and
+
+    [...]
+
+    Hopefully, I have shown that the answer to both of these has to be negative. For Beer,
+    organisational cybernetics is about defining the necessary and sufficient conditions,
+    based on the need to handle complexity, for viable organisation. This does not need to
+    result in a centralised, bureaucratic and authoritarian structure but can be grounded in
+    one that relies on autonomy. By formulating an anarchist cybernetics, I want to show
+    that while Beer maintains the basic structure of capitalist enterprise, with a middle
+    management layer and a senior executive level at the top, these are not necessary for
+    viability. This is the core difference between Beer’s cybernetics and the anarchist
+    cybernetics I am arguing for here. To give Beer the credit he is due, his account of how
+    organisations should determine goals does touch on non-hierarchical processes, as
+    Pickering argues (2010: 272). Anarchist cybernetics shows how tactics, strategy and