For an Ecological Tourism!

unfortunately (?) there is no such button!unfortunately (?) there is no such button!

"It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly,
and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly." - Epikouros

"there is no way to Peace - Peace is the way!" - A.J. Muste

(a progressive work in progress - comments & suggestions welcome!)

1. Introduction

Before the Climate Crisis became a household word and a politician's boogie for all evils, all countries used to - many still do - treat the Environment as an externality, a dumping ground. Equally, nearly all countries used to - and many still do - treat Tourism & Hospitality as a low-maintenance, labour-intensive industry that magically provides ample jobs and revenue and keeps growing, like a type of benevolent tumour, by itself. Environment & Tourism Ministries alike were nearly always ranked last in seniority, if they ever existed at all, headed by people who had little professional & academic knowledge or experience. Universities too did not, and many famous ones still do not, consider Tourism as a serious topic or a separate sector worth studying, while Hospitality was confined to a technical-level education (perfect the art of smiling while working yourself to death). At a time when countries are fast setting up Climate Change Ministries, there is also a growing realization that Tourism & Hospitality (and Leisure) are not a joke or an afterthought, but, thanks no less to the huge number of people working directly or indirectly in this multi-sector, a protagonist in what goes by the name of "Just Transition", the quest for a better, fairer, happier, greener, global socio-economic system. That, in turn, includes and involves the quest for an ecological (green, democratic, equitable) tourism model.

Terminology matters, as do definitions (and combinations) of words, how one perceives them (as absolutes or as continuums), while word meanings also keep changing. The short, simple yet complex term "democratic" has been greatly abused over the ages. Original (Athenian, Direct) Democracy was not just about voting, but also about being voted, not just for holding (often divisive, polarised, controlled by the status quo/deep state) elections every four years to choose someone to, supposedly, represent you (rather than sponsors with deep pockets) but for you holding power. It denoted you and every other citizen representing yourselves directly both by voting on important issues and participating/atlernating in governance. Democracy is therefore about the direct involvement of all the people (all classes until they are dissolved, the Demos) in taking decisions and exercising power (Kratos), in other words about "power of, governance by and for all the people".

Similarly, Hospitality originated as much more than a paid service in many cultures. In his seminal "Of Hospitality"(2000) Derrida, the most famous Philosopher to write on the concept of Hospitality, made the distinction of unconditional and conditional Hospitality, where the unconditional variety is also extended to the unexpected and even the unwelcomable guest. The founder of Deconstruction also contrasted genuine Hospitality to the inhumane policies of global north governments towards migrants and refugees. In Ancient Greece "Philoxenia" or "Cordial attitude towards Travellers" was a sacred procedure with specific requirements, gift-giving rituals and the foundation of long-lasting friendships. Zeus himself was called "Xenios", the protector of Travellers. In the Iliad (Book VI) Diomedes a Greek and Glafkos a Trojan were about to slaughter each other in the battlefield when while trying to insult each other (as football players still do during the game) they realize that Diomedes' grandfather had once offered Hospitality to Glafkos' grandfather. Diomedes and Glafkos instantly stopped fighting, embraced and offered their weapons to each other as a gift! 

The ongoing, combined, quintuple crisis (polycrisis), economic/systemic, social, environmental/climate, humanitarian/refugee, pandemic/public health, and now, again, the New Cold War, the spectre of nuclear MADness (Mutually Assured Destruction) and the butchery of innocent civilians in Gaza, the Ukraine and many other less geopolitically-interesting places that corporate media do not cover, is probably of no recent historical precedent in terms of endangering our presence, let alone our well-being, on this planet. While technological and medical progress has allowed the human population to grow, despite hundreds of treaties and fanfare, progress is agonizingly slow in terms of reducing inequality, poverty and improving conservation, social justice and human rights. On the contrary, in recent years, there is a rapidly growing Wealth and Health Inequality: some 3 billion people own nothing, 1% owns 45% of personal wealth, while the 0,01%, for the first time in history, own so much, about 11% of global wealth. Unsurprisingly, the 1% are also responsible for twice the amount of emissions as the poorest 50%! The world's richest and most powerful people, the Billionaire-Oligarchs of all countries have increased their wealth from 1% to 3% in the last 30 years. At the other end, according to the World Health Organization, one in three people still do not have access to safe drinking water! And we have all witnessed how poor countries were largely excluded from the supply of Covid-19 vaccines, while the oligarchs got vastly richer during the pandemic! The 99% now have to worry both about the end of the world and about the end of the month!

"Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition." - Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Part IV, Chapter 46

If, and it is a big if, we consider human civilization as a path of progress in all fronts, and not just in Technology, then it follows that progress is possible, but it takes a lot of time. Although it usually starts with one or a few persons, it has to involve the many! Thus there is a need for persistence and collaboration, and optimism: as they say, if we are not failing often, it just means we are not really trying! Just think of the long line of failures, trials, errors and successes that took us from trees to caves to mega-cities and, possibly, if our inner ape (or Elon) does not mess this up, to the stars. On the other hand, if this is "as good as it gets", if human civilization does not represent real "progress" across some real or imaginary axis, just a constant, largely meaningless and often negative, change of circumstances on the surface of a lonely planet it still makes sense to prevent these circumstances from getting worse for us, as individuals and as societies.

