Imaginarium of Science. Part 4

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The OGAS project was not the only example in history when the achievements of science, especially cybernetics, were tried to be used in managing the country's economy. And, of course, such experiments were possible only in socialist countries, where the market was controlled by the state to one degree or another. The second country where such an attempt was carried out was Chile. And this time on the initiative and with the full support of the government. In 1970, the socialists came to power in this country through democratic elections. The leader of the Socialist Party of Chile, Salvador Allende, became its 29th president. Having come to power in the capitalist country, Allende began to carry out socialist reforms - all the largest private companies and banks were nationalized. A land reform was carried out, as a result of which about 40% of privately owned agricultural land was expropriated. In the first two years of the government of Allende (Popular Unity), about 3,500 estates with a total area of 500 thousand hectares of land were added to the reorganized agricultural sector, which amounted to about a quarter of all cultivated land.

As in the years of collectivization in the USSR, this policy met with resistance from large landowners who were losing their property. Large pastoralists began slaughtering livestock or taking herds to neighboring Argentina. So the Cattle-breeding Association of Tierra del Fuego, before its giant estates were expropriated, slaughtered 130 thousand pregnant cows and sent another 360 thousand heifers to slaughterhouses. It was estimated that the slaughter of sheep was 330 thousand. All this entailed significant food problems. Nevertheless, the Allende government had very serious successes - in two years the government created 260 thousand new jobs, which led to a decrease in unemployment in the Greater Santiago area alone from 8.3% in December 1970 to 3.6% in December 1972 of the year. In 1971, the gross national product (GNP) grew by 8.5%, including industrial production by 12% and agricultural production by almost 6%. Housing construction developed at an especially rapid pace. The volume of construction work in 1972 increased by 3.5 times. In 1972, GNP grew by 5%. The slowdown in growth was explained by the fact that in response to the nationalization of the property of American companies in Chile (mostly not confiscated, but bought out), the United States took emergency measures to undermine the Chilean economy - it threw out on the world market at dumping prices part of its strategic reserves of copper and molybdenum, depriving such Thus, Chile is the main source of export income (from the dumping of copper alone, Chile lost $ 160 million in the first month).

Under pressure from the United States, many countries cut off economic ties with Chile, and the country was undergoing a severe economic blockade. Surprisingly, the USSR also joined this blockade (this is very important to note), that is, the blockade became complete. In the spring of 1973, an economic stagnation began in Chile, quickly turning into a crisis. This was the result of a blatant US-led destabilization campaign. In March, following the defeat of Allende's opponents in parliamentary elections, the crisis was exacerbated by a sluggish far-right-led civil war. Up to 30 terrorist attacks took place in Chile per day, the fascists from "Patria and Libertad" repeatedly blew up power lines, bridges on the Pan American Highway and on the railroad that runs along the entire coast of Chile, which deprived entire provinces of electricity and supply. The damage to the Chilean economy from the terrorist attacks of the fascists and the strikes provoked from the United States was enormous. For example, on August 13, 1973, the Nazis carried out a dozen and a half explosions at power lines and electrical substations, depriving 9 central provinces with a population of 4 million people of electricity (and in large cities and water). In total, by August 1973, the ultra-right had destroyed over 200 bridges, highways and railways, oil pipelines, electrical substations, power lines and other economic facilities with a total cost of 32% of Chile's annual budget.

However, despite the chaos organized by the ultra-right, the Allende government continued to support up to 80% of the population (even the leader of the Chilean fascists P. Rodriguez admitted this on live television). And if not for the betrayal of the military, who joined the ultra-right, then the socialists would have been able to retain power. On September 11, 1973, a military coup took place in the capital and during the assault on the presidential palace, Allende was shot by the attackers. In his last address to the people, already under the bombs of the putschists, Allende said:

"At this crossroads of history, I am ready to pay with my life for the people's trust. And I tell him with conviction that the seeds that we have planted in the minds of thousands and thousands of Chileans can no longer be completely destroyed. They have the power and they can suppress you, but the social process cannot be stopped either by force or by crime. History belongs to us and peoples make it."

Allende. Behind his left shoulder, his future killer is Pinochet.

Unfortunately, the betrayal of General Pinochet stopped the social process in Chile for a very long time. And not only social. In 2003, 30 years after the coup, the British newspaper "The Guardian" reported one most interesting detail of the coup:

"When Pinochet's military overthrew the Chilean government thirty years ago, they discovered the revolutionary communications system - the 'socialist internet' that entangled the entire country. Its creator? An eccentric scientist from Surrey."

It was about the English scientist Stafford Bear and his Cybersyn project. Stafford Beer is one of the founders of management cybernetics, the creator of the VSM theory - Viable System Model (model of viable systems). His theory is based on the representation of the activity of any economic entity as a living organism and therefore represents the quintessence of a number of discoveries in the most diverse fields of biology, information theory and cybernetics. The first explanation of the model was undertaken in The Brain of the Firm. The firm as a viable system was described in the form of a neurocybernetic model, where the structure and mechanisms of the nervous system of the human body became the prototype for the model of the firm's management structure. VSM is based on the minimum set of functional criteria necessary for the effective autonomous existence of such a "living" system. In Beer's model, the provision of these criteria is carried out with the help of five subsystems constantly interacting for integration and being in "homeostasis" (that is, the activity of individual subsystems does not unbalance other systems). The viability of such a social system is due to the dynamics of its internal structure, which is continuously learning, adapting and evolving. Interestingly, almost simultaneously with Bir, the Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela formulated a universal concept of biological life forms (autopoiesis), which confirmed many of the fundamental principles underlying VSM.

