Vol. 3 No. 2 (2024)
Biopolitics

Articles

Cybernetic decisionism of academician Glushkov

Published 2024-12-27 — Updated on 2024-12-28

  • Igor Kobilin

Igor Kobilin
Russian State University for the Humanities image/svg+xml , Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences image/svg+xml , Privolzhsky Research Medical University image/svg+xml

Abstract

The article analyzes the OGAS project led by academician Viktor Glushkov through the lens of Michel Foucault’s theory of governmentality. Glushkov is often seen as a strict technocrat aiming to create an all-encompassing system of machine control, and his colleagues sometimes suspected him of focusing exclusively on technical regulation of socio-economic processes. However, this study reveals a more nuanced view. Glushkov’s vision of cybernetic management involved not only a system of machine analytics but also a «sovereign» decision-making element. This dual-structured management model exhibits self-similarity, becoming a «sovereign» authority over the established economic administration system, where adherence to automated regulations and circulars in turn generates an informal «sovereign» excess. This fractal nature of the OGAS project is further reflected in Glushkov’s historiosophical insights: by addressing the challenge of crossing the second information barrier, he illustrates how OGAS dialectically sublates the dualism between hierarchical politics and the commodity-money economy of the previous era, integrating their core aspects into a new unity of cyber-governmentality. Through this dialectical (Hegelian) approach, Glushkov underscores the necessity of sovereign, volitional intervention. At the same time, recognizing the vulnerability of this «sovereign» element, he proposed that a technically managed social environment could foster the emergence of a new form of subjectivity.

Keywords

governmentality, cybernetics, decisionism, Soviet philosophy, political theology, autopoiesis, dialectical negation

PDF (Russian)

Author Biography

Igor Kobilin

PhD., associate professor of the Department of Theory and History of Humanitarian Knowledge at the Russian State University for the Humanities, lecturer of the Political Philosophy program at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, associate professor at PIMU.

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