Our modern "problems" and "solutions" go all the way back to the dawn of the Anthropocene, to the first agricultural societies where accumulation, surplus, debt, money, markets and human-made pollution (scientists have detected very early pollution from the 5th C. BCE Athenian - very democratic - silver mine smelters in the Arctic ice!) first emerged and have since been inextricably linked to the basis of human civilization. We, however, cannot go back to an agrarian civilization or even further back. It is not realistic for 8 billion people to retreat back to the countryside, the forests and to a nomadic-mode of survival - nor should they, in the first place, as cities can be the most eco-friendly environments, saving space and resources. Doom and gloom and guilt, about the current state of Tourism, the Climate, the Environment and the World does not lead anywhere unless it is accompanied with constructive, concrete, individual and collective action. The key culprits and beneficiaries of the current state of affairs have names and addresses and loopholes (e.g. tax havens) that prevent a level playing field (= equal rights, obligations & opportunities for all) with practical, clear, progressive laws. Our collective technological achievements if properly utilized/managed/divided could already guarantee the well-being of everyone on the planet. The pandemic clearly indicated that "There Is An Alternative" (in fact there are many alternatives) to the dated, neoliberal recipes of the 1980s, but what is less clear is to what extent and in what respects the alternative is 'better'. 

"Countries should not be judged by the words written in their constitutions but by their annual budgets" - Noam Chomsky

National budgets of powers big and small, still favour militarization and environmental destruction, among others. This is no accident of course, as the military-industrial-extractive complex has a chokehold on many governments and political parties of powerful countries, let alone weaker ones. We need to loosen this chokehold, and divert these trillions to peaceful, environmental and health activities and social services for all.


Pyotr Alexeyevich KropotkinPyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin"All things are for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say, "This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products," any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant, "This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build." All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as "The Right to work," or "To each the whole result of his labour." What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING: WELL-BEING FOR ALL!"

Pyotr Kropotkin - The Conquest of Bread, 1892

In the 21st century, especially if the onerous prophecies of climate scientists are accurate, but even if they are not, we need to find answers to questions of paramount importance, including how and who produces, distributes and stores money, energy and food, and, in the light of the Coronavirus crisis, how quality health, education and housing can be accessible for all. But a democratic, progressive tourism, travel and leisure are just as important in an automated economy where we should not have to work as many hours in order to make a decent living. In a way, we have to reverse-engineer the pillars of the current system. Work must be redefined, re-organised and fairly remunerated. Even if not always visible, there are already huge cracks in the status quo - the great transition to a low-carbon, fairer and happier world, is already underway.

2. Has Capitalism, after so many failed attempts to replace it, faded away by itself? 

According to the self-described 'erratic marxist' and maverick politician-economist Yanis Varoufakis, we need not worry about "fixing" Capitalism as it has "silently passed away without anyone noticing", as Feudalism once was. Capitalism certainly still exists as a shorthand for the 'globally prevailing socioeconomic system and geopolitical balance" or "world order", which of course is constantly evolving and is different than 200 years ago. As Engels implied in his seminal "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State" the roots of Capitalism go all the way back to the rise of Patriarchy while present-day Socialist Feminists also argue that they are the two sides of the same coin. This would imply that we can get/have gotten rid of Capitalism only to the extent that we have gotten rid of Patriarchy. On the other hand, Capitalism being so infamously flexible, perhaps a Feminist, or Feminist-friendly, Capitalism has emerged. 

Capitalism as a term goes back to the 13th century. Its origins however can be traced to the emergence of agrarian societies and the first accumulation of capital. The term 'capitalism' was chosen by Louis Blanc and later by Marx and Engels (M&E) to describe and explain the then emerging economic system. M&E are towering figures in the history of political philosophy, respected by friends and foes alike, due to their scientific analysis of human progress until the 19th century. But first and foremost they were theorists of (19th c) Capitalism rather than Socialism and they did not provide a roadmap for the transition to, or a hypothesis of how the alternative, Communist, society they envisioned, or even the transitionary stage of Socialism, would really work. According to many scholars, as he grew older Marx became less statist, dogmatic and euro-centric, moved closer to libertarian communism, appreciated the role of local conditions and the existence of many paths forward, to the extent that in his final years Marx was not an orthodox Marxist (or indeed a Marxist-Leninist!). Thanks to the works of John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Michael Löwy, Kohei Saito and others, we are now aware that Marx gradually and increasingly appreciated the importance of Ecology and he can be rightly considered a key precursor of Ecosocialism. For a libertarian socialist like Chomsky, Marxism is an "organized religion" - again this not very informative as all coherent, comprehensible and eventually successful theories, must be organised. If there is a dogma or tautology in Marxism, then that can only be that Humanity may scientifically and ethically progress towards an altruistic direction to the level required by a future Communist society, and that this can only happen through a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (in practice a dictatorship "on behalf" of the proletariat). There is ample evidence to back the proposition that Humanity does progress scientifically, but scant evidence it has made any progress in the direction of altruism/mutual aid during the past 10,000 years, the visible results being endless poverty, violence and wars. Marx did not write anything specific about Tourism, as Raul Bianchi has pointed out, probably because mass tourism did not exist in his day.

"Under socialism much of “primitive” democracy will inevitably be revived, since, for the first time in the history of civilized society the mass of population will rise to taking an independent part, not only in voting and elections, but also in the everyday administration of the state. Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing." 
V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution

