Difference between revisions of "Anarchy 31/Anarchism and the cybernetics of self-organising systems"
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<div style="max-width:500px; margin:auto;">{{p|270}} | <div style="max-width:500px; margin:auto;">{{p|270}} | ||
− | <font size="5">'''Anarchism and the'''< | + | {| width="100%" |
+ | |- | ||
+ | | colspan="2" |<font size="5">'''Anarchism and the'''</font> | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | colspan="2" |<font size="5">'''cybernetics of self-organising'''</font><br> | ||
+ | |- | ||
+ | | <font size="5">'''systems'''</font> | ||
+ | | align="right" valign="top" | <font size="4">'''[[Author:John D. McEwan|JOHN D. McEWAN]]'''</font> | ||
+ | |} | ||
− | |||
+ | {{p|s1|n}}<div style="text-align:justify;">{{sc|The intention of this article}} is to suggest that some of the con­cepts used by {{w|cyber­neti­cians|Cybernetics|Cybernetics}} study­ing evolv­ing self-organ­ising systems may be relev­ant to anarch­ist theory, and that some of the con­clu­sions drawn from this study tend to favour liber­tarian models of social organ­isa­tion. Much of the spe­cific­ally cyber­netic ma­terial is drawn from lectures given by {{w|Gordon Pask|Gordon_Pask}} and {{w|Stafford Beer|Stafford_Beer}} at {{w|Salford College of Advanced Technology|University_of_Salford|University of Salford}}. They are not, of course, respons­ible for any con­clu­sions drawn, except where expli­citly stated. | ||
− | {{ | + | {{tab}}Firstly, what do we mean by a self-organ­ising system? One defini­tion is simply {{q|a system in which the ''order'' in­creases as time passes}}, that is, in which the ratio of the ''{{w|variety|Variety_(cybernetics)|Variety (cybernetics)}}'' ex­hibited to the max­imum possible variety de­creases; variety being a measure of the com­plex­ity of the system as it appears to an ob­server, the uncer­tainty for the ob­server regard­ing its beha­viour. A system with large variety will have a larger number of pos­sible states than one with smaller variety. Thus such a system may start by ex­hibit­ing very varied beha­viour, ''e.g.''<!-- 'e.g.' not in italics in original --> a large number of dif­fer­ent re­sponses to a given stim­ulus may appear equally likely, but over a period of time the beha­viour becomes less erratic, more pre­dict­able—fewer and fewer dis­tinct re­sponses to a given stim­ulus are pos­sible (or, better, have a sig­nific­antly high prob­abil­ity.) |
− | {{tab}} | + | {{tab}}This def­ini­tion is, however, in some ways re­strict­ive. The best such a system can do is to reach some sort of op­timum state and stay there. Also, if we regard the system as a {{w|control system|Control_system|Control system}} at­tempt­ing to main­tain stabil­ity in a fluctu­ating en­viron­ment, the types of dis­turb­ance with which it can deal are limited by the fixed max­imum variety of the system. This point will be dealt with later. The essen­tial thing is that unpre­dict­able dis­turb­ances are liable to prove too much for the system. |
− | {{tab}} | + | {{tab}}Such con­sidera­tions suggest that it would be more fruit­ful to in­corpor­ate in the defini­tion the idea that the max­imum pos­sible variety might also differ at dif­fer­ent times. Thus Pask re­stricts the term to situa­tions where the history of {{q|the system}} can best be repre­sented as a series S₀ S₁ {{e}} S''ₙ''<!-- 'n' not subscript in original --> each term a system with fixed max­imum variety, and each self-organising in the first sense. With this defini­tion we are {{p|271}}able to deal with control systems of the type found in living organ­isms. Indeed, with a few limited excep­tions, bio­logical and social organ­isa­tion are, up to now, the only fields in which such control systems can be found. Some of the excep­tions, in the shape of ar­tifi­cially con­structed systems, despite their crude and ele­ment­ary nature in com­par­ison with living organ­isms, do however exhibit re­mark­ably ad­vanced beha­viour, at least in com­par­ison with con­ven­tional con­trol­lers. |
− | + | {{tab}}For an example of self-organ­ising beha­viour in this sense, we may con­sider a human being learn­ing to solve certain types of problem, as his beha­viour appears to an ob­server. Over an inter­val the beha­viour may appear self-organ­ising in the first sense. When, however, the learner adopts a new concept or method, there will be a dis­con­tinu­ity in the de­velop­ment of the beha­viour, after which it will again be self-organ­ising in the first sense, for a time, but now in­corpor­ating new pos­sibil­ities, and so on. | |
− | |||
− | {{tab}}For an example of self- | ||
{{tab}}In many dis­cus­sions of control situa­tions the concept of {{q|Hier­archy}} appears very quickly. This may tend to make the anarch­ist recoil, but should not do so, since the usage is a tech­nical one and does not co­in­cide with the use of the term in anarch­ist criti­cisms of polit­ical organ­isa­tion. | {{tab}}In many dis­cus­sions of control situa­tions the concept of {{q|Hier­archy}} appears very quickly. This may tend to make the anarch­ist recoil, but should not do so, since the usage is a tech­nical one and does not co­in­cide with the use of the term in anarch­ist criti­cisms of polit­ical organ­isa­tion. | ||
− | {{tab}}Firstly, the cyber­neti­cian makes a very import­ant dis­tinc­tion between two types of hier­archy, the ''ana­tom­ical'' and the ''func­tional'', to use the termin­ology adopted by Pask. The former is the type exem­pli­fied in part by hier­arch­ical social organ­isa­tion in the normal sense (''e.g.'' {{q|tree of command}} struc­ture in in­dustry), that is: there are two (if two levels) actual dis­tin­guish­able con­crete entit­ies in­volved. The latter refers to the case where there may be only one entity, but there are two or more levels of in­forma­tion struc­ture opera­ting in the | + | {{tab}}Firstly, the cyber­neti­cian makes a very import­ant dis­tinc­tion between two types of hier­archy, the ''ana­tom­ical'' and the ''func­tional'', to use the termin­ology adopted by Pask. The former is the type exem­pli­fied in part by hier­arch­ical social organ­isa­tion in the normal sense (''e.g.'' {{q|tree of command}} struc­ture in in­dustry), that is: there are two (if two levels) actual dis­tin­guish­able con­crete entit­ies in­volved. The latter refers to the case where there may be only one entity, but there are two or more levels of in­forma­tion struc­ture opera­ting in the system—as for example in some types of {{w|neuron networks|Biological_neural_network|Biological neural network}}. A compar­able concept is {{w|Melman|Seymour_Melman|Seymour Melman}}{{s}} {{q|dis­alien­ated de­cision pro­cedure}}.<ref>See {{w|Seymour Melman|Seymour_Melman|Seymour Melman}}: '''Decision-Making and Productivity''' (Blackwell, 1958).</ref> This idea might, I think, be sug­gest­ive to anarch­ists. |
{{tab}}Secondly, even in the case of {{q|ana­tom­ical hier­archy}}, the term only means that parts of the system can be dis­tin­guished dealing with dif­fer­ent<!-- 'diifferent' in original --> levels of de­cision making and learning, ''e.g.'' some parts may deal dir­ectly with the en­viron­ment, while other parts relate to activ­ity of these first parts, or some parts learn about indi­vidual occur­rences, while others learn about se­quences of indi­vidual occur­rences, and others again about classes of se­quences. | {{tab}}Secondly, even in the case of {{q|ana­tom­ical hier­archy}}, the term only means that parts of the system can be dis­tin­guished dealing with dif­fer­ent<!-- 'diifferent' in original --> levels of de­cision making and learning, ''e.g.'' some parts may deal dir­ectly with the en­viron­ment, while other parts relate to activ­ity of these first parts, or some parts learn about indi­vidual occur­rences, while others learn about se­quences of indi­vidual occur­rences, and others again about classes of se­quences. | ||
− | {{tab}}Even in the ana­tom­ical sense, then, the term need have none of the con­nota­tions of coer­cive sanc­tions in a ruler- | + | {{tab}}Even in the ana­tom­ical sense, then, the term need have none of the con­nota­tions of coer­cive sanc­tions in a ruler-ruled rela­tion­ship which are common in other usages. |
− | {{tab}}An im­port­ant phe­nomenon in self- | + | {{tab}}An im­port­ant phe­nomenon in self-organ­ising systems is inter­action between the in­forma­tion flowing in the system and the struc­ture of the system. In a complex system this leads to ''Redund­ancy of Poten­tial Com­mand''—it is ''impos­sible to pick out the crit­ical de­cision-making element,'' since this will change from one time to another, and depend on the in­forma­tion in the system. It will be evident that this implies that the idea of a hier­archy can have only limited ap­plica­tion in such a system. |
− | {{p|272}}{{tab}}I will now attempt to give a brief sketch of a partly arti­ficial self- | + | {{p|272}}{{tab}}I will now attempt to give a brief sketch of a partly arti­ficial self-organ­ising system, in­volv­ing the inter­action be­tween human beings and a machine. This pro­vides ex­amples of the con­cepts intro­duced, and also, I feel, sug­gests import­ant general con­clu­sions about the char­acter­ist­ics of self-organ­ising groups—char­acter­ist­ics which may sound familiar to liber­tari­ans. The machine in ques­tion is a group teach­ing machine de­veloped by Gordon Pask.<ref>{{w|Gordon Pask|Gordon_Pask}}: {{qq|Inter­ac­tion between a Group of Sub­jects and an Adapt­ive Auto­maton to produce a Self-Organ­ising System for De­cision-Making}} in the sym­posium '''Self-Organ­ising Systems, 1962,''' ed. {{popup|Jovits|Marshall C. Yovits (born 1923), American computer scientist}}, {{popup|Jacobi|George T. Jacobi, Armour Research Foundation}} and {{popup|Goldstein|Gordon David Goldstein (1917-1989), American computer scientist}} (Spartan Books).</ref> |
− | {{tab}}Prior to this Pask had de­veloped indi­vidual teach­ing ma­chines which were import­ant ad­vances in the growth of applied cyber­netics.<ref>See {{w|Stafford Beer|Stafford_Beer}}: '''Cyber­netics and Manage­ment''' (English Uni­ver­sities Press, 1959) pp. 123-127, and {{w|Gordon Pask|Gordon_Pask}}: '''An Ap­proach to Cyber­netics''' (Hutchin­son 1961).</ref> However, on con­sider­ing the problem of group teach­ing (for skills where some calcul­able measure of the pupil{{s|r}} per­form­ance, the rate of change of which will serve as a suit­able in­dica­tion of learn­ing, exists), he did not simply combine indi­vidual ma­chines. | + | {{tab}}Prior to this Pask had de­veloped indi­vidual teach­ing ma­chines which were import­ant ad­vances in the growth of applied cyber­netics.<ref>See {{w|Stafford Beer|Stafford_Beer}}: '''Cyber­netics and Manage­ment''' (English Uni­ver­sities Press, 1959) pp.123-127, and {{w|Gordon Pask|Gordon_Pask}}: '''An Ap­proach to Cyber­netics''' (Hutchin­son,<!-- comma omitted in original --> 1961).</ref> However, on con­sider­ing the problem of group teach­ing (for skills where some calcul­able measure of the pupil{{s|r}} per­form­ance, the rate of change of which will serve as a suit­able in­dica­tion of learn­ing, exists), he did not simply combine indi­vidual ma­chines. |