Beer's ideas are simple enough to understand, but represent a very unusual approach to organizing governance. As The Guardian wrote:

These words of Beer about "free, equal relations" do not quite correspond to the essence of the project. Rather, it is some kind of tribute to the left-liberal ideology, which the scientist adhered to. The essence of the project was different. When the socialists came to power in Chile, they found that under their leadership "a disorganized empire of mines and enterprises is concentrated, some of which are occupied by self-organized workers, others are still controlled by the old owners." And only a few of them are working with full dedication. In July, the new minister of economics in the socialist government, 29-year-old Fernando Flores, and his friend and senior adviser Raul Espejo asked Stafford Beer for help. Both were familiar with his work, as Bira's company did some work for Chilean railways even before Allende came to power. The goal of Bir's new work for the government was to optimize the centralized management of heterogeneous enterprises and mines. And the core of this control systemsthere was an information system linking more than 500 of the country's largest enterprises into a single network. As it turned out, Beer's ideas can not only optimize the movement of trains on the railway, but also the work of enterprises in the whole country. This was the main essence of the project.

With the help of telexes, the system connected 500 enterprises to the Cybernet network. In addition to the exchange of pure economic information, it was planned that the system would allow workers to manage, or at least take part in the management of their enterprises. That is, in the decision taken, the opinion of the workers of the plant or enterprise was taken into account, and this is what made it possible to talk about "new equal relations" between the government and the working people. As Beer believed, the daily exchange of information between the workshop and Santiago would create trust and help genuine cooperation, in which it would be possible to combine personal initiative and collective action - that is, to solve a problem that has always been the "holy grail" for left thinkers. In fact, however, workers themselves were often unwilling or unable to run their factories. This is the conclusion reached by the American researcher Eden Miller, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Cybersin project. And I agree with him. My opinion, as the author of this text, boils down to the fact that the people should be involved in the process of governing the country at higher levels than the production level. Then, when opinions are taken into account on issues more general for society than the supply of coal for the local thermal power plant or the planning of the production of bearings. Unsuccessful attempts at self-government were undertaken at the dawn of the USSR and proved to be ineffective. For the rest, the Cybersin project practically repeated the ideas of the OGAS - production statistics were collected from many different enterprises and on its basis control decisions were developed.

The Situation Room is the heart of the Cybersin Project.

Since the Chilean economy was incomparably smaller in size than the Soviet economy, it was much easier to process complete information - there was no need to create 20,000 computing centers throughout the country, one in the capital was enough. The control itself was concentrated in a special "situation room" where all processed information was brought together. And now, 30 years later, this room is admirable - it resembles the wheelhouse of a spaceship, although in technical terms the entire project could not be compared in scale with the OGAS system of Glushkov. Suffice it to say that the Chilean government had only two computers at its disposal - the IBM 360/50 and the Burroughs 3500, which they used for the project. There were no other computers and the country could not afford to buy them. And so that a pair of computers could cope with the processing of incoming information, it had to be filtered in the most severe way, using the principles of Beer's theoretical model. Nevertheless, the task was daunting and Beer's engineers did a great job creating this miracle. In fairness, it should be noted that Chilean engineers were also involved in the project. For example, the world-renowned Chilean designer Gui Bonsiepe supervised the deployment of the Cybernet nationwide information network, while Cyberstride's statistical filtering programs were written by a group of Beer's colleagues in the UK. In this case, the just published methodological development of Harrison and Stevens of short-term forecasting based on the Bayesian approach was used.

In addition, Beer used techniques developed in the United States to create a real-time simulation model of the Chilean economy (the Checo program). To implement a multilevel regulatory system ("algedonic" type, algedonic - Greek pain and pleasure) - related to regulation in a non-analytical sense, he took as a prototype the experiments of his son Simon and his devices, created in the UK, and also contacted the CEREN Institute in sociology and refined their concepts with two of Chile's leading sociologists. Bier discussed theoretical questions of the autostability of a viable system with the outstanding Chilean scientist Umberto Maturano, the author of the famous model of self-replicating systems (Autopoietic Systems). And on the equipment for the operational "heart" of the system - the Situation Room - several firms in Great Britain worked according to the drawings of the Chilean group of Guy Bonspieux. All this shows that the scale of work and the range of concepts used from different fields of science was very large.

The advantages of the new control system showed up almost immediately. And in October 1972, when the Allende government faced the biggest crisis in recent years, Stafford Beer's invention proved its vital importance. Across Chile, conservative small entrepreneurs went on strike in a nationwide CIA-sponsored strike. First of all, transport. The flows of food and fuel supplies to the capital were cut off and then the government decided that Cybersin was the way to solve the problem. Telexes were used to get information about where the most difficult situation is now and where people still worked and where resources were available. With the help of Cybersin, the government organized the supply of food to the capital with the help of 200 trucks left by the government, bypassing the striking 50,000 drivers. The strike did not bring results and Allende's opponents had only one way - a military coup.

After the 1973 putsch, the Cybersin control center was immediately destroyed. The finance minister and the main initiator of the project, Fernando Flores, was imprisoned for 3 years and then expelled from the country. For some time he lived in the United States, and after the overthrow of Pinochet, he returned to Chile and is now a senator. Raul Espejo, Fernando Flores' advisor and chief project manager, emigrated to England after the putsch. Now he is one of the organizers of the "Bir community" and is now establishing relations between the community and the Department of System Integration and Management of the Moscow Phystech. Well, modern liberal myths have already been formed about the success of the economy of the future ruler of Chile, Pinochet.

Author - Maxson