Difference between revisions of "Anarchy 31/Anarchism and the cybernetics of self-organising systems"
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− | + | | colspan="2" |<font size="5">'''Anarchism and the'''</font> | |
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+ | | colspan="2" |<font size="5">'''cybernetics of self-organising'''</font><br> | ||
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+ | | align="right" | <font size="4">'''[[Author:John D. McEwan|JOHN D. McEWAN]]'''</font> | ||
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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-<wbr>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 | + | {{tab}}The com­mit­tee is denied the con­tinu­ous feed-<wbr>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? | ||
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{{tab}}In other words, within the cosed 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}}In other words, within the cosed 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-<wbr>organ­ising char­acter­istics, and fre­quent | + | {{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-<wbr>organ­ising char­acter­istics, and fre­quent in­ad­equacy as de­cision makers. |
{{tab}}Con­sider the first case of the self-<wbr>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-<wbr>to-<wbr>face group per­forms a func­tion ana­logous to Pask{{s}} machine, allo­cating tempor­ary domin­ance in ac­cord­ance with success. | {{tab}}Con­sider the first case of the self-<wbr>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-<wbr>to-<wbr>face group per­forms a func­tion ana­logous to Pask{{s}} machine, allo­cating tempor­ary domin­ance in ac­cord­ance with success. | ||
− | {{p|276}}{{tab}}I now wish to return 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 | + | {{p|276}}{{tab}}I now wish to return 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}} [[#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{{dash}}that there are un­offi­cial self-<wbr>organ­ising systems and tend­en­cies in the organ­isa­tion which are essen­tial to its sur­vival. | {{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{{dash}}that there are un­offi­cial self-<wbr>organ­ising systems and tend­en­cies in the organ­isa­tion which are essen­tial to its sur­vival. | ||
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{{tab}}Beer is un­usu­ally per­cept­ive, and frank, in em­phas­ising the preva­lence and im­port­ance of un­offi­cial ini­tiat­ives at all levels, ''e.g.'' (of shop-<wbr>floor workers). {{qq|They arrange things which would horrify man­age­ment, if they ever found out}}, (of charge-<wbr>hands, etc.) {{qq|If ''they'' did not talk things over and come to mutual agree­ments, the whole busi­ness would col­lapse.}} | {{tab}}Beer is un­usu­ally per­cept­ive, and frank, in em­phas­ising the preva­lence and im­port­ance of un­offi­cial ini­tiat­ives at all levels, ''e.g.'' (of shop-<wbr>floor workers). {{qq|They arrange things which would horrify man­age­ment, if they ever found out}}, (of charge-<wbr>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}}{{s}} {{q|{{w|Prin­ciple of Re­quis­ite Variety|Variety_(cybernetics)#The_Law_of_Requisite_Variety}}}} from the theory of homeo­stasis, and in­forma­tion-<wbr>theor­etic re­quire­ments for | + | {{tab}}The main key­stones in Beer{{s}} argu­ment are {{w|Ashby|W._Ross_Ashby}}{{s}} {{q|{{w|Prin­ciple of Re­quis­ite Variety|Variety_(cybernetics)#The_Law_of_Requisite_Variety}}}} from the theory of homeo­stasis, and in­forma­tion-<wbr>theor­etic re­quire­ments for ad­equate channel cap­acity in a multi-<wbr>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}}}}. In normal working, the ini­tiat­ives of the shop-<wbr>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 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}}}}. In normal working, the ini­tiat­ives of the shop-<wbr>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 in­ | + | {{tab}}The relev­ance of the re­quire­ments of channel cap­acity is to the in­ad­equate, atten­uated in­forma­tion avail­able at the top of the hier­archy{{dash|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-<wbr>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}}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 in­ | + | {{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}} 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}}: '''{{l|The General Idea of the Revolu­tion in the Nine­teenth Century|http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution/}}''' (Freedom Press, 1923).</ref> (The first italics are mine.) | {{tab}}A compar­able con­verse phe­nomenon was pointed out by {{w|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}}: '''{{l|The General Idea of the Revolu­tion in the Nine­teenth Century|http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution/}}''' (Freedom Press, 1923).</ref> (The first italics are mine.) | ||
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{{tab}}The lan­guage is perhaps some­what vague and am­bigu­ous, but for a brief de­scrip­tion in non-<wbr>tech­nical terms, of a society con­ceived as a complex evolving self-<wbr>organ­ising system, it could hardly be bet­tered. Cer­tainly not in 1896. | {{tab}}The lan­guage is perhaps some­what vague and am­bigu­ous, but for a brief de­scrip­tion in non-<wbr>tech­nical terms, of a society con­ceived as a complex evolving self-<wbr>organ­ising system, it could hardly be bet­tered. Cer­tainly not in 1896. | ||
− | {{tab}}The tragedy is not that so-<wbr>called pro­gres­sive thinkers today think that anarch­ist ideas of society and social organ­isa­tion are | + | {{tab}}The tragedy is not that so-<wbr>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-<wbr>gods to work{{dash}}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-<wbr>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}}'' by {{w|A. W. 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-<wbr>reg­ulat­ing without govern­mental in­stitu­tions. Given this, I do not deny that the govern­ment-<wbr>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 they system is well adapted to this task. Also, various psycho­logical factors outside the scope of cyber­netics help in the self-<wbr>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}}{{dash}}there is only an ag­greg­ate of indi­vidual choices. | ||
− | {{tab}} | + | {{tab}}It seems to me signi­fic­ant that this theory of self-<wbr>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}}: '''{{popup|The Social Psycho­logy of In­dustry|The Social Psychology of Industry: Human Relations in the Factory}}''' (Penguin, 1954), Ch. 2.</ref> |
Revision as of 17:37, 3 April 2017
Anarchism and the | |
cybernetics of self-organising | |
systems | JOHN D. McEWAN |
Firstly, what do we mean by a self-
This definition is, however, in osme 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 are For an example of self-
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—
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-
An important phenomenon in self-
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—
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-
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—
Pask emphasised that he had not then had the opportunity to obtain sufficient data to make any far-
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-
Necessary characteristics for a group to constituted self-
I think we might sum up ‘fixed role assignment and stereotyped procedures’ in one word—
Note that these characteristics are necessary, not sufficient—
The role of the computer in Pask’s system may be worrying some. Is his 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—
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 affacting the work to be taken into account. There is considerable evidence that the workers in such a shop, working as a co-
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-
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-
In theory, such a controller could still remain an adoptive self-
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-
In other words, within the cosed 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-
Consider the first case of the self-
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—
Beer is unusually perceptive, and frank, in emphasising the prevalence and importance of unofficial initiatives at all levels, e.g. (of shop-
The main keystones in Beer’s argument are Ashby’s ‘Principle of Requisite Variety’ from the theory of homeostasis, and information-
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-
The relevance of the requirements of channel capacity is to the inadequate, attenuated information available at the top of the hierarchy—
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.
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-
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-
In context of interlocking control structures, we may note, as a fairly crude example, the syndicalist attempt to co-
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-
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-
Further, “A society to which pre-
The language is perhaps somewhat vague and ambiguous, but for a brief description in non-
The tragedy is not that so-
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-
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-
I agree that they system is well adapted to this task. Also, various psychological factors outside the scope of cybernetics help in the self-
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’—
- ↑ 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.