Cybernetics and mutual aid in the coronavirus crisis

Thomas Swann, author of the forthcoming book Anarchist Cybernetics, provides an overview of cybernetics as the identification of universal principles of self-organisation, and connects this with anarchism and mutual aid. In the context of the present coronavirus crisis, he argues that an engagement with cybernetics can help anarchists and others involved in mutual aid networks to think seriously about organisational structure to address problems such as structural hierarchies and to protect their openness to democratic participation.