In the preceding chapters, I have tried to outline how anarchist cybernetics – defined as a meeting of anarchist theories and practices of self-organisation, on the one hand, and Stafford Beer's organisational cybernetics, on the other – is well positioned to provide insights into and possible solutions to some of the complex problems facing radical left organisation. Primarily through the example of the Occupy movement, the book has explored how taking a cybernetics perspective with respect to issues of organisation can help those involved in radical politics better understand what happens when participatory and democratic self-organisation works as it should and how such organisation might be achieved. Rather than providing a model of organisation, a blueprint that can be followed to ensure success, the book and anarchist cybernetics more generally are intended, like Beer's cybernetics itself, as tools to aid those engaging in organising to identify and address problems that commonly arise. By focusing on control (understood as self-organisation) and communication, the discussion throughout has been focused on how particular functions and mechanisms of organising operate in ways that enable organisations to respond to complexity and change, while achieving the goals they set themselves. Anarchist cybernetics does not prescribe how such organisations should be structured but instead foregrounds some of the necessary functions of self-organisation and suggests how these can be realised, without constructing and reinforcing structural hierarchies. The three central concepts that underpin this framework are selforganisation, functional hierarchy and many-to-many communication.

Self-organisation is a foundational concept that is common to both anarchist politics and cybernetics and has been identified by authors, such as Colin Ward and John McEwan, as a key area of shared interest about which the two traditions can fruitfully inform one another (as outlined at length in Chapter 3). Within anarchism, self-organisation is understood to refer to how groups of people are able to come together as a collective entity, make decisions and act purposefully, without the need for bosses hierarchically above them issuing orders and having oversight over the actions of the whole collective. In cybernetics, selforganisation is a more technical concept and is used to describe how systems – mechanical, electronic, biological or indeed social – have the potential to regulate their behaviour in line with set goals.