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   Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 19:41:00 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

   🧵

   All right, y'all asked for it, so here you go. (Actually, nobody asked for it, but you're getting it anyway.) I've talked about experiments with cybernetic communism in the USSR (OGAS), Chile (Cybersyn), and Yugoslavia ("mechanized administration"). So now let's talk about a similar experiment in East Germany (officially known as the GDR).

   If you want to follow along, this is my main English-language source: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1046 and I will link to other sources as I use them.

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 19:41:37 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     Thus, after Georg Klaus' work legitimizing cybernetics from an ML perspective, the GDR sought to use this new science to reform the economy into a technologically advanced socialist powerhouse, without introducing market mechanisms. Indeed, much like the USSR, the GDR would grow to see their computers as a precondition for the transition to communism, and would experiment with its own semiconductor industry - but you can follow that story here: https://youtu.be/cxrkC-pMH_s

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 19:41:38 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     Thus, a narrative of technological development was used to entice intellectuals to stay, as well as to legitimize the regime in general.

     (Also, can we talk about how cool this hammer-and-compass symbol is?)

     HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴 repeated this.
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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 19:41:39 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     Ideologically, the GDR is actually a bit of an interesting case in general. They understood, better than any other Eastern Bloc country, the importance of technological development (especially automation and manufacturing) for the transition to communism. There were clear material conditions driving this ideology: prior to the Berlin Wall, it was relatively easy for intellectuals to defect to the west from the GDR.

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:45:34 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     In the late 1960s, however, there was a backlash. Klaus and other cybernetic philosophers started to be accused of trying to replace Marxism-Leninism with cybernetics. Party elites worried that a cybernetic communism would erode the authority of the party, a theme that was also seen in the USSR's rejection of cybernetic communism. (To be fair, some technocrats joked that their computer for modeling the economy was "the guillotine for functionaries" so that fear was probably justified.)

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:45:35 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     enterprises and workers would be relatively autonomous and most decisions would be made on the ground through "production committees."

     Hierarchical organization charts that represented social power relations were also replaced with cybernetic diagrams based on function. This way of seeing the economy takes clear inspiration from the organizational cybernetics pioneered by Stafford Beer which would form the basis for Cybersyn.

     HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴 repeated this.
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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:45:36 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     the cybernetic socialist economy would be designed to optimize for building the transition into communism, the promotion of optimal development, and fulfilling material and cultural needs.

     As the NES aimed to improve efficiency without introducing market mechanisms, cybernetic planners sought to overcome the calculation and knowledge problems in two ways. The first way was to build computationally complex cybernetic models of the economy.

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:45:36 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     However, the poor state of the computer industry in the GDR (largely due to a lack of resources being devoted) made this difficult. The second way was to reorganize society using cybernetic insights into information and control flows. This involved distributing decision-making throughout the economy where actors could make use of local, specialized knowledge: the center would set targets, but

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:45:37 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     A complex cybernetic model of the GDR economy was constructed, identifying and cataloging the economic processes, the data-gathering statistics for feedback, and the levers of influence for making corrections (the three components of a cybernetic system). The model also included the goal orientation of the system: instead of maximizing surplus value and rent extraction,

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:45:38 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     Even General Secretary Walter Ulbricht championed these cybernetic reforms, which formed the basis of his reform package called the New Economic System (NES), which was more ambitious than any institutional reform proposed in the Eastern Bloc aside from Yugoslavia's socialist self-management (but, unlike Yugoslavia, this proposal would avoid using market reforms). And so, in 1961, this experiment in cybernetic communism was born.

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:45:39 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     Anyway, these reforms were to be wide-sweeping: the entire state, society, and economy were to be re-organized based on cybernetic principles; and everything from the country's economy and managers to its engineers and technicians were to be mathematically modeled. Again, this emphasizes the theme common to all these projects: cybercommunism is not just communism with computers, but involves analyzing and organizing communist society using cybernetic analysis of control and information flow.

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     HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴 (histopol@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 20:57:37 JST HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴

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     • Mina

     @mina

     This should be to your liking:

     Captivating account of the history of #Cybernetics in the #GDR:
     From the #NewEcomomicSystem (#NES) to its replacement with the less ambitious Economic System of Socialism (#ESS) to the abandonment in 1971 and start in #Chile.

     Maybe we will now get cybernetics and thus #NES and, ultimately, #Communism--but w/o the corruptible human functionaries through the pervasivenes of #LLM|s? 😉

     Cc @sorceressofmathematics

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     HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴 (histopol@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 21:01:42 JST HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴

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     • Mina

     @mina
     /ou bet.
     Think so, too.
     Coming from a follow mathematician, it had to be good. 😉

     @sorceressofmathematics

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     Mina (mina@berlin.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Dec-2023 21:01:44 JST Mina

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     • HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴

     @HistoPol

     Cool thread! Thank you!

     @sorceressofmathematics

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     Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ? (sorceressofmathematics@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2023 03:29:33 JST Voltairine ??? ⚛️ ?

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     • HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴
     • Mina

     @HistoPol @mina Y'all might also be interested in this similar thread I wrote a few weeks ago. It talks about a similar experiment with cybernetic communism in Socialist Yugoslavia.

     https://mastodon.social/@sorceressofmathematics/111564389742685915

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     HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴 (histopol@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 31-Dec-2023 04:11:32 JST HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴

     in reply to

     • Mina

     @sorceressofmathematics
     Thanks.

     @mina