How to Non-Organize

After the devastation of World War II, the importance of technological research and development became increasingly clear, not only for achieving success on the battlefield but also to serve as a foundation for new ways of thinking about the future. In particular, states across different political and economic systems around the world worked to integrate new forms of planning based on tools from social science, and scientific and industrial resources. On October 24, 1945, the United Nations (UN) was founded to promote international peace and stability and to prevent new wars and atrocities​​. The UN embodied the radical proposition that science and technology, which witnessed the most terrifying demonstration of its use by totalitarian regimes, could be deliberately redirected toward collective human welfare. 

Although science and technology continued to be used for warlike purposes in the decades that followed, it also saw many efforts to align a future of well-being and peace to complex public policies. However, this resulted in multiple versions of the future that collided with each other. This was part of the driving force behind the politics of the Cold War, as well as the intellectual and scientific elite who advocated a single type of future that conformed to the plans of each world superpower. During the postwar years, a new kind of business leader began to emerge. Rather than advocating for a “single future,” these figures sought to develop new forms of institutions capable of addressing humanity’s interconnected challenges, and most importantly, with the ability to work across the very boundaries that Cold War logic insisted were insurmountable.

Aurelio Peccei’s Argentine Laboratory

Amid this period of questioning existing governmental and institutional structures, Aurelio Peccei emerged as an “intellectual-industrialist” with a global vision. Born into a Piemontese socialist family with strong anti-fascist convictions, after studying economics at the University of Turin, he went to the Sorbonne with a scholarship and was awarded a trip to the Soviet Union, which nurtured his view of society from a global and systemic perspective that would later define his work. On his return to Italy, he began working for Fiat and was sent to develop the company’s business in China. During World War II, as a member of Giustizia e Libertà, Italy’s anti-fascist resistance movement, Peccei was imprisoned for a year as a hostage of the fascist regime, which deepened his understanding of the complex relationship between power, justice, and human dignity.

After the war, Peccei’s competence and creativity made him one of Fiat’s most valuable executives. He settled in Argentina in 1949 for nearly a decade, where he started the Fiat Concord company, a subsidiary of the Italian automotive manufacturer, which built cars, tractors and railway vehicles, contributing substantially to the industrial rebirth of the Latin American region.1 Unlike many Western companies’ executives who viewed developing countries merely as sources of raw materials, Peccei demonstrated that it was possible to establish companies of international excellence while experiencing the challenges posed by technology transfer, economic cooperation, and industrialization. Around 1957, Peccei established the Office for International Economic Cooperation Studies (Oficina de Estudios para la Colaboración Económica Internacional, or OECEI) within Fiat Concord’s structure. This became his laboratory for thinking about development challenges on a global scale.

Peccei’s time in Argentina proved transformative, not just for his career but for his worldview: recognizing that the challenges facing humanity were interconnected and required cooperative rather than competitive approaches.2This occurred within a broader historical transformation in which planning itself had become a scientific managerial approach, evolving from factory floors in the late nineteenth century to complex social and economic processes that could be rationally organized and optimized, including entire national economies. By the 1950s, cybernetics had emerged as a crucial bridge between technological management approaches and state projects, offering what appeared to be an ideologically neutral language. Notably, political scientist Karl Deutsch applied cybernetic principles to the analysis of political systems, promising to transform statecraft itself into a science of communication and feedback. For Deutsch nations were no longer stable geographical territories but interactive spaces.3

Peccei’s time in Argentina was therefore not an isolated case, not even within Argentina. At that time, Argentina was emerging as a significant center for innovation that would profoundly influence global discussions about technology, development, and planning. In 1960, Manuel Sadosky, a pivotal figure in the development of computation in Latin America, founded the Institute of Calculus (Instituto de Cálculo) at the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The institute was known for acquiring the country’s first mainframe computer—a Ferranti Mercury affectionately known as “Clementina.”4 According to Sadosky, the Institute of Calculus fulfilled a triple mission: research, higher education, and service. The service aspect was a novelty at the time, as it was not usually considered a part of university practice. However, it enabled Argentinian companies to solve problems requiring many calculus and operational research techniques.5

This type of interrelationship between the university, companies, and public institutions meant the university’s research could effect real change on major national issues. For instance, the Institute of Calculus developed a simulation method to study the use of rivers in the Cuyo region, which enabled the cultural, social, and political impact of different river courses to be analysed. Another significant figure at the institute was Oscar Varsavsky, who led the Mathematical Economy research group. Varsavsky pioneered numerical experimentation methods in the region, including simulation exercises of future scenarios based on a vast array of heterodox variables, including political ones. His belief was that computational models and cybernetic principles would make it possible to achieve a society that not only thrived economically but also encouraged the creative and technological potential of its people.6

“The World Model” (World3). Source: The Limits to Growth (1972).

