Coined by US mathematician Norbert Wiener in 1948 to refer to the notion of "steering" or "governance" with regard to any complex system, whether biological, mechanical, physical, or social, the word "cybernetics" today carries with it a certain mustiness, evoking Cold War rivalries, Jetsons-style retro-futurism, or charmingly primitive robotics. Yet, as Andrew Pickering (2010, p. 16) reminds us in his magisterial study The Cybernetic Brain, cybernetic thinking is presently very much alive and well, but under different guises -AI, cryptocurrencies, machine learning, neuroscience, "smart cities" -that serve to obscure its origins in post-war systems and information theory (see also Galloway, 2014, p. 111; Tiqqun, 2020a, p. 8). For much of this era, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, many on the Left identified cybernetics with the consolidation of a technocratic capitalism designed to smooth over its inherent contradictions, and perfect the surveillance and control of populations in pursuing "social equilibrium." Recently, however, there has been a more positive reappraisal of cybernetics. Central to this reassessment is the work of such "Left-accelerationists" as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, 2014aWilliams, , 2014bWilliams, , 2015, who dismiss the Orwellian fears around cybernetics and argue that "cunning automata" can be liberated from the directionless and irrational constraints of capital. This might allow us to enter a world of extensive and intensive cyberplanning, thereby "repurposing" the very material infrastructure of capitalism itself, to universally emancipatory ends. Advocates of such a "cybernetic socialism" commonly cite Project Cybersyn -the never-fully-operational attempt to manage the Chilean economy by networked computers during the Allende period, ending dramatically with the coup d'état of 11 September 1973 -as both precursor and inspiration.The goal of this article is to critically assess the promise of cybernetics as it has been taken up by noteworthy currents in contemporary anti-capitalist thinking, especially the Left-accelerationists and their "fellow travelers." Discussion will be organized along the following lines. First, central sociopolitical debates over cybernetics, its nature and potential applications, will be reviewed. Curiously, although Left-accelerationism has been primarily British in inspiration, though not without international resonance, particular reference will be made here to the French context, mainly because deliberations on this topic have raged in the latter with a singular intensity since at least the late 1950s. (Perhaps this is because, as The Invisible Committee (2015, pp. 120-1) suggest in their splenetic 2014 text "Fuck Off, Google," France is "generally a technophobic country dominated by a generally technophilic elite.") Enthusiastic proponents of systems or cybernetic thinking, including Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, were challenged by numerous detractors, ranging from Henri Lefebvre and Gilles Châtelet to the neo-situationist collective...