The monumental - in terms of both historicity, complexity and... errors - task was undertaken, theoretically and literally, in Czarist Russia, a backward, sprawling, empire that M&E never considered as a suitable candidate, and rightly so with the benefit of hindsight, by the great revolutionary and thinker, Lenin. Many marxists believe he distorted Marx's ideas picking what suited him for his purposes and overemphasized the 'dictatorial' aspects of Marxian recipes. The work quoted above, "The State and Revolution" is considered as one of Lenin's most important works as it was written just before the year of the Great October Revolution, probably as a result of arguments with other Bolshevik luminaries such as Bukharin of whether the state should wither rapidly or not after the revolution. Most importantly it shows the many alternatives to what became known as Stalinism, and what could have been had Lenin lived to be 100 years old. Unfortunately, Lenin died too early, at just 53, leaving the helm of the great experiment at the hands of someone he had explicitly and repeatedly warned others against, Stalin, the "bad boy" from the Caucasus... Had Lenin remained longer in the equation could the USSR have attained "genuine Communism" (rather than autocratic state capitalism) and still exist today or would it have chosen a similar path? Was someone like Stalin exactly what was needed to defeat the monster of Fascism? The Soviet Union was far more than the gulags and show trials of the Stalin era, there followed periods of considerable advancement for the working class, the arts, sports and well-being. It was - with all its shortcomings and faults, the first (experimental, corrupt, imperfect etc) worker-state in history. What if Gorbachev, who may have sincerely wanted to democratize the Soviet system and build world detente, had emerged earlier, was more talented or luckier? There can be no definite answers as there are no 'ifs' in History. But hopefully we will never see terror, show trials and personality cults ever repeated under any progressive banner or pretext. Human Rights, Personal (as opposed to Corporate) Freedoms and Democracy, in a recognisable form, are non-negotiable on the way to a better society and are not to be sacrificed for any lofty goal, for the simple reason that there is no higher goal than All Human Rights for All.

"We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality"
Mikhail Bakunin, Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism, 1867

Lenin had a great mind and leadership abilities but on the one hand he did not have the luxury of operating in a theoretical vacuum as a philosopher - he had to fight real (and imaginary) enemies and solve real (and artificial) problems - and on the other Russia at the time was totally unsuitable for the great experiment, at least according to the very theory that was to be applied. Chomsky, among others, believe Lenin was an opportunist who represented am authoritarian, right-wing deviation from the mainstream Marxism/Socialism of the era which was close to Libertarian Socialism. It is certain that Lenin tweaked and implemented incomplete Marxian revolutionary theories written with western-industrialized countries in mind, in order to adapt them to the pre-revolutionary Russian reality, and then, after the Revolution, there were many experiments and 180 degree policy reversals from 'war communism' to 'state capitalism' (New Economic Policy of 1921) with conflicting and confusing results. In particular, Chomsky has criticized him for deliberately destroying workers councils and reintroducing the Czarist system of control and oppression and then opportunistically justifying these acts internally along the lines that Russia was unsuitable for socialism according to orthodox Marxist theory! Aren't revolutions messy and violent! Kropotkin chose to return to the young USSR and observe the events in real time and up close as he recognised the historical significance of the "October Revolution" (essentially a coup according to Chomsky). He initially hoped that "even if it does not achieve everything that it would like to, it will nevertheless enlighten the path of the civilised countries for at least a century". But after observing the violence, in-fighting, sectarianism and terror of the civil war, he became disillusioned and observed, in his "Letter to the Workers of Western Europe",  that "unhappily, this effort has been made in Russia under a strongly centralized party dictatorship. This effort was made in the same way as the extremely centralized and Jacobin endeavor of Babeuf. I owe it to you to say frankly that, according to my view, this effort to build a communist republic on the basis of a strongly centralized state communism under the iron law of party dictatorship is bound to end in failure. We are learning to know in Russia how not to introduce communism, even with a people tired of the old regime and opposing no active resistance to the experiments of the new rulers." Kropotkin wrote to Lenin in 1920 urging him to change course and allow for decentralised institutions. There was no answer, but at least during Kropotkin's funeral in 1921, by special permission from Lenin, Anarchists were allowed to carry anti-Bolshevik banners, for the very last time.... Lenin's elder brother, Alexander, was of course an Anarchist, who had been hanged for allegedly participating in an attempt to assassinate the Tsar. Libertarian Socialists such as Bakunin had also long warned that a revolutionary vested with absolute power, like Stalin, could only become a new Tsar. In his last letter to the central committee, an incapacitated Lenin famously warned against Stalin, but it was too late! Stalin, allegedly, repaid him by poisoning Lenin's widow, the revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya, on her birthday in 1939. Byzantines, bow down!

Murray Bookchin, 1990Murray Bookchin, 1990"Power to the people' can only be put into practice when the power exercised by social elites is dissolved into the people. Each individual can then take control of his daily life. If 'Power to the people' means nothing more than power to the 'leaders' of the people, then the people remain an undifferentiated, manipulatable mass, as powerless after the revolution as they were before. In the last analysis, the people can never have power until they disappear as a 'people.” ... Revolutionary liberation must be a self-liberation that reaches social dimensions, not "mass liberation" or "class liberation" behind which lurks the rule of an elite, a hierarchy and a state."
Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1986)

M&E theory was further applied and twisted in other unsuitable places, sometimes as a pretext, leading to surreal results including the Buddhist stratocracy of Burma and the hereditary dictatorship of North Korea. Democratic centralism may have some benefits in getting things done faster, but inadvertently leads to the extreme concentration of power, top-down policy-making and authoritarianism. A mixture of democratic decentralism and democratic centralism is perhaps more appropriate, depending on specific policies and geography, and progress in communication & voting technology now allows many more permutations and combinations. Democracy is not always guaranteed by a multi-party state, especially when most of these parties have the same basic policies and filter out the popular will, and other parties are banned. Democracy, rather, is facilitated by having no dominant political parties, and the people can decide directly, without intermediaries, on a wide range of issues. Again, this may lead to horrible results that oppress minorities. So (Direct) Democracy is just a tool not the goal. The goal is the triptych Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Lose one of the three and the triptych collapses.

