The economic programs of all Greek parties - whatever their political spectrum is- recognize only one dominant form of relation that organises the production of value: money-oriented labour. The Right wing includes the partisans of the mediation of markets, which are actually operating under an asymmetry of information leading to a serious multidimensional crisis, while the Left wing contains the partisans of the mediation of state’s mechanisms that regulate the reciprocity through hierarchical and bureaucratic systems. Both wings are being considered as inadequate by the wide masses. Nowadays the dilemma Left or Right seems pretty vague and implausible.
However, according to P2P theory the fore mentioned dilemma can be redefined giving totally new content in the vision of the Left and transform radically the markets of the Right. In other words the future is distributed: moving towards new property forms, which are neither government-owned nor individual. Peer production and property are emerging from the interstices of market economy resembling the lava surging out of the crater covering the old land and gradually creating a new one. Abroad -beyond Greek borders- Commonism already forms the immaterial world of production because of immaterial abundance. New dynamics of human relations - P2P - constitute a new way of social organisation away from the sphere of profit maximization, while producing value. The institutionalisation and the enlargement of the Commons as well as the guarantee of a decent survival through a general -universal- guaranteed income could be regarded as feasible political objectives (contrary to the enlargement of state). In the institutional level the new vision transcends representative democracy and aims at the adoption of peer governance. The participative democracy cannot flourish within a system that reproduces and extends the economic inequality, because there is no wide participation if there is no secure prosperity.
The recent electoral result signals the conservative resultant of Greek society; certainly enough it can be claimed that the Left has failed. The conservatism runs horizontally through the political spectrum and some Right perceptions dominate even in the Left. However, the percentages of the weak parties have considerably increased showing the need concerning an alternative solution/paradigm to come to the fore. Globally people start disputing the illusive sense of freedom in terms of being free from something, and they understand the real freedom in terms of engaging, creating and self-expressing. The emancipatory P2P movement, and the sociable Web, which are not just ‘children’ of the technological (r)evolution, express a deeply shift in the epistemology and ontology in culture, and offer the means to solve the global problems. As the dynamics of P2P are still feeble in Greece, the support of all the forces that ensure better conditions for distribution is crucial. The Greek government adopts Microsoft software as the official software of the country, whereas a few people adopt the open/free software. Many are unaware of the questions related to software patents and knowledge’s copyrights, while some others start faintly speaking about concepts such as creative commons and copyleft. Furthermore, there are efforts to adopt more participative forms of organisation, in contrast with them who still believe in a limited representative ‘democracy’.
Our aim in Greek P2P blog is to spread the P2P message over Greece and to make clear how peer processes differ from the traditional processes of the market economy. The first Greek newsletter was conducted and sent last month, and till now more than 30 people (amongst them there are more than 10 people from the Greek academia) have been subscribed to it. Moreover, we created the main wiki page for the Greek language that contains numerous translations and original articles written by Bauwens, Papanikolaou, and others. Also, within December the extensive essay “P2P and Human Evolution”, translated in by George Papanikolaou, will be published at the Greek wiki. Aspiring to a community interested in discussing about P2P theory and the tangible solutions that it can offer, we are thinking of creating a Greek mailing list as well as launching a series of podcasts. In addition to this, we are examining the possibility of founding an official not-for-profit P2P organisation. We will keep the foreign public of P2P foundation informed about our initiations and results coming from our effort to spread the P2P message through this blog.