Cybernetic Revolutionaries

Cybernetic Revolutionaries
Author: Eden Medina
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262525968

A historical study of Chile's twin experiments with cybernetics and socialism, and what they tell us about the relationship of technology and politics. In Cybernetic Revolutionaries, Eden Medina tells the history of two intersecting utopian visions, one political and one technological. The first was Chile's experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile's economy. Neither vision was fully realized—Allende's government ended with a violent military coup; the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely implemented—but they hold lessons for today about the relationship between technology and politics. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government—which was to feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the growing industrial sector, and modeling the behavior of dynamic systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the network's Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies. Studying project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological with the goal of creating a more just society can open new technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies, Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading history.

Beyond the Vanguard

Beyond the Vanguard
Author: Marian E. Schlotterbeck
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2018-05-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520970179

For a thousand days in the early 1970s, Chileans experienced revolution not as a dream but as daily life. Alongside Salvador Allende’s attempt to democratically bring about a socialist regime, new understandings of the meaning of revolutionary change emerged. In her groundbreaking book Beyond the Vanguard, Marian E. Schlotterbeck explores popular politics in Chile in the decade before Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and provides an in-depth account of how working-class people transformed the existing social order by embracing radical politics. Schlotterbeck eloquently examines the lost opportunities for creating a democratic revolution and the ways that the legacy of this period continues to resonate in Chile and beyond. Learn more about the author and this book in an interview published online with Jacobin.

Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy

Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy
Author: Michael Albertus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2018-01-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 110819642X

This book argues that - in terms of institutional design, the allocation of power and privilege, and the lived experiences of citizens - democracy often does not restart the political game after displacing authoritarianism. Democratic institutions are frequently designed by the outgoing authoritarian regime to shield incumbent elites from the rule of law and give them an unfair advantage over politics and the economy after democratization. Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy systematically documents and analyzes the constitutional tools that outgoing authoritarian elites use to accomplish these ends, such as electoral system design, legislative appointments, federalism, legal immunities, constitutional tribunal design, and supermajority thresholds for change. The study provides wide-ranging evidence for these claims using data that spans the globe and dates from 1800 to the present. Albertus and Menaldo also conduct detailed case studies of Chile and Sweden. In doing so, they explain why some democracies successfully overhaul their elite-biased constitutions for more egalitarian social contracts.

Latin America's Radical Left

Latin America's Radical Left
Author: Aldo Marchesi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107177715

This book examines a generation of leftist militants who in the 1960s advocated revolutionary violence for social change in South America.

Pinochet's Economists

Pinochet's Economists
Author: Juan Gabriel Valdes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 1995-08-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521451468

This book tells the extraordinary story of the Pinochet regime's economists, known as the "Chicago Boys". It explores the roots of their ideas and their sense of mission, following their training as economists at the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. After their return to Chile, the "Chicago Boys" took advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the 1973 military coup to launch the first radical free market strategy implemented in a developing country. The ideological strength of their mission and the military authoritarianism of General Pinochet combined to transform an economy that, following the return to democracy, has stabilized and is now seen as a model for Latin America. This book, written by a political scientist, examines the neo-liberal economists and their perspective on the market. It also narrates the history of the transfer of ideas from the industrialized world to a developing country, which will be of particular interest to economists.

Allende's Chile

Allende's Chile
Author: Stefan de Vylder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009-03-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521107570

The evolution of events in Chile during the presidency of the late Salvador Allende attracted attention all over the world. The experiment was unique in that no other Marxist president had been put in power by the democratic process of the ballot box. Political and economic developments under the government of the Unidad Popular undoubtedly had significance beyond the Chilean borders. The 'Chilean road to socialism' was a blind alley, leading not to socialism by peaceful means but to a military dictatorship by exceedingly violent means. Allende and the Unidad Popular were defeated and Chilean democracy was overthrown. But why it was overthrown remains an important question. This study analyzes the economic aspects of Allende's failure.

Story of a Death Foretold

Story of a Death Foretold
Author: Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1608198960

Presents an account of the short rise and fall of President Salvador Allende, who died of gunshot wounds on September 11, 1973, following the military coup that deposed him.

Nation of Enemies Chile Under Pinochet

Nation of Enemies Chile Under Pinochet
Author: Pamela Constable
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1993-05-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780393309850

An account of the polarization of Chilean society under Augusto Pinochet and of Chile's return to democratic government.

Limits of Tolerance

Limits of Tolerance
Author: Sebastian Brett
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1998
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781564321923

History and Legal Norms