Cornelius Castoriadis, and other libertarian socialists, argued that the Soviet Union, and similar states, had - or ended up having - little to do with Socialist theory and that they quickly degenerated into bureaucratic and nepotistic stratocracies (from Gk. stratos = army), tolerated but unloved by the people - which may explain their peaceful and sudden demise. It could be argued that elements of that stratocracy, stripped of ideological pretexts, survive to this day and to some extent they led to the current situation in the Ukraine. No one can dispute that some progress was made in many economic sectors and in the living standards of actually-existing-socialism countries despite human rights abuses, and that they indirectly encouraged the capitalist West to introduce progressive reforms by way of competition. The collective West also has an admirably long record of military, economic and social atrocities, including innumerable invasions and crimes against Humanity and a talent of attributing these to various causes. The slave trade and the atrocities, bordering on genocide, of European colonial powers (e.g. Belgian Congo, French Madagascar, French Algeria, French Indochina, German Africa) should have still haunted these countries and encouraged them to pay hefty reparations, but instead, across Europe neo-Nazis and assorted racists and fascists are reemerging from History's sewers.

An irony is that M&E by accurately observing and interpreting with the intention of changing the prevailing system, succeeded (via Lenin) in changing it, similarly to the Observer effect in quantum mechanics, while progressive changes were also introduced due to pressures from socialist countries and worker struggles in the West. To such extent, that the authorities of the East German dystopia were "forced" to build the infamous Wall (1961) - a monument of self-defeat - and then shoot all those that tried to escape from 'socialist' 'paradise'. Similarly, Soviet Union authorities were "forced" to crush the Hungarian Uprising (1956) and the Prague Spring (1968). Beyond Stalin's horrors, the key reason for the failure of the Soviet experiment included the absence of freedom: free elections, free speech, a free press, a free market, an independent judiciary, consumer choice, and, last but certainly not least, the freedom to relocate, to travel and especially to travel abroad unless you were a spook or a member of the nomenclature and convincingly looked unlikely to escape from paradise. The collective West convincingly appeared (also through successful propaganda - Chomsky's "manufacturing consent") to offer all of these to the many. This gave Gorbachev some ideas but it or he was too late. 

The prevailing, global socioeconomic and financial system of the 21st century, especially due to the emergence of China and the BRICS, is not Capitalist, but rather post-Capitalist. It is a much evolved, improved and distant relative of the semi-barbaric, authentic Capitalism of the 19th century thanks to many things including worker's struggles, the fear of revolution, common sense and perhaps an inherent flexibility to adopt what works and abandon what does not. It has therefore adopted, adapted and coopted many progressive ideas, a noted offspring being the Nordic social-democratic model. Green New Deal politics as understood by the right-wing are another recent example of fusion and offer some controversial solutions like payments for ecosystem services, carbon offsetting, blue bonds and other financial instruments, some more useful and effective than others. Offsetting for one, is sold as a consolation option yet it is conceptually surreal: imagine offsetting human rights by abusing some tourism workers/communities in Thailand and treating others extra nicely in Cambodia... On the other hand something somewhere is better than nothing nowhere.

Ideologies aside, pressured by the chance of a catastrophic Climate Crisis (if the science is correct and all this is not some giant conspiracy as some mad climate deniers claim), we need to act quickly. As the Climate Crisis is a direct result of the prevailing socieconomic system, it is clear that acting quickly also involves, irrespective of ideology, replacing/reforming/improving the current system without the old one dropping on the heads of the poorest - hence a Just Transition. One of the problems is that very few people know precisely how the current system works and among them only a tiny minority of them really care about improving it. So there is bound to be damage and suffering, as always, during the transition period, and our main concern should be to avoid a third world war in the process, especially with the way geopolitical tensions and peripheral wars are going.

If Marx was alive today, he would probably call as a new "proletariat" the quasi slave-labour in 'developing' countries producing cheap consumer goods for the West and their compatriots who have braved seas and deserts to make it to Europe and the US so as to get a menial job. Otherwise, in the Global North, the pyramid now has many more little steps and we are moving to a service-based, virtual, gig economy, with new strata such as the 'precariat' rising, with permanent unemployment and under-employment, a growing luben/criminal/narco-mafia strata, and new, semi-apolitical, identity movements like the Me Too, LGBT+ and Black Lives Matter. Increasingly after the 2007 global financial crisis and the 2020-22 pandemic, the large middle class is being broken into a near-infinite number of fragmented, pseudo-classes (and, apparently, genders!) defined in sometimes surreal ways. In turn this means that old style, 19th century marxist analytical tools cannot interpret the current situation, and that possible agents of progress are probably be the citizen, the professional, the employee and the precarian and their respective associations, rather than a radicalized proletariat or lumpenproletariat. As with volcanoes however, you never know if and when the next eruption will take place. Progress is not a given, there are also periods of regression.

We must also be aware of and resist two very dangerous trends, in both East and West: Nationalism & Racism and Authoritarianism & Surveillance Capitalism - "Ninety Eighty Four" and "Brave New World" combined! Orwell, influenced by the examples of his era (and - highly ironically - a State informant himself!) thought the State would exclusively and directly do all the surveillance! Wrong, it seems everything can be "privatized" and sub-contracted these days, from water in our homes to prisons! Our behaviour, as citizens and "consumers", is increasingly being monitored by both the state and corporations, apparently for our own sake, convenience, safety, health and so on! Also apparently, the vast majority (the people who elect/support governments) have passively accepted this monitoring as a trade off for digital/virtual freebies that make their life a little less miserable - witness, for example, how many are posting every minutiae of their lives and baring (pun intended) their personal details online, voluntarily parting with their most inner secrets to the great joy of marketeers of all sorts!