− | {{tab}}The import­ant insight he had was that a group of human beings in a learn­ing situ­ation, is itself an evolu­tion­ary system, which sug­gested the idea of the machine as a cata­lyst, ''modi­fy­ing the com­mun­ica­tion chan­nels in the group,'' and thus pro­ducing dif­fer­ent group struc­tures. | + | {{tab}}The import­ant insight he had was that a group of human beings, in a learn­ing situ­ation, is itself an evolu­tion­ary system, which sug­gested the idea of the machine as a cata­lyst, ''modi­fy­ing the com­mun­ica­tion chan­nels in the group,'' and thus pro­ducing dif­fer­ent group struc­tures. |
− | {{tab}}In the de­velop­ment of the indi­vidual teach­ing ma­chines, the possi­bil­ity of the pupil domin­ating the ma­chine had already arisen. This Pask now ex­tended by intro­ducing the idea of a quality {{q|money}} allo­cated to each member of the group, and used by each of them to {{q|buy}} for himself control over the commun­ica­tion struc­ture of the group and over the partial spe­cifica­tion of the solu­tion pro­vided by the machine. Now, in the indi­vidual machine, the degree to which the pupil was helped was coupled to change of his degree of success. If he was becom­ing more success­ful then the help given was de­creased. In the group machine, the allo­cation of {{q|money}} is coupled to ''two'' condi­ | + | {{tab}}In the de­velop­ment of the indi­vidual teach­ing ma­chines, the possi­bil­ity of the pupil domin­ating the ma­chine had already arisen. This Pask now ex­tended by intro­ducing the idea of a quality {{q|money}} allo­cated to each member of the group, and used by each of them to {{q|buy}} for himself control over the commun­ica­tion struc­ture of the group and over the partial spe­cifica­tion of the solu­tion pro­vided by the machine. Now, in the indi­vidual machine, the degree to which the pupil was helped was coupled to change of his degree of success. If he was becom­ing more success­ful then the help given was de­creased. In the group machine, the allo­cation of {{q|money}} is coupled to ''two'' condi­tions—in­creas­ing success ''and'' in­creas­ing variety in the group struc­ture. This second condi­tion is the key to the novelty of the system. |
{{tab}}The system, then, has chan­ging domin­ance and ex­hibits redund­ancy of poten­tial com­mand. | {{tab}}The system, then, has chan­ging domin­ance and ex­hibits redund­ancy of poten­tial com­mand. | ||
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{{tab}}In practice, each pupil sits in a little cubicle pro­vided with buttons and indic­ators for com­mun­ica­tion, and a com­puter<!-- 'computor' in original --> is used for control, calcul­ating the various meas­ures, etc. The oper­ator is pro­vided with some way of seeing what is going on, and can de­liber­ately make things dif­ficult for the group, by intro­ducing false in­forma­tion into the chan­nels, etc., seeing how the group copes with it. | {{tab}}In practice, each pupil sits in a little cubicle pro­vided with buttons and indic­ators for com­mun­ica­tion, and a com­puter<!-- 'computor' in original --> is used for control, calcul­ating the various meas­ures, etc. The oper­ator is pro­vided with some way of seeing what is going on, and can de­liber­ately make things dif­ficult for the group, by intro­ducing false in­forma­tion into the chan­nels, etc., seeing how the group copes with it. | ||
− | {{tab}}The prob­lems which Pask, at the time, had used in these group ex­peri­ments had been form­ulated as con­vey­ing in­forma­tion about the posi­tion of a point in some space, with noise in the com­mun­ica­tion chan­nels. The group had been asked to imagine that they are air traffic con­trol­lers, given co- | + | {{tab}}The prob­lems which Pask, at the time, had used in these group ex­peri­ments had been form­ulated as con­vey­ing in­forma­tion about the posi­tion of a point in some space, with noise in the com­mun­ica­tion chan­nels. The group had been asked to imagine that they are air traffic con­trol­lers, given co-ordin­ates spe­cify­ing the posi­tion of an air­craft at a certain time, for ex­ample. |
− | {{tab}}He sug­gests, however, that prob­lems of agree­ing on a choice of policy on a basis of agreed facts is not, in prin­ciple, very dif­fer­ent from the case in which {{q|the facts}} are in dispute, and there is no ques­tion of adopt­ing any future | + | {{tab}}He sug­gests, however, that prob­lems of agree­ing on a choice of policy on a basis of agreed facts is not, in prin­ciple, very dif­fer­ent from the case in which {{q|the facts}} are in dispute, and there is no ques­tion of adopt­ing any future policy—except of course the policy to adopt in order to ascer­tain the true facts and com­mun­icate them; this being the problem which the group solves for itself. It is in this sense that {{p|273}}the group may be re­garded as a de­cision maker. |
− | {{tab}}It will be noted that the state of the system when in equi­lib­rium ''is'' the solu­tion to the problem. Also that this solu­tion changes with time. This is also the case in the first example from purely human organ­isa­tion which oc­curred to | + | {{tab}}It will be noted that the state of the system when in equi­lib­rium ''is'' the solu­tion to the problem. Also that this solu­tion changes with time. This is also the case in the first example from purely human organ­isa­tion which oc­curred to me—a jazz band (an example also sug­gested by Pask). |
− | {{tab}}Pask em­phas­ised that he had not then had the op­portun­ity to obtain suffi­cient data to make any far- | + | {{tab}}Pask em­phas­ised that he had not then had the op­portun­ity to obtain suffi­cient data to make any far-reach­ing well sub­stanti­ated gen­eral­isa­tions from these ex­peri­ments. The results he had ob­tained, however, were very inter­est­ing and, I think, give con­sider­able insight into the char­acter­istics of self-organ­ising systems, and their ad­vant­ages over other types of de­cision-makers. |
− | {{tab}}Some groups, after an initial stage while they were gaining famil­iar­ity with the machine, began as­sign­ing specific roles to their mem­bers and intro­ducing<!-- 'introducting' in original --> stand­ard pro­cedures. This led to a drop in effi­ciency and in­abil­ity to handle new factors intro­duced by spur­ious inform­ation, etc. The learn­ing curve rises, flat­tens, then drops sharply when­ever some new element is intro­duced. The system is now no longer self- | + | {{tab}}Some groups, after an initial stage while they were gaining famil­iar­ity with the machine, began as­sign­ing specific roles to their mem­bers and intro­ducing<!-- 'introducting' in original --> stand­ard pro­cedures. This led to a drop in effi­ciency and in­abil­ity to handle new factors intro­duced by spur­ious inform­ation, etc. The learn­ing curve rises, flat­tens, then drops sharply when­ever some new element is intro­duced. The system is now no longer self-organ­ising. |
− | {{tab}}Neces­sary charac­ter­istics for a group to con­sti­tuted self- | + | {{tab}}Neces­sary charac­ter­istics for a group to con­sti­tuted self-organ­ising system, Pask<!-- 'Park' --> sug­gests, are avoid­ance of fixed role-assign­ments and stereo­typed pro­ced­ures. This is of course tied up with re­dund­ancy of poten­tial com­mand. |
− | {{tab}}I think we might sum up {{q|fixed role as­sign­ment and stereo­typed pro­ced­ures}} in one | + | {{tab}}I think we might sum up {{q|fixed role as­sign­ment and stereo­typed pro­ced­ures}} in one word—insti­tu­tional­isa­tion. |
− | {{tab}}Note that these char­acter­istics are ''neces­sary,'' not ''suffi­cient'' | + | {{tab}}Note that these char­acter­istics are ''neces­sary,'' not ''suffi­cient''—at the very least the group must first of all con­sti­tute a system in a mean­ing­ful sense; there must be com­mun­ica­tion be­tween the mem­bers, a suffi­cient struc­ture of in­forma­tion chan­nels and feed­back loops. |
− | {{tab}}The role of the com­puter in Pask{{s}} system may be worry­ing some. Is | + | {{tab}}The role of the com­puter in Pask{{s}} system may be worry­ing some. Is this not an ana­logue of an author­itar­ian {{q|guiding hand}}? The answer is, I think, no. It must be re­membered that this is an arti­ficial exer­cise the group is per­form­ing. A problem is set by the oper­ator. There is there­fore no real situ­ation in actu­ality for the group to affect and observe the result of their efforts. It is this func­tion of de­termin­ing and feeding back success/<wbr>failure in­forma­tion which the machine fulfils. |
− | {{tab}}The other im­port­ant aspect of the machine as a cata­lyst in the learn­ing process, we have already men­tioned. There is a rough analogy here with the role of {{q|influ­ence leader}} in the Hauser{{s|r}} sense,<ref>See {{popup|Richard|Richard Hauser, Austrian sociologist}} and {{w|Heph­zibah Hauser|Hephzibah_Menuhin}}: '''The Frat­ernal Society''' (Bodley Head, 1962).</ref> rather than any author­it­arian {{q|over­seer}}. I will return to this ques­tion of the role of the machine shortly. | + | {{tab}}The other im­port­ant aspect of the machine as a cata­lyst in the learn­ing process, we have already men­tioned. There is a rough analogy here with the role of {{q|influ­ence leader}} in the Hauser{{s|r}} sense,<ref>See {{popup|Richard|Richard Hauser, Austrian sociologist}} and {{w|Heph­zibah Hauser|Hephzibah_Menuhin|Hephzibah Menuhin}}: '''The Frat­ernal Society''' (Bodley Head, 1962).</ref> rather than any author­it­arian {{q|over­seer}}. I will return to this ques­tion of the role of the machine shortly. |
− | {{tab}}Regard­ing the group as a de­cision maker, Pask sug­gests that this is perhaps the only sense in which {{q|two heads are better than one}} is | + | {{tab}}Regard­ing the group as a de­cision maker, Pask sug­gests that this is perhaps the only sense in which {{q|two heads are better than one}} is true—if the {{q|two heads}} con­sti­tute a self-organ­ising system. The clue as to why a number of heads, ''e.g.'', notori­ously, in com­mit­tees, often turn out to be much worse than one, is, he sug­gests, this busi­ness of role as­sign­ment and stereo­typed pro­ced­ure. He has not, however, sug­gested why this should arise. |
