I often try to characterize my attempts at a P2P Theory (a theory which can explain the emergence of the p2p relational dynamic and practically ‘advance’ it as well), as being post-ideological. I was prompted to think again about this aspect, after an email dialogue with Vasilis Kostakis, who is working on a Laser Theory of social action , seeking to determine what are the conditions for successfulll p2p-based action and social change.

Ideology has many different meanings, but there are 2 that I find important. One, that it is not the result of genuine insight, but a hidden defense of concrete social interest; and two, that it is enclosed within one paradigm of reality. In other words, it is an exclusionary exercise. So what we need is rather a meta-paradigmatic approach, one that realizes that there are different ways to look at reality, and that truth is better served with an openness towards such different insights. This means that we move both towards a transcendence of social interests (as different paradigms will represent different social groups), but also that the approach becomes inclusionary, seeking for valid insights ‘wherever they may occur’. A theory then becomes a provisional integration, that has to be consistent with the facts, and open the way for further research. In terms of praxis, it becomes a search for commonalities between various social and political forces. Commonalities around which temporaray alliances can be built, while accepting the paradigmatic differences. One more aspect is that we have learned that part of the system cannot know the whole system of which it is a part, and this destroys a large part of the certainty that cemented ideological approaches. In this context, our approach that seeks to both understand and promote p2p alternatives, is not the quest for any ‘fixed answer’, a better solution by itself of the problems that humanity is faced with, but rather, it becomes the promotion of a set of processes, which are better able to find such a set of answers, because they are more participative, and can bypass narrow-minded interests which are blocking such best solutions to emerge. Again here we see a significant difference with the old approaches. Politics becomes the quest to broaden the set of possible social experiments, so that the best solutions may emerge, and learn and interconnect with each other.

Below is a contribution by Vasilis Kostakis:

“Nowadays, we live in a meta-ideological era when Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, Kingship and other regimes and systems have failed to embrace, enhance and incarnate people’s expectations and needs, achieving simultaneously a natural equilibrium. Moreover, it seems that many people do not believe in any ideology: the ”ideology of cynicism” or in other words the Capitalism, in its most vicious version, rules.

I definitely agree with the view that ideologies belong to the past as they lack a solid scientific basis on the natural processes. They inherently accept that societies are governed by non-natural forces and are closed environments of deterministic interactions. Furthermore, individuals adopt an ideology only if they can not realise any antithesis amongst reality and ideology’s content and principles. But in the long term, the fore-mentioned fact is impossible to stand: our boiling world does not need a predetermined system to bound; Contrariwise, it needs something open: an open code social manifesto(s) (the final ”s” implies the freedom to engage, suggest, accept or reject)

Therefore, I believe that there is the tendency for a new, to put it in technological terms, operating system with an open code (i.e. “Linux”) that will be subjected to natural evolution as a participatory system. I argue that Capitalism, Communism etc were regimes and social systems with a close code (i.e. “Windows”), which were periodically, if ever, enhanced by a few people. So, the P2P ethos, processes and mode of social organisation, which combines both freedom and what Michel Bauwens calls equipotentiality, can set the infrastructure for an open code social manifesto. I can not define exactly what this manifesto would be as it is going to be created and recreated through massive participation and can be considered as the potential result of the laser beam. I suppose that it may be a distillate of new ontology (ways of being), epistemology (ways of knowing) and axiology (value constellations).

We should stop building our houses on shifting sand; We should rather become the sand.

So what comes after ideologies? I know that I have to be concrete, but that is the point: we should not be concrete, we have just to participate till a population inversion is created and then the pluralism will determine. Our future has taken up the wager to transform P2P processes from a subsystem within the capitalist community into the dominant mode of civilisation.”