In the journal marxism & sciences, Ivan Bouchardeau of Toulouse Jean Jaurès University has published an article which argues that cybernetics and Marxism cannot be synthesised, that Project Cybersyn in Chile from 1971-1973 was a technocratic and idealist project and that in order for socialist planning today to be feasible, it must be grounded in autonomous working class struggle.
The article’s abstract can be found below:
Should Marxism draw inspiration from cybernetic management theories and systems science in order to rethink the question of economic planning? In this article, we propose to examine the convergence between cybernetics and socialism through the example of Cybersyn: how did Marxist and cybernetic perspectives interact—or contradict one another—at the technical, theoretical, and political levels in this specific case? The hypothesis is as follows: from a theoretical and historical standpoint, first-order cybernetics and Marxism initially appear too far apart, even though certain points of convergence can be identified. Within the specific case of Cybersyn, however, Stafford Beer developed a model of cybernetic planning that embodied an overly idealistic vision of socialism—resulting in an original yet ultimately technocratic project. Nevertheless, the historical and political reality of Chile between 1971 and 1973 highlighted what was missing for the project to become genuinely relevant: namely, its appropriation within the context of class struggle. The lesson seems particularly important today, in the age of pervasive “techno-solutionism:” neither emancipation nor planning should be conceived primarily through a technological lens, no matter how sophisticated. Rather than a conceptual self-organization inherited from cybernetics, it is the real autonomy of the working class and social movements that should form the foundation for the appropriation and management of the means of production from the bottom up.”
You can read the article here.