− | {{tab}}Drawing on know­ledge of beha­viour of a self- | + | {{tab}}Drawing on know­ledge of beha­viour of a self-organ­ising nature {{p|274}}ex­hibited in other groups, ''e.g.'' in­formal shop-floor organ­isa­tion, the adapt­abil­ity and effi­ciency ex­hibited in in­stances of col­lect­ive con­tract working, and similar phe­nomena,<ref>See, for example, the paper by {{w|Trist|Eric_Trist|Eric Trist}} on col­lect­ive con­tract working in the {{w|Durham|County_Durham}} coal­field quoted by {{w|H. Clegg|Hugh_Clegg_(industrial_relations)|Hugh Clegg}} in '''A New Ap­proach to Indus­trial Demo­cracy''' (Black­well,<!-- comma omitted in original --> 1960) and the dis­cus­sion of this book by [[Author:Geoffrey Ostergaard|Geoffrey Oster­gaard]] in [[Anarchy 2/Approaches to industrial democracy|ANARCHY 2]]. Note the ap­pear­ance of new ele­ments of job rota­tion.<br>{{tab}}Despite his empha­sis on the formal aspects of worker organ­isa­tion, {{w|Melman|Seymour_Melman|Seymour Melman}}{{s}} ana­lysis (see Note 1) of the worker de­cision pro­cess at {{w|Standard{{s}}|Standard_Motor_Company|Standard Motor Company}} brings out many of the carac­ter­istics of a self-organ­ising system: the evolving nature of the process; the diffi­culty of de­termin­ing where a par­tic­ular de­cision was made; chan­ging domin­ance; the way in which the cumul­ative ex­peri­ence of the group changes the frame of refer­ence against which subse­quent prob­lems are set for solu­tion. A better idea of the gang system from which this derives can, however, be ob­tained from [[Author:Reg Wright|Reg Wright]]{{s}} articles in [[Anarchy 2/The gang system in Coventry|ANARCHY 2]] & [[Anarchy 8/Erosion inside capitalism|8]].</ref> we may perhaps offer some sug­ges­tions as to how insti­tu­tional­isa­tion may arise in certain types of circum­stances. |
− | {{tab}}Imagine a work­shop of reason­able size, in which a number of con­nec­ted pro­cesses are going on, and where there is some vari­ation in the factors af­ | + | {{tab}}Imagine a work­shop of reason­able size, in which a number of con­nec­ted pro­cesses are going on, and where there is some vari­ation in the factors af­fect­ing the work to be taken into ac­count. There is con­sider­able evid­ence that the workers in such a shop, working as a co-oper­ating group, are able to organ­ise them­selves without outside inter­fer­ence, in such a way as to cope effi­ciently with the job, and show re­mark­able facil­ity in coping with un­fore­see­able diffi­culties and disrup­tions of normal pro­cedure. |
{{tab}}There are two levels of task here: | {{tab}}There are two levels of task here: | ||
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:#The task of solving the problem of how the group should be organ­ised to perform these first level tasks, and how in­forma­tion about them should be dealt with by the group. | :#The task of solving the problem of how the group should be organ­ised to perform these first level tasks, and how in­forma­tion about them should be dealt with by the group. | ||
− | {{tab}}In situa­tions of the kind I am ima­gin­ing, the organ­isa­tion of the group is largely de­term­ined by the needs of the job, which are fairly obvious to all con­cerned. There is con­tinual feed- | + | {{tab}}In situa­tions of the kind I am ima­gin­ing, the organ­isa­tion of the group is largely de­term­ined by the needs of the job, which are fairly obvious to all con­cerned. There is con­tinual feed-back of in­forma­tion from the job to the group. Any un­usual occur­rence will force itself on their notice and will be dealt with ac­cording to their re­sources at that time. |
{{tab}}Purely for the purpose of illus­tra­tion, let us now con­sider the situa­tion of the same type of shop, only this time as­suming that it is organ­ised by a com­mit­tee from outside the shop. The situa­tion in which the com­mit­tee finds itself is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from that of the work group. There are now three levels of problem: | {{tab}}Purely for the purpose of illus­tra­tion, let us now con­sider the situa­tion of the same type of shop, only this time as­suming that it is organ­ised by a com­mit­tee from outside the shop. The situa­tion in which the com­mit­tee finds itself is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from that of the work group. There are now three levels of problem: | ||
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{{tab}}The de­term­ining success/<wbr>failure in­forma­tion for all these has still to come from (or at least is sup­posed to come from), the net result of the solu­tion of the first level prob­lems, ''i.e.'' the state of pro­duc­tion in the shop. | {{tab}}The de­term­ining success/<wbr>failure in­forma­tion for all these has still to come from (or at least is sup­posed to come from), the net result of the solu­tion of the first level prob­lems, ''i.e.'' the state of pro­duc­tion in the shop. | ||
− | {{tab}}The com­mit­tee is denied the con­tinu­ous feed- | + | {{tab}}The com­mit­tee is denied the con­tinu­ous feed-back which the group had. While working on its solu­tion to the second level problem, it will have no in­forma­tion about the success of its altern­atives, only previ­ous find­ings, coded, in prac­tice, in an in­ad­equate way. The degree of success will only be observ­able after a trial period after they have decided on a solu­tion. (Also un­usual cir­cum­stances can only be dealt with as ''types'' of occur­rence, since they cannot enumer­ate all pos­sibili­ties. This is import­ant in determ­ining the relat­ive effi­ciency of the two methods of organ­isa­tion, but is of less import­ance in our immedi­ate problem.) |
{{p|275}}{{tab}}It follows that the com­mit­tee cannot solve the third problem by a method ana­logous to that used by the original work group in solving the second level problem; while working on the second level problem the com­mit­tee has no compar­able in­forma­tion avail­able to determ­ine the solu­tion of the third level problem. But they must adopt some pro­ced­ure, some organ­isa­tion at a given time. How then is it to be de­term­ined? | {{p|275}}{{tab}}It follows that the com­mit­tee cannot solve the third problem by a method ana­logous to that used by the original work group in solving the second level problem; while working on the second level problem the com­mit­tee has no compar­able in­forma­tion avail­able to determ­ine the solu­tion of the third level problem. But they must adopt some pro­ced­ure, some organ­isa­tion at a given time. How then is it to be de­term­ined? | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In theory, such a con­trol­ler could still remain an adopt­ive self-organ­ising system, learn­ing the struc­ture to adopt in par­ticu­lar cir­cum­stances over a longer period of time, though it would still suffer from imper­fect in­forma­tion. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In prac­tice, how­ever, the com­mit­tee promptly convene a meeting, assign spe­cific func­tions and decide on stand­ard pro­ced­ures. The actual de­term­ining in­forma­tion is prob­ably a mixture of person­ality factors (in­clud­ing ex­tern­ally de­prived status) and the exist­ing ideas on organ­isa­tion theory (in­clud­ing local pre­ced­ent) pos­sessed by the mem­bers. Once decided they will shelve the third level problem unless dis­aster, or a new su­perior, strikes, when a similar, but more cum­ber­some, pro­ced­ure will be neces­sary to re-organ­ise the com­mit­tee along the same general lines. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In other words, within the closed system of the com­mit­tee and work group, there is no, or virtu­ally no, coup­ling be­tween the success of the actual under­taking, ''i.e.'' the pro­duc­tion job, and the de­cision pro­ced­ure solving the third level problem. Worse, the factors influ­encing the solu­tion of this problem, far from in­creas­ing the pos­sible variety of the com­mit­tee, lead to rigid­ity and low variety. Owing to this struc­ture it will gener­ally prove less effi­cient than a single ima­gina­tive person. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}We might suggest, then, that it is this isola­tion from the process in terms of which the success of their own activ­ity is defined, which is gener­ally typical of the com­mit­tee situ­ation, which leads to their com­mon failure to exhibit self-organ­ising char­acter­istics, and fre­quent in­ad­equacy as de­cision makers. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Con­sider the first case of the self-organ­ising work group again. Here it is the ''job itself'' which pro­vides the ana­logue of Pask{{s}} machine, as far as feed­back of success/<wbr>failure in­forma­tion is con­cerned. Also, it has fre­quently been pointed out that in a {{q|face-to-face}} group in this kind of situ­ation (''i.e.'' where the need for the situ­ation de­mand­ing col­lect­ive action are fairly obvious, and where some common cri­teria of success exist), that group lead­er­ship tends to be granted to the member or mem­bers best suited to the par­ticu­lar cir­cum­stances ob­tain­ing,{{ref|aster|*}} and to change as these circum­stances change. In other words, chan­ging domin­ance, de­term­ined by the needs of the situ­ation. Here again, the job, acting through the group psycho­logy of the face-to-face group per­forms a func­tion ana­logous to Pask{{s}} machine, allo­cating tempor­ary domin­ance in ac­cord­ance with success. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{p|276}}{{tab}}I now wish to turn from this ques­tion of small group organ­isa­tion to that of larger systems, and con­sider some criti­cisms of con­ven­tional indus­trial organ­isa­tion de­veloped, in par­tic­ular, by Stafford Beer. He main­tains that con­ven­tional ideas of control in complex situa­tions, such as an indus­trial company, or the economy of a country, are crude and in­ad­equate. {{qq|The fact is,}} he says, {{qq|that our whole concept of control is naive, primit­ive, and ridden with an almost retrib­utive idea of caus­al­ity. Control to most people (and what a re­flec­tion this is upon a soph­istic­ated society!) is a crude process of coer­cion.}}<ref>{{w|Beer|Stafford_Beer|Stafford Beer}} [[#cite_note-2|'''{{popup|op. cit.|opere citato: cited above}}''']] p.21.</ref> | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In the lecture re­ferred to earlier, his main thesis was the im­possi­bil­ity of truly effi­cient control of a complex under­taking by the type of rigid hier­archic organ­isa­tion with which we are at present famil­iar. That such systems manage to survive, and work in some sort of manner, as they obvi­ously do, is, he sug­gested, due to the fact that they are not en­tirely what they are sup­posed to be—that there are un­offi­cial self-organ­ising systems and tend­en­cies in the organ­isa­tion which are essen­tial to its sur­vival. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Beer is un­usu­ally per­cept­ive, and frank, in em­phas­ising the preva­lence and im­port­ance of un­offi­cial ini­tiat­ives at all levels, ''e.g.'' (of shop-floor workers). {{qq|They arrange things which would horrify man­age­ment, if they ever found out}}, (of charge-hands, etc.) {{qq|If ''they'' did not talk things over and come to mutual agree­ments, the whole busi­ness would col­lapse.}} | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The main key­stones in Beer{{s}} argu­ment are {{w|Ashby|W._Ross_Ashby|W. Ross Ashby}}{{s}} {{q|{{w|Prin­ciple of Re­quis­ite Variety|Variety_(cybernetics)#The_Law_of_Requisite_Variety|The Law of Requisite Variety}}}} from the theory of {{w|homeo­stats|Homeostat|Homeostat}}, and in­forma­tion-theor­etic re­quire­ments for ad­equate channel cap­acity in a multi-level system. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The prin­ciple of re­quis­ite variety states that, if stabil­ity is to be at­tained, the variety of the con­trol­ling system must be at least as great as the variety of the system to be con­trolled. We have already had an in­stance of this, for this was really the trouble with our hypo­thet­ical com­mit­tee: due to its rigid struc­ture and the need to issue in­struc­tions in terms of stand­ard pro­ced­ures to be adopted, it could not pos­sibly be effi­cient in a situ­ation of any com­plex­ity. If we made the further as­sump­tion that there was no organ­isa­tion of the work group other than that imposed by the com­mit­tee, chaos would be un­avoid­able. Ap­proxi­ma­tions to this occur in {{q|{{w|working to rule|Work-to-rule|Work-to-rule}}}}. In normal working, the ini­tiat­ives of the shop-floor workers would serve as an addi­tional source of variety, this en­abling the prin­ciple of re­quis­ite variety to be satis­fied, at least as far as normal vari­ations in the factors af­fect­ing the pro­duc­tion situ­ation were con­cerned. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The relev­ance of the re­quire­ments of channel cap­acity is to the in­ad­equate, atten­uated in­forma­tion avail­able at the top of the hier­archy—this is in­evit­able, for, in prac­tice, the channel cap­acity could never be made ad­equate in the sort of pyr­amidical struc­tures we have—and also to the in­ad­equacy of the formal channels be­tween sub­systems (''e.g.'' depart­ments) which require to co-ordin­ate their activ­ities. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}To em­phas­ise how far con­ven­tional mana­gerial ideas of organ­isa­tion are from satis­fying the prin­ciple of re­quis­ite variety, Beer used an {{p|277}}amusing parable con­cern­ing a Martian visitor to Earth, who exam­ines the activ­ities at the lower levels of some large under­taking, the brains of the workers con­cerned, and the organ­isa­tional chart pur­port­ing to show how the under­taking is con­trolled. The visitor is most im­pressed, and deduces that the creatures at the top of the hier­archy must have heads yards wide. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In dis­cus­sing the at­tempts of an in­ad­equate control system to control a system of greater variety, Beer pointed to the accum­ula­tion of unas­simil­able in­forma­tion likely to occur as the control vainly strug­gles to keep track of the situ­ation. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}A compar­able con­verse phe­nomenon was pointed out by {{w|Proudhon|Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon|Pierre-Joseph Proudhon}} in 1851, in what must rank as one of the most proph­etic state­ments about the de­velop­ment of social organ­isa­tion ever written: {{qq|(The gov­ern­ment) must make as many laws as it finds in­terests, and, as in­terests are in­numer­able, ''rela­tions arising from one another mul­tiply to infin­ity,'' and ant­agon­ism is endless, law­making must go on without stop­ping. Laws, decrees, ordin­ances, re­solu­tions, will fall like hail upon the un­fortun­ate people. After a time the polit­ical ground will be covered by a layer of paper, which the geo­logists will put down among the vicis­situdes of the earth as the ''papyr­aceous forma­tion''.}}<ref>{{w|P.-J. Proudhon|Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon|Pierre-Joseph Proudhon}}: '''{{l|The General Idea of the Revolu­tion in the Nine­teenth Century|http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution/|Full text at the Fair Use Repository}}''' (Freedom Press, 1923).</ref> (The first italics are mine.) | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}This is also an early, and lucid, state­ment of the com­plex­ity of the control situ­ation in social organ­isa­tion. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Beer has some sug­gest­ive ideas on the ques­tion of cent­ral­isa­tion ''vs.'' de­central­isa­tion in in­dustry. (That is, cent­ral­isa­tion of control. The ques­tion of cent­ral­isa­tion of ''plant'' is a differ­ent, if re­lated, problem.) He puts the di­lemma thus: | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{hang|Cent­ral­ise: in­suffi­cient channel cap­acity, etc.—cannot work effi­ciently.}} | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{hang|De­central­ise: com­pletely autonom­ous units—no cohe­sion, prob­ably ceases to be a system at all.<!-- no period in original -->}} | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The point, he sug­gests is that neither altern­ative corres­ponds to what we find in really effi­cient systems, ''i.e.'' complex living organ­isms. What we do find are a number of differ­ent, inter­locking control systems. Beer also draws atten­tion to the pre­val­ence, and im­port­ance, of re­dun­dancy of poten­tial com­mand in self-organ­ising systems, and points out that it is com­pletely alien to the sort of theory of organ­isa­tion found in in­dustry and in similar under­takings. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The type of organ­isa­tion at which we should aim is, he sug­gests, an organic one, in­volving inter­locking control systems, inter­meshing at all levels, util­ising the prin­ciple of evolving self-organ­ising systems, with the channel cap­acity and flow of in­forma­tion kept as high as pos­sible.<ref>Compare also the con­clud­ing section of {{w|Pask|Gordon_Pask|Gordon Pask}}{{s}} '''An Ap­proach to Cyber­netics,''' in par­ticu­lar the dis­cus­sion of a {{q|bio­logic­ally organ­ised}} factory.</ref> | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}He men­tioned in this con­nec­tion an Amer­ican busi­ness­man who claimed that his busi­ness was, in part, organ­ised along some­what similar lines and seemed to work very well. The idea was that anybody at all, no matter how {{q|junior}} (I do not know whether this was actu­ally re­stric­ted to what are termed {{q|staff}} or not), could call a con­fer­ence at short notice, to discuss any­thing they wanted, whether con­nected with {{p|278}}their work or not. Such a meeting could call in the pres­ident of the company himself, or anyone they thought they needed. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In context of inter­locking control struc­tures, we may note, as a fairly crude example, the {{w|syn­dical­ist|Syndicalism|Syndicalism}} attempt to co-ordin­ate the activ­ity of their basic units, the factory unions, through an inter­locking two-fold struc­ture of indus­trial and ter­rit­orial feder­ation. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Let us now contrast two models of de­cision making and control. First we have the model current among man­age­ment theor­ists in in­dustry, with its counter­part in con­ven­tional think­ing about govern­ment in society as a whole. This is the model of a rigid pyr­amidal hier­archy, with lines of {{q|com­mun­ica­tion and com­mand}} running from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. There is fixed delin­eation of re­spons­ibil­ity, each element has a speci­fied role, and the pro­ced­ures to be fol­lowed at any level are de­term­ined within fairly narrow limits, and may only be changed by de­cisions of ele­ments higher in the hier­archy. The role of the top group of the hier­archy is some­times sup­posed to be com­par­able to the {{q|brain}} of the system. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The other model is from the cyber­netics of evolving self-organ­ising systems. Here we have a system of large variety, suffi­cient to cope with a complex un­pre­dict­able en­viron­ment. Its char­acter­istics are chan­ging struc­ture, modify­ing itself under con­tinual feed­back from the en­viron­ment, ex­hibit­ing re­dund­ancy of poten­tial com­mand, and in­volving complex inter­locking control struc­tures. Learn­ing and de­cision-making are dis­trib­uted through­out the system, denser perhaps in some areas than others. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Has any social thinker thought of social organ­isa­tion, actual or pos­sible, in terms com­par­able with this model? I think so. Compare [[Author:Peter Kropotkin|Kropotkin]] on that society which {{qq|seeks the fullest de­velop­ment of free as­soci­ation in all its aspects, in all pos­sible degrees, for all con­ceiv­able pur­poses: an ever-chan­ging as­soci­ation bearing in itself the ele­ments of its own dura­tion, and taking on the forms which at any moment best cor­res­pond to the mani­fold en­deav­ours of all.}}<ref>[[Author:Peter Kropotkin|Peter Kropotkin]]: '''{{l|Anarch­ism, its Philo­sophy and Ideal|https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-anarchism-its-philosophy-and-ideal|Full text at the Anarchist Library}}''' (Freedom Press, 1895).</ref> | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Further, {{qq|A society to which pre-estab­lished forms crys­tal­lised by law, are repug­nant, which looks for harmony in an ever-chan­ging and fugit­ive equi­lib­rium be­tween a multi­tude of varied forces and influ­ences of every kind, fol­low­ing their own course.}} | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The lan­guage is perhaps some­what vague and am­bigu­ous, but for a brief de­scrip­tion in non-tech­nical terms, of a society con­ceived as a complex evolving self-organ­ising system, it could hardly be bet­tered. Cer­tainly not in 1896. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The tragedy is not that so-called pro­gres­sive thinkers today think that anarch­ist ideas of society and social organ­isa­tion are in­ad­equate. (This is excus­able, and indic­ates failure on the part of anarch­ist propa­gand­ists to develop and spread their ideas.) It is that they think the other model ''is'' ad­equate. Also that they are incap­able of think­ing in any other terms. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Hence such thinkers are sur­prised when they cannot find the great effi­cient de­cision makers they expect in control of our in­stitu­tions. The {{p|279}}{{q|solu­tions}} they propose to the muddle they do find, would require super­men-gods to work—even if the super­men could obtain ad­equate in­forma­tion to de­term­ine their de­cisions. This, from the nature of the struc­ture, they can never do. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Again, when exist­ing systems break down, as in indus­trial dis­putes, the tend­ency for the leaders on both sides is to at­tempt to remedy the situ­ation by meas­ures which in­crease the in­ad­equacy of the system. That is, they attempt, by re­organ­isa­tion and con­tract­ual meas­ures, to in­crease the rigid­ity of the system by defin­ing roles and re­spons­ibil­ities more closely, and try to confine the activ­ities of human beings, who are them­selves evolving self-organ­ising systems, within a pre­de­term­ined con­tract­ual frame­work. An inter­est­ing example of this will be found in ''{{l|Wildcat Strike|https://libcom.org/files/gouldner-alvin--wildcat-strike-a-study-in-worker-management-relationships.pdf|Full text at libcom.org (PDF)}}'' by {{w|A. W. Gouldner|Alvin_Ward_Gouldner|Alvin Ward Gouldner}}. