“Bide Time and Maneuver”: a Conservative Style of Cybernetic Governmentality
Keywords:
Governmentality; conservatism; liberalism; Soviet philosophy; cybernetics
Abstract
This article is dedicated to a single aspect of the history of Soviet governmentality. According to Foucault, socialism did not develop an administerial rationality of its own
and was hence forced to connect up to the already available forms of this rationality. Late Soviet history is in many ways determined by the confrontation betwen two such сonnections–one to the administrative/police form and the other to the liberal form. The first connection is well-known, while the other is only now being studied in earnest. Using the cyber-administerial project of Nikita Moiseyev, the author of this article demonstrates how the elements of liberal governmentality, already marked by a “conservative style” (Mannheim), transform after being transplanted onto Soviet soil. Partial decentralization and market mechanisms become elemnts of a cybernetic mega-machine, where the perpetually developing forces of production are a labile functional part of the system, while relations of production are a conservative “architectural organization scheme”, responsible for self-preservation and stability. The conservative “architecture” of the system should be set up in such a way that prevents progressing development from calling into question the existence of an infinitely self-tuning socialist “autopilot”.
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Bassin, Mark (2016). The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construc- tion of Community in Modern Russia (Culture and Society after Socialism). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bikbov, Alexander (2014). Grammatika poryadka: Istoricheskaya sotsiologiya ponyatiy, kotoriye menyayut nashu realnost [The Grammar of the Order: A Historical So- ciology of the Concepts which Change Our Reality]. Мoscow: Izd. dom Vysshey shkoly economiki.
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Bourke, Richard (2018). What is Conservatism? History, Ideology and Party // European Journal of Political Theory. 17.4: 449-475.
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Budraitskis, Ilya (2020). Мir, kotoriy postroil Hantington i v kotorom zhivyom vse my. Paradoksy konservativnogo povorota v Rossii [The World that Huntington Built and in which We All Live. Paradoxes of the Conservative Turn in Russia]. Мoscow: Izdatelstvo knizhnogo magazina “Tsiolkovskiy”.
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Foucault, Michel (1971). The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978. London: Palgrave.
Foucault, Michel (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979. London: Palgrave.
Glushenkova, Elena (2015). Ecopolitologiya N.N. Moiseyeva i ustoychivoye razvitiye Rossii [The Ecopolitical Thought of N. N. Moiseyev and the Sustainable Development of Russia]. Мoscow: Аcademiya MNEPU.
Gordon, Colin (1991). Governmental Rationality: An Introduction / The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality. Ed. by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Graham, Loren (1987). Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union, New York: Columbia University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1957). Conservatism as an Ideology // American Political Science Review. 51(2):454-473.
Ionin, Leonid (2005). “Konservatizm” [Conservatism]. Logos. Vol. 3: 3-73.
Kamnev, Vladimir (2009). “Sovetskiy konservatizm kak filosofskaya problema” [Soviet Conservatism as a Philosophical Problem]. Vestnik Leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni A. S. Pushkina. Vol. 3.1: 172-182.
Kaploon, Viktor (2019). “Perestat myslit “vlast” cherez “gosudastvo”. Gouvernamentalite, Governmentality Studies: chto stalo s analitikoy vlasti Mishelya Fuko v russkikh perevodakh.” [To Stop Thinking “Power” by Means of “Government”. Gou- vernamentalite, Governmentality Studies: What Happened to Michel Foucault’s Analytic of Power in Russian Translation.] Logos. Vol. 29.2:179-220.
Kobylin, Igor (2019) “‘Razum i rynok’: ecologicheskoye “upravlenchestvo” akademika Moiseyeva” [“‘Reason and Market’: Moiseyev’s ecological “adminstrativity”]. Neprikosnovenniy zapas. Vol.123.1: 144-160.
Kovda, Viktor (1952). Velikiy plan preobrazovaniya prirody [The Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature]. Мoscow: Izdaelstvo akademii Nauk SSSR.
Mannheim, Karl (1954) Diagnosis of Our Time: Wartime Essays of a Sociologist. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Minakov, Arkadiy (2011). Russkoy konservatizm v pervoy chetverti XIX veka [Russian Conservatism in the First Quarter of the XIX Century]. Voronezh: Izd-vo. Voronezhskogo gos. un-ta.
Moiseyev, Nikita (1984). Lyudi i kibernetika [People and Cybernetics]. Мoscow: Molodaya gvardiya.
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Moiseyevskiye chteniya (2018). Moiseyevskiye chteniya. Kultura i gumanitarniye problemy sovremennoy tsivilizatsii. Vserossiyskaza nauchnaya konferentsiya. Doklady i materialy. [Moiseyev readings. Culture and Problems in the Humanities Pertinent to the Contemporary Civilization. All-Russian Scholarly Conference. Papers and Proceedings]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo gumanitarnogo universiteta.
Moiseyevskiye chteniya (2019). Moiseyevskiye chteniya. Kultura kak faktor natsionalnoy bezopasnosti Rossii. Obshсherossiyskaza (natsionalnaya) nauchnaya konferentsiya. Doklady i materialy. [Moiseyev readings. Culture as a Factor of Russia’s National Security. National Scholarly Conference. Papers and Proceedings]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo gumanitarnogo universiteta.
Moiseyevskiye chteniya (2020). Moiseyevskiye chteniya. Kultura i gumanitarniye prob- lemy sovremennoy tsivilizatsii. Obshсherossiyskaza (natsionalnaya) nauchnaya konferentsiya. Doklady i materialy. [Moiseyev readings. Culture and Problems in the Humanities Pertinent to the Contemporary Civilization. National Scholarly Conference. Papers and Proceedings]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo gumanitarnogo universiteta.
Muller, Jerry Z., ed. (1997). Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Oakeshott, Michael (1962). Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, London: Methuen and co ltd.
Peters, Benjamin (2016). How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Repnikov, Alexander (2007). Konservativniye kontseptsii pereustroystva Rossii [Conservative Conceptions of Russia’s Reconstruction]. Мoscow: Academia.
Rindzeviciute, Egle (2015). The Future as an Intellectual Technology in the Soviet Union. From Centralised Planning to Reflexive Management // Cahiers du Monde russe. Vol. 56.1: 111-134.
Rindzeviciute, Egle (2016). The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up The Cold War World. Ithaca; L.: Cornell University Press.
Rindzeviciute, Egle (2020). “Soviet Policy Sciences and Earth System Governmental- ity”. Modern Intellectual History. Vol. 17.1.: 179-208.
Shchedrovitskiy, Georgiy (2003). Metodologiya i filosofiya organizatsionno-upravlencheskoy deyatelnosti: osnovniye ponyatiya i printsipy (kurs lektsiy) [Methodology and Philosophy of Organizational-administrative Action: Fundamental Concepts and Principles (lecture course)]. Vol. 5. Moscow: ORU.
Thompson, Willie (2011). Ideologies in the Age of Extremes: Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914-91. NY: Pluto Press.
Walicki, Andrzej (1964). W kręgu konserwatywnej utopii. Struktura i przemiany rosyjskiego słowianofilstwa, Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Published
2021-01-20
How to Cite
Kobylin, I. (2021). “Bide Time and Maneuver”: a Conservative Style of Cybernetic Governmentality. Stasis, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-21-10-2-77-101
Section
Articles
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