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward."
- Mikhail Bakunin

A perfectly just, egalitarian and free society is most probably impossible, yet perfection does not really matter: the goal serves as the horizon, to keep us walking towards it rather than staying still and let regressive forces push us back to the dark ages. It's an endless tug of war where "if you do not strive for the impossible, you will end up accepting the unthinkable!". Even if "actually-existing-but-supposedly-decaying-Capitalism" or "the prevailing globalised socioeconomic system", it does not really matter what we call it, once more manages to survive, given that it has solid backing from the military-industrial-financial complex, we could use a progressive, democratic leadership at all levels implementing short, medium and long-term policies in all spheres but, above all, active citizens that help each other will - baring any cosmic disaster or climatic collapse - most probably succeed in gradually humanising and ultimately replacing the current system with something better, Utopian rather than Dystopian. Mutual Aid, as explained by Peter Kropotkin, has been and remains a key driver of evolution and progress, even if all else fails, during turbulent and chaotic times such as the ones we are experiencing and far worse ones in the million years of human history. It is also under the radar of oppressive mechanisms.

"The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.”
- Pyotr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, A Factor of Evolution

By realising that 'revolutionary government' is a contradiction in terms, and proposing a decentralised and just economic system based on Mutual Aid and voluntary cooperation, Kropotkin, also a prominent Geographer and Naturalist can be considered a precursor of Ecosocialism.

3. A progressive path towards a better global system

In the 21st century we therefore need synthesis and practical, progressive, innovative, consensual, non-violent, solutions rather than being fixated on what exactly will take place "After" - I am of course referring to the endless quarrels, narcissism of small differences and divisions of the Left. In one sense we are never living in the "after", we always live in the "now". If we could agree on the basics, essentially implementing fully, all three goals of the French Revolution - Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité - we could always amicably quarrel "after"! Why not go back to the roots of first-epoch Socialism, back to basics: democracy, worker-control, and a genuine community where everyone helps each other. Be we also need to include Ecology, for obvious reasons, as well as a Free Market, as that seems inextricably connected with what we call Human Civilization.

Progressive Ecological forces democratically coming to power in key countries is one, quite remote, possibility at this moment, if we do not retreat into another Cold War, or worse, WW3. But in an inclusive & progressive framework - combining the best of all relevant theories and practices and what works locally - we do not necessarily have to "come into power" in every country but we could emancipate and empower ourselves and our communities for starters. Each one of us can effect some meaningful changes in a peaceful manner within the current system and even with oppressive/regressive political forces in power: if each one of us becomes the change we want to see in the world, as Gandhi famously said, in the form of a daily, personal, peaceful, revolution. By doing things differently, by encouraging economic democracy in the workplace, by supporting eco-friendly businesses and cooperatives and choosing their products and services, by supporting progressive ecological initiatives in every region and walk of life. A free-er, fairer and happier society for more people is within our reach during the coming centuries, if this huge concentration of power or wealth is gradually but steadily eroded at the grassroots by a more democratic ownership of the means of production, including of course the Tourism means of production, and a fairer distribution of income and wealth between and within countries and classes.

"It is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honourably and justly, and it is impossible to live prudently and honourably and justly without living pleasantly"

Epicurus (341-270 BCE)

Essentially, we need to keep, improve, deepen and expand Democracy, which, like the Market (or Agora in Ancient Greece, a place for both trade and politics - agorazein (buy), agorevein (speak)), predates both Industrialism and Capitalism, and build a fairer economic system, replacing Corporate Autocracy with Economic Democracy. Large companies that operate & decide in a truly democratic and transparent fashion, pay their taxes, and design products and services that harm as little as possible would be acceptable if this was ever possible, but the average exploitative hierarchical multinational is clearly not. To avoid dictatorship, especially a permanent one, of any kind, checks and balances must be maintained at all levels, with a free speech culture online and offline, a genuinely free and independent press that monitors & checks authority, devolved, democratic social media not controlled by the state or the deep state/billionaire techno-feudalists, genuinely free markets, democratically-run businesses, a social welfare system, equal, quality work and leisure opportunities for all, free and vibrant workers unions and professional associations, direct democratic decision-making processes, a genuine respect for all types of minorities, and, particularly relevant for Tourism & Hospitality, a genuinely welcoming culture towards foreigners, known in ancient Greece as Xenia. The close association of Hospitality with Asylum (both forms of Mobility) was already understood and celebrated in Homer's Odyssey. There are already inspiring examples bridging the Refugee-Tourist divide, such as Athens' Welcommon Hostel, led by Nikos Chrysogelos, former Green MEP and a historic figure of the Greek Green movement.

As we cannot really rely on enforcement of civilised practices by the police, a new type of Ethics is needed, where excessive private property and excessive consumption are not only discouraged by law/taxes, but they are also unethical/frowned upon by society, in the same way that Theft already is and always has been. To paraphrase Proudhon: Excessive Consumption is Theft! In turn sharing and mutual aid must be encouraged and be ethically rewarded.

[But let's take a break here, since the very subjective matter of "Ethics" was brought up. Human progress is a marathon, a never-ending contest. The regressive forces, the status quo, "the bad guys", call them how you like, always play dirty. (If you have not seen or heard this, invest in a doctor, there is something wrong with your sensory abilities). So why should "the good" play nicely? The means to the end or the means are the end? One more hard question. What about turning the tables and using the system to fight the system, legally, to the last iota. Sustainable/green/climate change finance comes to mind. Does money smell worse if it is directly sourced from a dodgy exotic source, or a defense or oil company before being laundered and/or greenwashed? Is there a corrosive effect when dancing with the mainstream and for which side? Once more, it depends, it remains to be seen, this is a contest! A propos, revolutionaries traditionally used Swiss banks while Switzerland was a revolutionary haven long before it became a tax haven.... End of break.]