 

The Architecture of Change: The Club of Rome and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Peccei’s experience of managing international business and economic relations made him realize the limitations of traditional institutional structures when it came to addressing complex, transnational challenges, and their inability to respond rapidly and creatively to emerging and systemic challenges. This led him to establish the Club of Rome, a new type of organization—or rather, as he insisted, a “non-organization.” Emerging from Peccei’s vision, the Club of Rome was founded on the belief that the postwar international system was struggling to address the new class of problems arising from rapid technological change, environmental degradation, and growing global inequalities.

As Peccei himself explained, “The Club of Rome is a non-organization, a non-institution, a non-bureaucracy. It is, rather, a meeting point of ideas and desires related to the crisis threatening modern society.”7 It operated as an “invisible college” with a small multidisciplinary cohort from different nationalities, which included scientists, humanists, educators, business leaders, and government officials. Members were united by common values and met when opportunities arose, often in small working sessions. This structure allowed for the kind of intellectual agility and cross-disciplinary thinking that Peccei believed was essential for addressing what he termed the “global problematique.”

The non-organizational purpose of the Club of Rome sought to avoid the bureaucratic rigidity that plagued traditional institutions, allowing for rapid adaptation to changing circumstances. Most importantly, it embodied Peccei’s conviction that the challenges facing humanity require a fundamentally new approach to collective action, one that is much closer to the agility and tactics of business or military organizational structures, which were often lacking in government structures:

Most governments are organised through a vertical hierarchy devised to meet the needs of earlier simpler times and ill-suited to face the “horizontal” nature of so many of the problems they face. The machinery of government gives little importance to the staff function found to be so important by the military and the large business corporations. Most integrative decision is with the Prime Minister or Cabinet, although coordination and decision on a horizontal basis is ever more required at many levels. The increased span and scale of governmental responsibility have multiplied the size and power of the bureaucracy which even at its most intelligent has the function of ensuring stability and continuity, and hence is inevitably resistant to change. Adjustment to rapidly changing events is thus inherently difficult.8

Peccei identified three essential dimensions that this new approach must embrace: the systematic dimension, recognizing that modern problems were interconnected systems rather than isolated issues; the long-term dimension, acknowledging that many challenges require planning horizons measured in decades rather than electoral-political cycles; and, the global dimension, understanding that local actions have planetary consequences.9

For the Club of Rome, cybernetics served as an ideal political bridge-building tool for Cold War cooperation. The term had gained significant prestige in the Soviet Union, where it was regarded as a “modernizing influence” while offering a framework for understanding problems as interconnected systems rather than isolated issues.10 Cybernetics allowed scientists to work collaboratively on issues that transcended geopolitical boundaries, including energy systems, environmental pollution, food and agriculture, and urban planning. It was in this context that the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) was established in Austria in 1972 as a joint East-West research center, representing a practical implementation of many of Peccei’s ideas about international cooperation and systemic thinking. IIASA’s mission was to apply systems analysis—an interdisciplinary methodology derived from cybernetics and operations research—to address the problems of global significance.

While IIASA was not directly created by the Club of Rome, Peccei played a significant role in the institute’s formation. IIASA focused much of its work on the society-environment nexus and the complex problems that occurred in all advanced societies, regardless of their political systems. These included transboundary environmental pollution, sustainable energy supply, ecosystem resilience, and infrastructure planning—precisely the kind of systemic, long-term, and global challenges that Peccei had identified as requiring new approaches. IIASA’s approach reflected Peccei’s understanding that the modern world required ways of thinking that could integrate technical analysis with ethical considerations and could accommodate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. Moreover, rather than viewing problems through national or ideological lenses, IIASA approached shared global and transboundary challenges as collective solutions, thus becoming a pioneer in sustainable development.

World3 model with stabilizing policies introduced in the year 2000. Source: The Limits to Growth (1972).

