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Designing freedom: Allende, Pinochet and the twin experiments in cyber-socialism and neoliberalism

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dc.contributor.authorLehto, Otto
dc.contributor.authorPaniagua, Pablo
dc.date.accessioned2026-09-29T14:40:36Z
dc.date.available2026-09-29T14:40:36Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.abstractDuring the twentieth century, cybernetics became entangled with the socialistand neoliberal transformations in Latin America. Both socialists and market lib-erals appealed to cybernetic ideas about multi-level decentralization and adaptivecontrol to coordinate society and promote welfare. By analyzing Chile as a casestudy, we explore the twin experiments of cyber-socialism and neoliberalismrooted in modernism and oscillating between top-down design and partial (con-strained) decentralization. We show that the modernist and cybernetic ideas of‘designing freedom’ influenced the Allende administration (1970–1973) and thePinochet regime (1973–1990). The former experimented with cyber-socialismthrough Project Cybersyn, and the latter with authoritarian neoliberalism. Focus-ing on the work of cybernetic scholars Stafford Beer and F.A. Hayek, we compareboth regimes’ different but partially overlapping approaches to the design of con-strained freedom. Several features of modernist thinking and cybernetics explainboth experiments’ appeal and shortcomings. These lessons are relevant for con-temporary debates about the future of liberal democracy, the information societyand the compatibility of freedom with artificial intelligence (AI).
dc.description.versionVersión publicada
dc.format.extent25 p.
dc.identifier.citationLehto, O., & Paniagua, P. (2025). Designing freedom: Allende, Pinochet and the twin experiments in cyber-socialism and neoliberalism. Economy and Society, 54(2), 334-358. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2025.2513800
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2025.2513800
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/11447/11202
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAtribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Chile (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 CL)
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/cl/
dc.subjectNeoliberalism
dc.subjectSocialism
dc.subjectHayek
dc.subjectAllende
dc.subjectPinochet
dc.subjectCybernetics
dc.titleDesigning freedom: Allende, Pinochet and the twin experiments in cyber-socialism and neoliberalism
dc.typeArticle
dcterms.accessRightsAcceso abierto
dcterms.sourceEconomy and Society
dspace.entity.typePublication

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