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}To return to the con­ven­tional picture of govern­ment and the sup­posed control by the gov­erned in demo­cratic theory: | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Firstly, does what I have said about the in­effi­ciency and crudity of the govern­mental model as a control mechan­ism con­flict with [[Author:W. Grey Walter|Grey Walter]]{{s}} ana­lysis in his article {{qq|[[Anarchy 25/The development and significance of cybernetics|The De­velop­ment and Sig­nific­ance of Cyber­netics]]}} in [[Anarchy 25|{{sc|Anarchy 25}}]], in which he claimed that Western demo­cratic systems were re­mark­ably soph­istic­ated from the cyber­netic point of view? | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}I do not think so. The point is that what I am claim­ing is that they are in­ad­equate for con­trol­ling the economy, say, or provid­ing the great­est com­pat­ible satis­fac­tions for the gov­erned, as Proudhon pointed out. I would also claim that they are in­ad­equate as mechan­isms for main­tain­ing order in society, unless society is con­ceived as largely self-reg­ulat­ing without the govern­mental in­stitu­tions. Given this, I do not deny that the govern­ment-elect­orate system has proved an effi­cient ''machine for main­tain­ing itself,'' al­though I might be in­clined to give a little more im­port­ance to un­offi­cial, in­formal ele­ments in the system in this context than Grey Walter does in his article. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}I agree that the system is well adapted to this task. Also, various psycho­logical factors outside the scope of cyber­netics help in the self-per­petu­ation of a system of this nature. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}If the model of effect­ive control by the govern­ment is in­ad­equate, the naive demo­cratic theory of control of the govern­ment by the people is much more so. This theory puts great stress on the im­port­ance of elec­tions as the means by which the gov­erned control their rulers and on the results of the elec­tions, and hence, deriv­at­ively, on the con­stitu­tion and beha­viour of the govern­ment, as ex­pres­sions of {{q|the will of the people}}. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}If we con­sider the indi­viudal, in a two party system, he is allowed one binary choice every five years or so, in which to reflect all the complex, dimly under­stood, effects of govern­ment actions, in­tended and un­in­tended. The model seems to allow of no struc­tured sub­system to be iden­ti­fied as {{q|the people}}—there is only an ag­greg­ate of indi­vidual choices. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}It seems to me signi­fic­ant that this theory of self-govern­ment of the people, by the people, through uni­versal, or at least wide, suf­frage, {{p|280}}de­veloped in the 18th and 19th cen­tur­ies along with the growth of the {{q|rabble hypo­thesis}} of society (''i.e.'' society as an un­struc­tured ag­greg­ate of indi­vidual social atoms, pursu­ing their own ego­centric in­terests, held to­gether only by author­ity and coer­cion). Soci­olo­gists and social psycho­lo­gists now find this picture of society com­pletely in­ad­equate.<ref>See, for example {{w|J. A. C. Brown|James_A._C._Brown|James A. C. Brown}}: '''{{popup|The Social Psycho­logy of In­dustry|The Social Psychology of Industry: Human Relations in the Factory}}''' (Penguin, 1954), Ch. 2.</ref> | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}This is not to deny the genius of some of the thinkers who worked within the limit­ations of this model of demo­cracy, for they were able to see the diffi­culties in prac­tice, and devised most com­plic­ated systems of checks and bal­ances to render their systems prac­tic­able, (''e.g.'' the archi­tects of the Amer­ican con­stitu­tion, as Grey Walter points out). However, they could not be ex­pected to over­come the funda­mental in­ad­equa­cies of their model of govern­ment of the people, by the people, for the people, no matter how suc­cess­ful they were in de­velop­ing the skel­etons of viable self-per­petu­ating systems. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In con­trast to the {{q|rabble hypo­thesis}}, we find that liber­tarian social­ist thought, espe­cially in Kropotkin and [[Author:Gustav Landauer|Landauer]], showed an early grasp of the complex group struc­ture of society; society as a complex network of chan­ging rela­tion­ships, in­volving many struc­tures of cor­related activ­ity and mutual aid, inde­pend­ent of author­itar­ian coer­cion. It was against this back­ground that they de­veloped their theor­ies of social organ­isa­tion. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}Neither am I con­vinced by the more soph­istic­ated pres­sure group theory of demo­cracy, intro­duced in an at­tempt to avoid the obvious in­ad­equacy of the naive theory. As a de­script­ive theory of the actual situ­ation it does seem reason­ably ad­equate, but as a means by which the indi­vidual obtains a voice in de­cisions affect­ing him, it is just as in­ad­equate as the naive theory. This in fact is gener­ally ad­mitted by its ad­her­ents, who have largely dropped the idea of demo­cracy as self-govern­ment.<ref>See {{w|Clegg|Hugh_Clegg_(industrial_relations)|Hugh Clegg}}: '''A New Ap­proach to Indus­trial Demo­cracy''' and [[Author:Geoffrey Ostergaard|G. Ostergaard]]{{s}} dis­cus­sion in [[Anarchy 2/Approaches to industrial democracy|ANARCHY 2]].</ref> | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In the case where a group, of a self-organ­ising type, freely organ­ises itself to tackle some situ­ation, the re­sult­ing struc­ture adopted by the group might be taken to exhibit {{q|the will of the group}}. More gene­rally, groups of this nature are capable of genuine group de­cisions. Such ex­pres­sions as {{q|the will of the group (people)}} are, I suggest, ac­cept­able, and only as a rather danger­ous short­hand, solely in cases of this sort. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In direct ap­plica­tion, this is, of course, limited to fairly small groups, since, beyond a certain size, an un­struc­tured ag­greg­ate of human beings is unable to act as a group, because there is too much in­forma­tion to be handled. The channel cap­acity is prob­ably in­ade­quate, and, even if the indi­vidual member could be presen­ted with suffi­cient in­forma­tion, he would be unable to deal with it. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}In certain work situ­ations where the job ef­fect­ively con­strains the system, and only part of the beha­viour needs to be correl­ated, we might expect larger ag­greg­ates to be capable of beha­viour as a group. This is borne out by experi­ence. In a situ­ation where complex activ­ity has to be correl­ated and there are few prior con­straints, ''e.g.'' col­lect­ive im­prov­isa­tion in a jazz band, most re­search groups, dis­cus­sion groups, a maxi­mum of the order of ten seems to be imposed; in manual jobs {{p|281}}of certain types, and in the groups of the gang system at Coventry, much larger ag­greg­ates are found capable of coher­ent beha­viour—groups of the order of a hundred or even a thou­sand mem­bers. Some of the very large groups, ''e.g.'' in the motor in­dustry, may, however, be ex­amples of more complex organ­isa­tion. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}We have said that only small ag­greg­ates of human beings, if re­garded ini­tially as un­struc­tured, can ex­hibit genuine group beha­viour. There is no reason, however, why large ag­greg­ates, if ''suffi­ciently struc­tured,'' should not main­tain coher­ent beha­viour, while re­tain­ing genuine self-organ­ising char­acter­istics en­abling them to deal with un­pre­dict­able dis­turb­ances in their en­viron­ment (in­clud­ing in {{q|en­viron­ment}} their own {{q|sub­stance}}, ''i.e.'' the human being con­sti­tut­ing the ag­greg­ate) without de­velop­ing a hier­archic struc­ture in the author­it­arian sense. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}This is not to say that there will be no hier­archy in the ''logical'' sense. There will cer­tainly be func­tional hier­archy in the sense of multi-level in­forma­tion flow, ''i.e.'' problem solving at the level of group en­viron­ment, in­ternal activ­ity of sub­group, rela­tions be­tween sub­groups<!-- 'sub-groups' in original -->, and so on. We have seen that this need not ''neces­sarily'' mean differ­ent isol­at­able phys­ical parts hand­ling the differ­ent levels. In a situ­ation of great com­plex­ity, however, we would expect to find ana­tom­ical hier­archies, in as far as there would be iden­tifi­able sub­groups, of varying degrees of per­man­ence of form and con­stitu­tion, dealing with differ­ent levels of activ­ity. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The essen­tial points are that the exist­ence of re­dund­ancy of poten­tial com­mand, with chan­ging domin­ance, means that any ana­lysis of part of the system at any time in terms of a hier­archic model must be re­garded with caution, and that, where such ana­tom­ical hier­archy is dis­tin­guish­able, it need not be a ques­tion of the higher levels con­trol­ling the lower by coer­cive sanc­tions, but rather of feeding back in­forma­tion to bias the autonom­ous activ­ity of the other sub­group. In short, a very differ­ent sort of hier­archy from that of mana­gerial theory. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}There cer­tainly need not be any isol­at­able {{q|control unit}} con­trol­ling the rest. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}I am using {{q|struc­tured}} here in a sense com­par­able to [[Author:Martin Buber|Buber]], ''i.e.'' pos­ses­sing a struc­ture of con­nec­ted sub­groups, group­ings or sub­groups, etc., of a func­tional nature, but I would place relat­ively less em­phasis on formal federa­tion of sub­groups, even in mul­tiple federa­tion, than Buber,<ref>See [[Author:Martin Buber|Martin Buber]]: '''{{l|Paths in Utopia|http://www.ditext.com/buber/utopia.html|Full text at Digital Text International}}''' (Rout­ledge, 1949).</ref> and more on more complex forms of con­nec­tion. Also I am count­ing as sub­groups both local­ised and more diffuse struc­tures, formal and in­formal. One form of con­nec­tion which seems to be of im­port­ance, is the case of diffuse sub­struc­tures {{q|pen­etrat­ing}} into more local­ised ones, ''e.g.'' certain mem­bers of a par­ticu­lar sub­group­ing being mem­bers of some more wide­spread group­ing, some sort of inter­est asso­ci­ation, say, and thus serving as a means by which in­forma­tion about special forms of activ­ity, passing in the more wide­spread struc­tures, can pass into the local­ised struc­ture, and play a part in de­term­ining its sub­se­quent beha­viour. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{p|282}}{{tab}}I hope I have shown that ideas derived from cyber­netics and infor­ma­tion theory are sug­gest­ive of fruit­ful lines of ap­proach in con­sider­ing social organ­isa­tion, espe­cially to the liber­tarian. I would not, however, expect too much in the way of rigor­ous direct ap­plica­tion of cyber­netic tech­nique to social situ­ations, for two reasons. Firstly there is the dif­fi­culty of speci­fying ad­equate and gener­ally ac­cept­able models of com­plex social situa­tions, where the bias of the ob­server is no­tori­ously ef­fect­ive in de­term­ining the picture he adopts. Secondly, the in­forma­tion theor­etic concept of {{q|in­forma­tion}} is an ab­stract one which em­pha­sises only the select­ive char­acter­istic on in­forma­tion. There are situa­tions in which this is not en­tirely ad­equate. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}This, however, is no excuse for re­main­ing bound by a primit­ive and in­ad­equate model of de­cision-making and control pro­ced­ures. The basic premise of the govern­mental­ist—namely, that any society must in­corpor­ate some mechan­ism for overall control—is cer­tainly true, if we use {{q|control}} in the sense of {{q|main­tain a large number of crit­ical vari­ables within limits of toler­ation.}}<!-- initial quotation mark double, final quotation mark single in original --> Indeed, the state­ment is virtu­ally a tauto­logy, since if such a situ­ation did not exist, the ag­greg­ate would not pos­sess suffi­cient stabil­ity to merit the de­signa­tion {{q|a society}}. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The error of the govern­mental­ist is to think that {{q|in­corpor­ate some mechan­ism for control}} is always equi­val­ent to {{q|in­clude a fixed isol­at­able control unit to which the rest, ''i.e.'' the major­ity, of the system is sub­ser­vient}}. This may be an ad­equate inter­preta­tion in the case of a model railway system, but not for a human society. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}The altern­ative model is complex, and chan­ging in its search for stabil­ity in the face of un­pre­dict­able dis­turb­ances—and much less easy to de­scribe. Indeed, we are perhaps just begin­ning to de­velop an ad­equate lan­guage to de­scribe such situ­ations, despite the proph­etic in­sights of a few men in the past. | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}A quota­tion from Proudhon makes a fitting con­clu­sion—and start­ing point—{{qq|People like simple ideas and are right to like them. Un­fortu­nately, the sim­pli­city they seek is only to be found in ele­ment­ary things; and the world, society, and man are made up of in­sol­uble prob­lems, con­trary prin­ciples, and con­flict­ing forces. Organ­ism means com­plica­tion, and mul­tipli­city means contra­dic­tion, op­posi­tion, inde­pend­ence.}}<ref>{{w|P.-J. Proudhon|Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon|Pierre-Joseph Proudhon}}: The Theory of Tax­ation (1861) quoted in [[Author:Martin Buber|Buber]] [[#cite_note-11|'''{{popup|op. cit.|opere citato: cited above}}''']]</ref> | ||
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+ | |||
+ | ----- | ||
+ | |||
+ | <font size="2">{{hang|{{note|aster|*}} {{q|best suited}} that is from the point of view of the group.}} | ||
+ | |||
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− | + | <references /></font> | |
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anarchism and the cybernetics of self organising systems}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:Anarchism and the cybernetics of self organising systems}} | ||
[[Category:Anarchist philosophy]] | [[Category:Anarchist philosophy]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Cybernetics]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Labour and industry]] | ||
[[Category:Articles]] | [[Category:Articles]] |
Latest revision as of 11:39, 11 October 2021
Anarchism and the | |
cybernetics of self-organising | |
systems | JOHN D. McEWAN |
Firstly, what do we mean by a self-organising system? One definition is simply ‘a system in which the order increases as time passes’, that is, in which the ratio of the variety exhibited to the maximum possible variety decreases; variety being a measure of the complexity of the system as it appears to an observer, the uncertainty for the observer regarding its behaviour. A system with large variety will have a larger number of possible states than one with smaller variety. Thus such a system may start by exhibiting very varied behaviour, e.g. a large number of different responses to a given stimulus may appear equally likely, but over a period of time the behaviour becomes less erratic, more predictable—fewer and fewer distinct responses to a given stimulus are possible (or, better, have a significantly high probability.)
This definition is, however, in some ways restrictive. The best such a system can do is to reach some sort of optimum state and stay there. Also, if we regard the system as a control system attempting to maintain stability in a fluctuating environment, the types of disturbance with which it can deal are limited by the fixed maximum variety of the system. This point will be dealt with later. The essential thing is that unpredictable disturbances are liable to prove too much for the system.
Such considerations suggest that it would be more fruitful to incorporate in the definition the idea that the maximum possible variety might also differ at different times. Thus Pask restricts the term to situations where the history of ‘the system’ can best be represented as a series S₀ S₁ . . . Sₙ each term a system with fixed maximum variety, and each self-organising in the first sense. With this definition we areFor an example of self-organising behaviour in this sense, we may consider a human being learning to solve certain types of problem, as his behaviour appears to an observer. Over an interval the behaviour may appear self-organising in the first sense. When, however, the learner adopts a new concept or method, there will be a discontinuity in the development of the behaviour, after which it will again be self-organising in the first sense, for a time, but now incorporating new possibilities, and so on.
In many discussions of control situations the concept of ‘Hierarchy’ appears very quickly. This may tend to make the anarchist recoil, but should not do so, since the usage is a technical one and does not coincide with the use of the term in anarchist criticisms of political organisation.
Firstly, the cybernetician makes a very important distinction between two types of hierarchy, the anatomical and the functional, to use the terminology adopted by Pask. The former is the type exemplified in part by hierarchical social organisation in the normal sense (e.g. ‘tree of command’ structure in industry), that is: there are two (if two levels) actual distinguishable concrete entities involved. The latter refers to the case where there may be only one entity, but there are two or more levels of information structure operating in the system—as for example in some types of neuron networks. A comparable concept is Melman’s ‘disalienated decision procedure’.[1] This idea might, I think, be suggestive to anarchists.
Secondly, even in the case of ‘anatomical hierarchy’, the term only means that parts of the system can be distinguished dealing with different levels of decision making and learning, e.g. some parts may deal directly with the environment, while other parts relate to activity of these first parts, or some parts learn about individual occurrences, while others learn about sequences of individual occurrences, and others again about classes of sequences.
Even in the anatomical sense, then, the term need have none of the connotations of coercive sanctions in a ruler-ruled relationship which are common in other usages.
An important phenomenon in self-organising systems is interaction between the information flowing in the system and the structure of the system. In a complex system this leads to Redundancy of Potential Command—it is impossible to pick out the critical decision-making element, since this will change from one time to another, and depend on the information in the system. It will be evident that this implies that the idea of a hierarchy can have only limited application in such a system.
Prior to this Pask had developed individual teaching machines which were important advances in the growth of applied cybernetics.[3] However, on considering the problem of group teaching (for skills where some calculable measure of the pupils’ performance, the rate of change of which will serve as a suitable indication of learning, exists), he did not simply combine individual machines.
The important insight he had was that a group of human beings, in a learning situation, is itself an evolutionary system, which suggested the idea of the machine as a catalyst, modifying the communication channels in the group, and thus producing different group structures.
In the development of the individual teaching machines, the possibility of the pupil dominating the machine had already arisen. This Pask now extended by introducing the idea of a quality ‘money’ allocated to each member of the group, and used by each of them to ‘buy’ for himself control over the communication structure of the group and over the partial specification of the solution provided by the machine. Now, in the individual machine, the degree to which the pupil was helped was coupled to change of his degree of success. If he was becoming more successful then the help given was decreased. In the group machine, the allocation of ‘money’ is coupled to two conditions—increasing success and increasing variety in the group structure. This second condition is the key to the novelty of the system.
The system, then, has changing dominance and exhibits redundancy of potential command.
In practice, each pupil sits in a little cubicle provided with buttons and indicators for communication, and a computer is used for control, calculating the various measures, etc. The operator is provided with some way of seeing what is going on, and can deliberately make things difficult for the group, by introducing false information into the channels, etc., seeing how the group copes with it.
The problems which Pask, at the time, had used in these group experiments had been formulated as conveying information about the position of a point in some space, with noise in the communication channels. The group had been asked to imagine that they are air traffic controllers, given co-ordinates specifying the position of an aircraft at a certain time, for example.
He suggests, however, that problems of agreeing on a choice of policy on a basis of agreed facts is not, in principle, very different from the case in which ‘the facts’ are in dispute, and there is no question of adopting any future policy—except of course the policy to adopt in order to ascertain the true facts and communicate them; this being the problem which the group solves for itself. It is in this sense thatIt will be noted that the state of the system when in equilibrium is the solution to the problem. Also that this solution changes with time. This is also the case in the first example from purely human organisation which occurred to me—a jazz band (an example also suggested by Pask).