So, the right to Inherit excessive property and other valuable assets and the time value of "money" needs rethinking, as well as the central role and excessive power of Banks in the production and investment of money. It is highly doubtful that crypto-currency, rather than transparent-currency is the solution to a more democratic and devolved production of money. Why turn money into a commodity produced and traded by modern techno-pirates at great environmental cost, too? Is crypto-currency a genuine alternative that undermines the power of Banks, or rather an alternative for Banks (and Capital) so as to avoid regulations that undermine their power? To prevent the rise of a priviledged/nomenclature/bureaucratic class the means of production should not be centralized and owned by the state (or by big, state-backed, private corporations), but they should be as devolved as possible - technology makes this ever easier - and owned by all and no-one specifically. It is difficult to imagine how exactly this could work, but perhaps it could take the form of a devolved "3D printing" type system and a high-tech urban agriculture where each household/neighborhood/city would produce everything they need by themselves. At the same time direct democratic political structures and laws could deliberately prevent a nomenclature from emerging. They would be mere "Coordinators" with no executive or property privileges and serve for a limited time. Every citizen would have the opportunity and perhaps the obligation to serve as a Coordinator for their neighbourhood/municipality/region. Murray Bookchin's Social Ecology and Communalism frameworks synthesized and expanded on these themes and examined historical examples, while they have also inspired the Zapatistas in Mexico and Rojava in Syria.

Very interestingly, M&E had also worried about and pondered on how the rise of a bureaucratic class could be avoided, as accurately predicted by Bakunin among others: their proposals included recall at any time, equal pay of officials and workers and temporary rotation of all through 'bureaucratic' positions. These measures proved impractical if they were ever seriously applied in the early Soviet Union. Based on historical experience and current observations a one-party state is not compatible with freedom for all. It is also hard to imagine any form of state, planning to auto-destruct or "wither away" (as Lenin over-optimistically theorized in The State and Revolution). Even if it did, wouldn't it be taken over by another state (colonialism), private corporations (neoliberalism) or criminal gangs (narco-state)? In an ironic way this nearly happened after the withering-away of the Soviet Union. Therefore, unless we achieve an affluent paradise on earth it will be impossible to get rid of all forms of state power or of the monopoly of organised violence that the state represents.

"No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker."
- Mikhail Bakunin

The key to true societal Progress, the type of progress that eludes us, is probably a combination of various frameworks. The key cannot be found unless the theories are put to the test, many times and in different places. The key may not always be the same, or we may need a set of keys. As no one holds the absolute truth or magic recipe, it would be useful if we could see more dialogue, rather than sectarianism and the narcissism of small differences, to understand what really transpired in the 20th century, the good, the bad and the ugly, and what is feasible and relevant today, in the 21st century and beyond. 

First and foremost we must note, something that corporate dominated mass media consistently hush and downplay: the great tradition of cooperatives and employee owned companies and their resilience. In the UK, despite decades of neoliberal policies, employee-owned companies still produce around 4% of GDP.  In the United States, the "Capitalist" heartland, there are over 10 million active workers in employee owned enterprises of various types, of which there are over "300 democratic workplaces" with 7,000 workers and over USD 400m in annual revenues. The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives lists over 450 businesses in its directory. The International Cooperative Alliance established in 1895, tries to unite and represent 3 million cooperatives with "1 billion members" worldwide.

At the level of communities and municipalities, there have been many experimental models over the century, surviving ones include Las Gaviotas in Colombia, Marinaleda in Spain (official website), Findhorn in Scotland, along with many other ecovillages, intentional communities and small co-housing initiatives, around the world. Some of these host visitors as a source of income, and use 'sociocratic' and 'holacratic' models. More political examples of successful communes include the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico, El Panal in Caracas, Venezuela and lately Rojava-AANES in north east Syria. In particular, and despite setbacks, Venezuela's Bolivarian process which bases socialism on the commune as its basic cell, is bearing fruit. At the corporate level, Mondragon Corporation, itself a network of 80 separate cooperatives in various sectors, is a famous, large-scale and successful example of workplace democracy, but there also many more smaller, struggling recuperated factories such as Indorca in Venezuela and BIOME in Greece, the latter producing competitively-priced ecological cleaning products. At the macro, international level, the Global Greens, an international federation of over 100 green political parties, is steadily becoming more influential thanks to electoral successes, the emerging Progressive International brings much needed networking, discussion and coordination between various internationalist, progressive, socialist, and ecological organizations, while the Athens-based "Initiative" is a network of 30 mostly European old-style Communist and Worker's parties.

The European Union is or at least was a promising quasi-progressive experiment despite the fact that neoliberals and conservatives usually dominated policy-making and now ultra-right misanthropes and xenophobes have risen once more in many EU countries. The EU had succeeded in preventing war on the continent since 1945 with the notable and sad exception of what was Yugoslavia, itself a noble multiethnic-federal-self-managed-market-socialism model which managed to work relatively well for some 40 years, and now Ukraine... Peace is a prerequisite for building anything while it was the first World War that postponed imminent revolutions in Western Europe. Whenever the ruling class of any country is with its back against the wall, it plays the nationalist card, and sadly, it usually works probably due to the hominid insecurities hidden deeply in our DNA. On the other hand,  a few weeks before the EU 2024 Parliament elections, "Europe" sounds powerless, indifferent and divided, with nationalism and xenophobia once more rising. In other parts of the world it is also despised and hated, for the past (still unpaid) crimes of Colonialism, and its ongoing crimes including neocolonial conduct by European businesses, pushbacks and incarceration of asylum seekers by European governments, and arms exports by the European military-industrial-banking complex so that people on other continents can get more effectively killed and so on. Worse, progressive forces in Europe have swallowed their tongue on many issues and some even try to adopt part of the far right agenda in an effort to win votes. Battered on many sides, the EU project seems to have run out of steam and ideas, but this will hopefuly change.