The application of cybernetics in the social sciences led to simulations that aimed at positing possible long-term models of society. The most well-known example of this is The Limits to Growth (1972), the report produced by MIT professors Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens III for the Club of Rome.11 The report “[examined] the five basic factors that determine, and therefore, ultimately limit, growth on this planet—population, agricultural production, natural resources, industrial production, and pollution.”12 This was achieved by drawing on a large database and using mathematical models and computer simulations. The work was largely based on the system dynamics technique created by Jay Forrester called the World3 model, a computer simulation model of global systems designed to explore the interactions between various factors such as population growth, resource depletion, pollution, and economic development, and to predict different scenarios on how these factors might affect society over time. 13

The Limits to Growth “objectively” demonstrated that continuing to develop along the world’s current trajectory of exponential population growth and rising per capita consumption would exert pressure on available resources and lead to an inevitable population crisis and planetary catastrophe. The authors recommended halting economic and population growth, with the aim of achieving a state of equilibrium. This represented a highly selective projection, however, and the fact that its main authors were professors at MIT endowed it with an aura of scientific authority that effectively immunized it from the rigorous scrutiny its methodology deserved.

 

“La Fundación Bariloche y el Modelo del Mundo” (“The Bariloche Foundation and the Model of the World”). Source: Revista La Nación, April 2, 1972. Courtesy of the Bariloche Foundation.

The Bariloche Foundation’s Alternative

In 1963, five years before the establishment of the Club of Rome, the Bariloche Foundation was founded by a group of scientists from Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission and the Balseiro Institute with the aim to establish a unique academic organization in Patagonia. It was the brainchild of Carlos Mallmann, an Argentine mathematical physicist who had served as director of both the Bariloche Atomic Centre and the Balseiro Institute, but who also had a broader concern about society. The Bariloche Foundation comprised a broad range of departments: biology, sociology, transfer, mathematics, natural resources and energy, and music.14

In 1970, a group of members of the Bariloche Foundation participated in an event in Rio de Janeiro, sponsored jointly by the Club of Rome and the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro, which aimed to analyze and discuss the World3 model that The Limits to Growth eventually used. The report sparked much discussion about the profound inequality that exists globally between different regions.15 The main criticism that emerged was that The Limits to Growth predicted an “ecological apocalypse” from a developed-world perspective, ignoring the fact that two-thirds of the world’s population were already experiencing crises involving scarce resources, inadequate housing, poor health, and starvation. Additionally, there was concern that policies oriented towards the attainment of a state of “global equilibrium” in the near future would perpetuate rather than address the present inequities and disparities in the global system.16

A year later, in 1971, the Bariloche Foundation created an alternative to the World3 model, the Latin American World Model (LAWM). Led by the Argentine geologist Amilcar O. Herrera, LAWM put forward a disruptive and emancipatory proposal that sought to address inequality on a global scale. It also represented a direct response from the Global South to what many developing countries saw as the potentially restrictive implications of the original The Limits to Growth study, offering an alternative perspective that prioritized equity and development needs alongside environmental concerns.17

LAWM questioned some of the variables, definitions, and calculations used by the MIT model, which were disconnected from the reality of many developing countries. In particular, the World3 model defined physical limits as Earth’s finite capacity to supply non-renewable resources, produce food from limited arable land, and absorb industrial pollution—all of which would be overwhelmed by exponential population and economic growth. LAWM claimed that those physical limits were mainly due to social and political factors, rendering World3’s proposition of “perfect stability” unfeasible. LAWM’s central argument was that underdeveloped societies could not emerge from their “backward” state by following the same development patterns as industrialized countries. The ideology of LAWM proposed a rethinking of the consumerist model in favor of a new one that would promote the development of material and cultural goods as well as the satisfaction of basic human needs. This would, according to LAWM, allow people to fulfil their potential without wasting resources.18

Energy consumption per capita by country, 1972. Source: Catastrophe or new society? A Latin American world model (1976). Courtesy of the Bariloche Foundation.