Pask emphasised that he had not then had the opportunity to obtain sufficient data to make any far-reaching well substantiated generalisations from these experiments. The results he had obtained, however, were very interesting and, I think, give considerable insight into the characteristics of self-organising systems, and their advantages over other types of decision-makers.
Some groups, after an initial stage while they were gaining familiarity with the machine, began assigning specific roles to their members and introducing standard procedures. This led to a drop in efficiency and inability to handle new factors introduced by spurious information, etc. The learning curve rises, flattens, then drops sharply whenever some new element is introduced. The system is now no longer self-organising.
Necessary characteristics for a group to constituted self-organising system, Pask suggests, are avoidance of fixed role-assignments and stereotyped procedures. This is of course tied up with redundancy of potential command.
I think we might sum up ‘fixed role assignment and stereotyped procedures’ in one word—institutionalisation.
Note that these characteristics are necessary, not sufficient—at the very least the group must first of all constitute a system in a meaningful sense; there must be communication between the members, a sufficient structure of information channels and feedback loops.
The role of the computer in Pask’s system may be worrying some. Is this not an analogue of an authoritarian ‘guiding hand’? The answer is, I think, no. It must be remembered that this is an artificial exercise the group is performing. A problem is set by the operator. There is therefore no real situation in actuality for the group to affect and observe the result of their efforts. It is this function of determining and feeding back success/
The other important aspect of the machine as a catalyst in the learning process, we have already mentioned. There is a rough analogy here with the role of ‘influence leader’ in the Hausers’ sense,[4] rather than any authoritarian ‘overseer’. I will return to this question of the role of the machine shortly.
Regarding the group as a decision maker, Pask suggests that this is perhaps the only sense in which ‘two heads are better than one’ is true—if the ‘two heads’ constitute a self-organising system. The clue as to why a number of heads, e.g., notoriously, in committees, often turn out to be much worse than one, is, he suggests, this business of role assignment and stereotyped procedure. He has not, however, suggested why this should arise.
Drawing on knowledge of behaviour of a self-organising natureImagine a workshop of reasonable size, in which a number of connected processes are going on, and where there is some variation in the factors affecting the work to be taken into account. There is considerable evidence that the workers in such a shop, working as a co-operating group, are able to organise themselves without outside interference, in such a way as to cope efficiently with the job, and show remarkable facility in coping with unforeseeable difficulties and disruptions of normal procedure.
There are two levels of task here:
- The complex of actual production tasks.
- The task of solving the problem of how the group should be organised to perform these first level tasks, and how information about them should be dealt with by the group.
In situations of the kind I am imagining, the organisation of the group is largely determined by the needs of the job, which are fairly obvious to all concerned. There is continual feed-back of information from the job to the group. Any unusual occurrence will force itself on their notice and will be dealt with according to their resources at that time.
Purely for the purpose of illustration, let us now consider the situation of the same type of shop, only this time assuming that it is organised by a committee from outside the shop. The situation in which the committee finds itself is completely different from that of the work group. There are now three levels of problem:
- The problems solved by the individual workers, i.e. their jobs.
- The problem of the organisation of the work group.
- The problem of the organisation of the committee itself.
The determining success/
The committee is denied the continuous feed-back which the group had. While working on its solution to the second level problem, it will have no information about the success of its alternatives, only previous findings, coded, in practice, in an inadequate way. The degree of success will only be observable after a trial period after they have decided on a solution. (Also unusual circumstances can only be dealt with as types of occurrence, since they cannot enumerate all possibilities. This is important in determining the relative efficiency of the two methods of organisation, but is of less importance in our immediate problem.)
In theory, such a controller could still remain an adoptive self-organising system, learning the structure to adopt in particular circumstances over a longer period of time, though it would still suffer from imperfect information.
In practice, however, the committee promptly convene a meeting, assign specific functions and decide on standard procedures. The actual determining information is probably a mixture of personality factors (including externally deprived status) and the existing ideas on organisation theory (including local precedent) possessed by the members. Once decided they will shelve the third level problem unless disaster, or a new superior, strikes, when a similar, but more cumbersome, procedure will be necessary to re-organise the committee along the same general lines.
In other words, within the closed system of the committee and work group, there is no, or virtually no, coupling between the success of the actual undertaking, i.e. the production job, and the decision procedure solving the third level problem. Worse, the factors influencing the solution of this problem, far from increasing the possible variety of the committee, lead to rigidity and low variety. Owing to this structure it will generally prove less efficient than a single imaginative person.
We might suggest, then, that it is this isolation from the process in terms of which the success of their own activity is defined, which is generally typical of the committee situation, which leads to their common failure to exhibit self-organising characteristics, and frequent inadequacy as decision makers.
Consider the first case of the self-organising work group again. Here it is the job itself which provides the analogue of Pask’s machine, as far as feedback of success/
In the lecture referred to earlier, his main thesis was the impossibility of truly efficient control of a complex undertaking by the type of rigid hierarchic organisation with which we are at present familiar. That such systems manage to survive, and work in some sort of manner, as they obviously do, is, he suggested, due to the fact that they are not entirely what they are supposed to be—that there are unofficial self-organising systems and tendencies in the organisation which are essential to its survival.
Beer is unusually perceptive, and frank, in emphasising the prevalence and importance of unofficial initiatives at all levels, e.g. (of shop-floor workers). “They arrange things which would horrify management, if they ever found out”, (of charge-hands, etc.) “If they did not talk things over and come to mutual agreements, the whole business would collapse.”
The main keystones in Beer’s argument are Ashby’s ‘Principle of Requisite Variety’ from the theory of homeostats, and information-theoretic requirements for adequate channel capacity in a multi-level system.
The principle of requisite variety states that, if stability is to be attained, the variety of the controlling system must be at least as great as the variety of the system to be controlled. We have already had an instance of this, for this was really the trouble with our hypothetical committee: due to its rigid structure and the need to issue instructions in terms of standard procedures to be adopted, it could not possibly be efficient in a situation of any complexity. If we made the further assumption that there was no organisation of the work group other than that imposed by the committee, chaos would be unavoidable. Approximations to this occur in ‘working to rule’. In normal working, the initiatives of the shop-floor workers would serve as an additional source of variety, this enabling the principle of requisite variety to be satisfied, at least as far as normal variations in the factors affecting the production situation were concerned.
The relevance of the requirements of channel capacity is to the inadequate, attenuated information available at the top of the hierarchy—this is inevitable, for, in practice, the channel capacity could never be made adequate in the sort of pyramidical structures we have—and also to the inadequacy of the formal channels between subsystems (e.g. departments) which require to co-ordinate their activities.
To emphasise how far conventional managerial ideas of organisation are from satisfying the principle of requisite variety, Beer used anIn discussing the attempts of an inadequate control system to control a system of greater variety, Beer pointed to the accumulation of unassimilable information likely to occur as the control vainly struggles to keep track of the situation.
A comparable converse phenomenon was pointed out by Proudhon in 1851, in what must rank as one of the most prophetic statements about the development of social organisation ever written: “(The government) must make as many laws as it finds interests, and, as interests are innumerable, relations arising from one another multiply to infinity, and antagonism is endless, lawmaking must go on without stopping. Laws, decrees, ordinances, resolutions, will fall like hail upon the unfortunate people. After a time the political ground will be covered by a layer of paper, which the geologists will put down among the vicissitudes of the earth as the papyraceous formation.”[7] (The first italics are mine.)
This is also an early, and lucid, statement of the complexity of the control situation in social organisation.
Beer has some suggestive ideas on the question of centralisation vs. decentralisation in industry. (That is, centralisation of control. The question of centralisation of plant is a different, if related, problem.) He puts the dilemma thus:
The point, he suggests is that neither alternative corresponds to what we find in really efficient systems, i.e. complex living organisms. What we do find are a number of different, interlocking control systems. Beer also draws attention to the prevalence, and importance, of redundancy of potential command in self-organising systems, and points out that it is completely alien to the sort of theory of organisation found in industry and in similar undertakings.
The type of organisation at which we should aim is, he suggests, an organic one, involving interlocking control systems, intermeshing at all levels, utilising the principle of evolving self-organising systems, with the channel capacity and flow of information kept as high as possible.[8]
He mentioned in this connection an American businessman who claimed that his business was, in part, organised along somewhat similar lines and seemed to work very well. The idea was that anybody at all, no matter how ‘junior’ (I do not know whether this was actually restricted to what are termed ‘staff’ or not), could call a conference at short notice, to discuss anything they wanted, whether connected withIn context of interlocking control structures, we may note, as a fairly crude example, the syndicalist attempt to co-ordinate the activity of their basic units, the factory unions, through an interlocking two-fold structure of industrial and territorial federation.
Let us now contrast two models of decision making and control. First we have the model current among management theorists in industry, with its counterpart in conventional thinking about government in society as a whole. This is the model of a rigid pyramidal hierarchy, with lines of ‘communication and command’ running from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. There is fixed delineation of responsibility, each element has a specified role, and the procedures to be followed at any level are determined within fairly narrow limits, and may only be changed by decisions of elements higher in the hierarchy. The role of the top group of the hierarchy is sometimes supposed to be comparable to the ‘brain’ of the system.
The other model is from the cybernetics of evolving self-organising systems. Here we have a system of large variety, sufficient to cope with a complex unpredictable environment. Its characteristics are changing structure, modifying itself under continual feedback from the environment, exhibiting redundancy of potential command, and involving complex interlocking control structures. Learning and decision-making are distributed throughout the system, denser perhaps in some areas than others.
Has any social thinker thought of social organisation, actual or possible, in terms comparable with this model? I think so. Compare Kropotkin on that society which “seeks the fullest development of free association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all conceivable purposes: an ever-changing association bearing in itself the elements of its own duration, and taking on the forms which at any moment best correspond to the manifold endeavours of all.”[9]
Further, “A society to which pre-established forms crystallised by law, are repugnant, which looks for harmony in an ever-changing and fugitive equilibrium between a multitude of varied forces and influences of every kind, following their own course.”
