General Intellect Unit 038 - The Viable System Model

• http://generalintellectunit.net/e/038-the-viable-system-model/

Brilliant podcast from General Intellect Unit on the Viable system model.

Some notes I took as I was listening:

• Stafford Beer got to some of his ideas via influence from his time in India
• You could probably get to the ideas via multiple routes though, e.g. via Deleuze & Guattari.

• VSM can gives you both autonomy AND cohesion

  • And help avoid the tyranny of structurelessnes
  • Jon Walker who writes The VSM Guide was applying VSM to coops in the UK in the 80s (including Suma)
• VSM provides a framework for how organisation in communism might work, once the state has withered away
• VSM can help identity what is the ACTUAL purpose of an organisation, often different to what the STATED purpose of the organisation might be. (Example: e.g. a group states their purpose is to overthrow capitalism, but empirically their actual purpose is to sit around drinking coffee.)
• In VSM management becomes a function of the overall system, not an individual role attainable only by those with a class privelege.
• We should think of VSM as an explicitly socialist technology.