LAWM adopted a model based on five sectors (food, education, housing, capital goods, and other consumption goods), divided the world into four sectors (developed countries, Asia, Africa, and Latin America), and ran various scenarios using computers.19 Instead of working on the basis of demographic projections (e.g. UN projections), population was understood to function as an endogenous variable linked to socio-economic determinants. In this way, the demographic sub-model made it possible to investigate a central hypothesis of LAWM’s approach, which, far from Malthusian biases, posited that the only appropriate way to intervene in population dynamics and development challenges was to improve living conditions.20 This proposal was a utopian, yet feasible model for society based on an interdisciplinary approach applied on a global scale. In Mallmann’s own words, “The goal of humanity that we propose is that each and every one of the present and future inhabitants of our planet—the spacecraft we share—can, through their activities, genuinely satisfy their quantitative and comparative needs of being and access.”21

Instead of The Limits to Growth’s abstract predictions of future global catastrophe, LAWM proposed a new model of human development that prioritized the immediate rectification of humanity’s deteriorating conditions such as hunger, illiteracy, and inadequate housing. The model argued that underdeveloped countries must not replicate the disparaging consumption and environmental degradation patterns of developed nations. Instead, they should pursue development that is intrinsically compatible with their ecosystems. However, it recognized that global policies for reducing resource consumption would remain unrealistic until every human being achieved acceptable living standards. It is unreasonable, according to LAWM, to demand environmental consciousness from regions struggling with basic survival conditions. Consequently, the proposal meant that developed countries must decelerate their economic growth to alleviate pressure on natural resources and combat overconsumption, redirecting part of their economic surplus to help underdeveloped countries overcome their stagnation.22

LAWM’s value as an alternative development model was highlighted at various scientific meetings.23 The Second Symposium on Global Modelling, organized by IIASA and held in Baden-am-Wien, Austria, in October 1974, was devoted to the presentation and discussion of LAWM.24 Peccei himself supported the Bariloche model, and was even asked by Mallmann to provide a list of European editors who could be interested in publishing a book on it.25 During a 1977 UNESCO-backed meeting about the application of LAWM in different national contexts, development studies author Michael Hopkins stressed that Bariloche Foundation’s proposal played a significant role in making the issue of basic human needs central to how the UN system thought about development. 

LAWM also received criticism in relation to the oversimplification of some of its variables and certain considerations that it did not take into account,26 in addition to its “political idealism,” which assumed the existence of a perfect global community that would be morally challenged.27 However, LAWM was never intended to give a detailed description of society. Given that every historical process is unique and generates new problems that influence its evolution, it was primarily a demonstration tool rather than a predictive instrument. Despite its sophistication, LAWM was eventually forgotten, in part due to the 1976 Argentine military coup led by General Jorge Rafael Videla, which forced LAWM’s key protagonists into exile, rupturing institutional continuity at the Bariloche Foundation. Furthermore, during the 1980s, many multilateral institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) adopted LAWM’s pioneering ideas and methodological approaches—particularly its emphasis on basic human needs as a development priority—without properly crediting LAWM as the originator of these concepts.

Non-Organizing as a Catalyst for Planetary Thinking

Peccei’s vision of “non-organization” was based on the need for new organizational forms to enable for planetary-scale governance. His insight was that traditional institutional structures—even those with strong strategic vision, operational capability and moral purpose—were rigid and ill-suited to providing an adaptive response to emerging interconnected global challenges. Such problems require an orchestrated expertise operating within shared and diverse frameworks for productive disagreement and collective action: organizations that think simultaneously as practitioners and philosophers, and act as local operators and global citizens.

Peccei’s simultaneous support for the MIT and Bariloche models recognizes that no single analytical framework can capture the full complexity of planetary-scale challenges. Over fifty years have passed since these models and ideas emerged, yet challenges such as climate change, technological governance, and social inequality have either prevailed or worsened. There is an even more urgent need today for epistemological diversity and the use of multiple forms of knowledge to achieve a more complete understanding of the world. These multiple ways of knowing require a new kind of planetary thinking that is as diverse and complex as the challenges it seeks to address.

The profound convergence between Peccei’s “non-organization” philosophy and Mallmann’s human-centered approach demonstrates that the Club of Rome’s intentionally “non-organizational” structure functioned as a permeable intellectual ecosystem that nurtured alternative ideas like LAWM. This reveals that, while history has mistakenly reduced the Club of Rome to a singular association with MIT’s Limits to Growth, its true potential lay precisely in its capacity to transcend institutional boundaries and ideological silos. It created collaborative spaces that served as catalysts for genuine intellectual pluralism where diverse voices could challenge dominant perspectives and propose fundamentally different approaches to modeling humanity’s future.