The Chinese model, combining Deng Xiao Ping's opening-up philosophy with a renewed emphasis on Socialism and Marxism under Xi Jinping and an increasing appreciation of the paramount importance of environmental sustainability (and rapid progress in sectors such as renewable energy and EVs), is a philosophically innovative and economically successful model that does justice to a great civilization, has brought hundreds of millions out of poverty and ignorance and turned a formerly weakened, colonized country, that the imperialists tried to hook on opium, into a proud and peaceful super-power. If poverty is "the worst form of violence", this is no mean feat. Deng's reasonable hypothesis was that it is easier to divide affluence than poverty. And, witnessing the sudden demise of the Soviet Union, he did not opt for a multi-party system. Xi probably saw that the system was becoming imbalanced with a new economically powerful, and sometimes corrupt, oligarchy that could soon try to gain political power and remove all policies associated with the socialist project. Even before the pandemic, China shared many similarities and problems with the 'Western' model, including environmental pressures and growing inequality, authoritarianism and surveillance. During the pandemic it appears that the zero-Covid policy created additional hardships yet the end result was successful. For outsiders living in "multi-party parliamentary democracies" with heated party politics the level of state micromanagement of public opinion may appear baffling and indicate a lack of confidence. But if one understands the wisdom of building and improving a successful, direct democratic rather than multi-party, socialist model that is compatible with local characteristics, culture and traditions should be weary of the cheap anti-Chinese propaganda, fear and calls for trade protectionism, peddled by some big western media. One could be optimistic, given the long history and achievements of the Chinese people, that, if anyone can do it, it is them: to fully attain the ever elusive combination of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité one day, and peacefully assist the rest of the world in this direction, as they are already doing. As one of the oldest and largest civilizations, the Chinese traditionally are not in a rush. Famously the late premier Zhou Enlai replied "it is too early to say" when asked about the importance of the Parisian May of 1968 (misquoted ever since, that he was referring to the Parisian July of 1789). It is also encouraging to note that unlike nearly all other major powers, China so far does not have a habit of bombing, invading or staging coups in other countries, but tends to assist them with their infrastructure in a win-win model without intervening in their politics, replacing the role of the IMF in recent decades, and any progressive person would hope it  continues in this constructive and peaceful path while also expanding direct democracy inside.

The United States model is undoubtedly, a very strong and successful one in historic terms, in every possible sense: economic, technological, cultural, scientific, military - you name it - with a solid, well-planned foundation on individual liberties, separation of powers, democratic (and direct democratic) electoral processes, federalism, as well as a long tradition of communalism, voluntarism and worker movements. It is also characterized by huge inequality, racism and an incomprehensible, especially to non-Americans, level of violence and an unhealthy gun culture. It is in effect a two-party system powered by a deep and gigantic military-industrial-financial-state complex. In a way it resembles Ancient Athens in its glory days: more or less democratic inside (to a degree racist and sexist, again not unlike Ancient Athens), but authoritarian over other nations. We are seeing encouraging signs of a progressive shift there too in recent years, with the emergence of progressives like Bernie Sanders and the US Greens.

The Swiss Direct Democratic and Federalist tradition which empowers citizens through the ability to call federal referenda as well as the public assembly system (Landsgemeinde) still surviving in two cantons, is also inspiring and evidently successful. The model of The United Nations is perhaps Humanity's greatest idea, but one could not call it an achievement yet, as it lacks real power and a clear mandate.

4. Ecology, Mobility & Tourism

Marx or Engels unfortunately did not write anything specific about Tourism, as Raul Bianchi has pointed out, probably because what we now recognise as mass tourism did not exist. If one is to look more closely however, Thomas Cook did start his services for temperance (pro-alcohol-abstinence) tourists using railways in 1841, the same year Marx completed his university dissertation on the differences between Democritus and Epicurus! And railways were of course also instrumental for the rapid global spread and growth of Capitalism.

Among tourism destinations, Kerala, with it's freely-elected, self-styled Marxist governance, it's peaceful coexistence of various religions, its emphasis on responsible tourism and its relatively high quality of living, is perhaps as close to paradise one can get, and an inspiring model of what progressive tourism can be. In most destinations however, it is evident that the Hospitality industry, by becoming a huge global industry, has moved far away from the meaningful, genuine, peer-to-peer, home-based hospitality of ancient times. An increasingly corporate-dominated hospitality and tourism sector gives the impression that there is something inherently imperialist, hierarchical and socially conservative about this industry. Racism and social racism are unfortunately evident in our sector, with the hardest, low-paid jobs given to immigrants, sometimes without papers, and ethnic minorities while exclusive "all-inclusive" resorts, well, exclude those they think they must. Couch-surfing, and to an extent, host-owned and run short-term-rentals, and community or cooperatively-owned/worker-run hotels and guesthouses, are attempts, sometimes romantic and impractical, other times quickly co-opted, to revive the ancient spirit. For some reason, which needs to be thoroughly investigated private rather than communal ownership is the rule in Tourism and Hospitality: although there are some municipal tourism enterprises, there are few tourism cooperatives, and fewer worker-owned (and recuperated) tourism businesses like Argentina's famous Hotel Bauen, a recent victim of the pandemic. The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives out of 451 member companies, lists just two in Tourism and Hospitality, Echo Adventure Cooperative in Groveland, California and Breitenbush Hot Springs Retreat and Conference Center in Detroit, Oregon. What precisely may be inhibiting the creation, survival and expansion of more worker-owned tourism companies? Does it have to do with lack of trust about the division of revenue and the provision of work and capital, or different needs and priorities of each partner within the broader capitalist framework? Does co-ownership undermine the hierarchy needed to reach a competitive quality standard? Does it undermine productivity and profits? Or is it undermined, in subtle and non-subtle ways, by the cunning system it aims to undermine? For example, by limiting cooperative access to adequate loans, subsidies, grants and business advice?