The language is perhaps somewhat vague and ambiguous, but for a brief description in non-technical terms, of a society conceived as a complex evolving self-organising system, it could hardly be bettered. Certainly not in 1896.
The tragedy is not that so-called progressive thinkers today think that anarchist ideas of society and social organisation are inadequate. (This is excusable, and indicates failure on the part of anarchist propagandists to develop and spread their ideas.) It is that they think the other model is adequate. Also that they are incapable of thinking in any other terms.
Hence such thinkers are surprised when they cannot find the great efficient decision makers they expect in control of our institutions. TheAgain, when existing systems break down, as in industrial disputes, the tendency for the leaders on both sides is to attempt to remedy the situation by measures which increase the inadequacy of the system. That is, they attempt, by reorganisation and contractual measures, to increase the rigidity of the system by defining roles and responsibilities more closely, and try to confine the activities of human beings, who are themselves evolving self-organising systems, within a predetermined contractual framework. An interesting example of this will be found in Wildcat Strike by A. W. Gouldner.
To return to the conventional picture of government and the supposed control by the governed in democratic theory:
Firstly, does what I have said about the inefficiency and crudity of the governmental model as a control mechanism conflict with Grey Walter’s analysis in his article “The Development and Significance of Cybernetics” in Anarchy 25, in which he claimed that Western democratic systems were remarkably sophisticated from the cybernetic point of view?
I do not think so. The point is that what I am claiming is that they are inadequate for controlling the economy, say, or providing the greatest compatible satisfactions for the governed, as Proudhon pointed out. I would also claim that they are inadequate as mechanisms for maintaining order in society, unless society is conceived as largely self-regulating without the governmental institutions. Given this, I do not deny that the government-electorate system has proved an efficient machine for maintaining itself, although I might be inclined to give a little more importance to unofficial, informal elements in the system in this context than Grey Walter does in his article.
I agree that the system is well adapted to this task. Also, various psychological factors outside the scope of cybernetics help in the self-perpetuation of a system of this nature.
If the model of effective control by the government is inadequate, the naive democratic theory of control of the government by the people is much more so. This theory puts great stress on the importance of elections as the means by which the governed control their rulers and on the results of the elections, and hence, derivatively, on the constitution and behaviour of the government, as expressions of ‘the will of the people’.
If we consider the indiviudal, in a two party system, he is allowed one binary choice every five years or so, in which to reflect all the complex, dimly understood, effects of government actions, intended and unintended. The model seems to allow of no structured subsystem to be identified as ‘the people’—there is only an aggregate of individual choices.
It seems to me significant that this theory of self-government of the people, by the people, through universal, or at least wide, suffrage,This is not to deny the genius of some of the thinkers who worked within the limitations of this model of democracy, for they were able to see the difficulties in practice, and devised most complicated systems of checks and balances to render their systems practicable, (e.g. the architects of the American constitution, as Grey Walter points out). However, they could not be expected to overcome the fundamental inadequacies of their model of government of the people, by the people, for the people, no matter how successful they were in developing the skeletons of viable self-perpetuating systems.
In contrast to the ‘rabble hypothesis’, we find that libertarian socialist thought, especially in Kropotkin and Landauer, showed an early grasp of the complex group structure of society; society as a complex network of changing relationships, involving many structures of correlated activity and mutual aid, independent of authoritarian coercion. It was against this background that they developed their theories of social organisation.
Neither am I convinced by the more sophisticated pressure group theory of democracy, introduced in an attempt to avoid the obvious inadequacy of the naive theory. As a descriptive theory of the actual situation it does seem reasonably adequate, but as a means by which the individual obtains a voice in decisions affecting him, it is just as inadequate as the naive theory. This in fact is generally admitted by its adherents, who have largely dropped the idea of democracy as self-government.[11]
In the case where a group, of a self-organising type, freely organises itself to tackle some situation, the resulting structure adopted by the group might be taken to exhibit ‘the will of the group’. More generally, groups of this nature are capable of genuine group decisions. Such expressions as ‘the will of the group (people)’ are, I suggest, acceptable, and only as a rather dangerous shorthand, solely in cases of this sort.
In direct application, this is, of course, limited to fairly small groups, since, beyond a certain size, an unstructured aggregate of human beings is unable to act as a group, because there is too much information to be handled. The channel capacity is probably inadequate, and, even if the individual member could be presented with sufficient information, he would be unable to deal with it.
In certain work situations where the job effectively constrains the system, and only part of the behaviour needs to be correlated, we might expect larger aggregates to be capable of behaviour as a group. This is borne out by experience. In a situation where complex activity has to be correlated and there are few prior constraints, e.g. collective improvisation in a jazz band, most research groups, discussion groups, a maximum of the order of ten seems to be imposed; in manual jobsWe have said that only small aggregates of human beings, if regarded initially as unstructured, can exhibit genuine group behaviour. There is no reason, however, why large aggregates, if sufficiently structured, should not maintain coherent behaviour, while retaining genuine self-organising characteristics enabling them to deal with unpredictable disturbances in their environment (including in ‘environment’ their own ‘substance’, i.e. the human being constituting the aggregate) without developing a hierarchic structure in the authoritarian sense.
This is not to say that there will be no hierarchy in the logical sense. There will certainly be functional hierarchy in the sense of multi-level information flow, i.e. problem solving at the level of group environment, internal activity of subgroup, relations between subgroups, and so on. We have seen that this need not necessarily mean different isolatable physical parts handling the different levels. In a situation of great complexity, however, we would expect to find anatomical hierarchies, in as far as there would be identifiable subgroups, of varying degrees of permanence of form and constitution, dealing with different levels of activity.
The essential points are that the existence of redundancy of potential command, with changing dominance, means that any analysis of part of the system at any time in terms of a hierarchic model must be regarded with caution, and that, where such anatomical hierarchy is distinguishable, it need not be a question of the higher levels controlling the lower by coercive sanctions, but rather of feeding back information to bias the autonomous activity of the other subgroup. In short, a very different sort of hierarchy from that of managerial theory.
There certainly need not be any isolatable ‘control unit’ controlling the rest.
I am using ‘structured’ here in a sense comparable to Buber, i.e. possessing a structure of connected subgroups, groupings or subgroups, etc., of a functional nature, but I would place relatively less emphasis on formal federation of subgroups, even in multiple federation, than Buber,[12] and more on more complex forms of connection. Also I am counting as subgroups both localised and more diffuse structures, formal and informal. One form of connection which seems to be of importance, is the case of diffuse substructures ‘penetrating’ into more localised ones, e.g. certain members of a particular subgrouping being members of some more widespread grouping, some sort of interest association, say, and thus serving as a means by which information about special forms of activity, passing in the more widespread structures, can pass into the localised structure, and play a part in determining its subsequent behaviour.
This, however, is no excuse for remaining bound by a primitive and inadequate model of decision-making and control procedures. The basic premise of the governmentalist—namely, that any society must incorporate some mechanism for overall control—is certainly true, if we use ‘control’ in the sense of ‘maintain a large number of critical variables within limits of toleration.’ Indeed, the statement is virtually a tautology, since if such a situation did not exist, the aggregate would not possess sufficient stability to merit the designation ‘a society’.
The error of the governmentalist is to think that ‘incorporate some mechanism for control’ is always equivalent to ‘include a fixed isolatable control unit to which the rest, i.e. the majority, of the system is subservient’. This may be an adequate interpretation in the case of a model railway system, but not for a human society.
The alternative model is complex, and changing in its search for stability in the face of unpredictable disturbances—and much less easy to describe. Indeed, we are perhaps just beginning to develop an adequate language to describe such situations, despite the prophetic insights of a few men in the past.
A quotation from Proudhon makes a fitting conclusion—and starting point—“People like simple ideas and are right to like them. Unfortunately, the simplicity they seek is only to be found in elementary things; and the world, society, and man are made up of insoluble problems, contrary principles, and conflicting forces. Organism means complication, and multiplicity means contradiction, opposition, independence.”[13]
- ↑ See Seymour Melman: Decision-Making and Productivity (Blackwell, 1958).
- ↑ Gordon Pask: “Interaction between a Group of Subjects and an Adaptive Automaton to produce a Self-Organising System for Decision-Making” in the symposium Self-Organising Systems, 1962, ed. Jovits, Jacobi and Goldstein (Spartan Books).
- ↑ See Stafford Beer: Cybernetics and Management (English Universities Press, 1959) pp.123-127, and Gordon Pask: An Approach to Cybernetics (Hutchinson, 1961).
- ↑ See Richard and Hephzibah Hauser: The Fraternal Society (Bodley Head, 1962).
- ↑ See, for example, the paper by Trist on collective contract working in the Durham coalfield quoted by H. Clegg in A New Approach to Industrial Democracy (Blackwell, 1960) and the discussion of this book by Geoffrey Ostergaard in ANARCHY 2. Note the appearance of new elements of job rotation.
Despite his emphasis on the formal aspects of worker organisation, Melman’s analysis (see Note 1) of the worker decision process at Standard’s brings out many of the caracteristics of a self-organising system: the evolving nature of the process; the difficulty of determining where a particular decision was made; changing dominance; the way in which the cumulative experience of the group changes the frame of reference against which subsequent problems are set for solution. A better idea of the gang system from which this derives can, however, be obtained from Reg Wright’s articles in ANARCHY 2 & 8. - ↑ Beer op. cit. p.21.
- ↑ P.-J. Proudhon: The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (Freedom Press, 1923).
- ↑ Compare also the concluding section of Pask’s An Approach to Cybernetics, in particular the discussion of a ‘biologically organised’ factory.
- ↑ Peter Kropotkin: Anarchism, its Philosophy and Ideal (Freedom Press, 1895).
- ↑ See, for example J. A. C. Brown: The Social Psychology of Industry (Penguin, 1954), Ch. 2.
- ↑ See Clegg: A New Approach to Industrial Democracy and G. Ostergaard’s discussion in ANARCHY 2.
- ↑ See Martin Buber: Paths in Utopia (Routledge, 1949).
- ↑ P.-J. Proudhon: The Theory of Taxation (1861) quoted in Buber op. cit.