"To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth."
Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society (1990)

On the demand side, we need to find practical ways, such as a great expansion of social tourism programmes (their usefulness was highlighted by the pandemic), within the current socio-economic constraints and tourism infrastructure, to offer genuine, quality, affordable hospitality to as many people as possible, not just to an enlightened, affluent elite, and at the same time offer quality, well-paid jobs to all tourism workers. This contradiction - a tourism affordable for all with well-paid tourism workers - would probably be solved if middlemen, monopolies, big bosses and exploiters of all sorts that dominate the tourism ecosystem, and who prevent tourism workers from enjoying the full product of their labour are gradually taken out of the equation and workers choose worker-owned tourism businesses for their holidays. It is a similar exploitative mechanism to the one that has children working over 70 hours per week in Bangladesh sweatshops to produce competitively priced sweaters sold in posh European districts at a huge profit margin. We must break the exploitative supply chain! How difficult is to book directly and visit a community-or worker-owned Ecolodge these days? It is far easier than 30 years ago. If only we could also reach it through public, eco-friendly transport and not be discriminated against through high prices, but, say, chosen according to what we could offer the local community in exchange for their hospitality! There are clearly dilemmas caused by the inherent contradictions of the current system, however we should dare dream of a distant future, a genuine Hospitality, based on mutually-beneficial, moneyless exchanges, and even better, try to set up such examples!

To paraphrase Marx's famous quote on philosophers: many academic and other experts have interpreted Tourism and how it has evolved "....the point, however, is to change it". Can it be changed? Yes. Can it be changed independently of other sectors, within the context of (and before the general replacement of) the dominant socio-economic system? Certainly! One hotel, tour, visit, destination at a time! Scientific knowledge and Technology are our allies. We, tourism professionals, employees and self-employed, should not be afraid of green technology and the new green means of production but at the same time we need to ensure that they will not be centrally controlled by powerful oligopolies, but as locally as possible by the people/workers/citizens/society, as well as to reduce their environmental impacts (yes, they do have such). For example, we should effectively encourage public and worker-owned electric aviation, trains and buses, rather than just protesting about air transport emissions, or, undemocratically, advocate less travel and staycations for the masses, or exclude them through pricing. We should improve and expand tourism planning, management and marketing so that Tourism benefits the many, rather than simply blasting Overtourism. We do not deny that overvisitation exists in specific locations, however it is usually the side-effect of poor management, marketing and infrastructure, and just one of many adverse effects of the current socioeconomic system - certainly not the worst! We need, on the one hand, to constantly identify and oppose fake solutions and ecocidal and anti-social aspects and actors of the global system, and on the other hand, to recognize and encourage progressive trends and best practices. We support fair trade and welcome genuinely free markets, where the self-employed, small family companies, voluntary associations and cooperatives may prosper, but oppose "free" markets monopolized by hierarchical, opaque, tax-evading, mega-corporations and one-sided, neoliberal international agreements. Progress in Tourism involves moving towards a Tourism that is affordable for all and is mainly owned/controlled by its employees and the local community.

During a quintuple crisis we do not have the luxury of lurking in the margins for the perfect conditions or for the stars to align, compromises are inevitable and also useful - they are the essence of any real, Direct Democracy. In fact the pandemic may have brought progressive ecological ideas back in fashion, and hopefully they will remain fashionable when it ends (it is not a given, people forget easily!). Even a relatively ecological, equitable, democratic Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure, can quickly create more quality, meaningful & pleasant jobs where no other options exist and, as importantly, open hearts and minds, increase mobility between nations and within societies, re-distribute wealth peacefully, effectively and equitably between and within countries without further harming the planet. This is why we do not advocate less travel or more expensive travel for the privileged few! At the same time we also have to see through and expose the massive corporate greenwash that is currently taking place in the Tourism sector on the occasion of the Climate Crisis, some hollow post-pandemic 'building-back-better' pronouncements and various toothless 'Tourism Declares'-style pledges undersigned by exploitative tourism corporations. Tourism Multinationals are hiding between these token, innocuous acts of 'voluntary' - 'self-regulating' environmental compliance while carrying on exploiting people and destinations as usual. If there were serious laws, full transparency, fair taxation and a level-playing field none of these giants on clay feet would survive!

A sad secret is that the majority of tourism-related ecolabels (from accommodations to beaches) are in effect "pay and display" exercises which involve using the right terminology and ticking some boxes, and this goes especially for lite, entry-level ecolabels. You rarely hear of ecolabels being removed after an allegation, investigation or spot-check. Ecolabels whose standards have been approved by a "trusted 3rd party" are in theory better but the "trusted" 3rd party never has the capacity or interest to check whether a specific ecolabel has been rightly awarded to a specific business. As long as there is a financial incentive to approve ecolabels and applicants the more and the bigger (the hotel and the label) the better. The whole thing operates like a giant pyramid scheme with huge conflicts of interest and opaque accounting, and will eventually collapse whether profits become too big or too little, as pyramid schemes always do.

We consider Mobility, Leisure, Travel and Tourism as basic Human Rights and thus advocate a better, Tourism for All, as an indispensable tool and element of the transition to a better World where "All belongs to All"! It's a dynamic process with an uncertain outcome. Tourism can play a unique role in all of the above processes as it is a truly globalized industry. Genuine Ecolodges, eco-communities, worker and community-owned tourism initiatives and other progressive tourism infrastructure and services are laboratories for a new, fairer and happier World.

We take issue with the elitism of those who oppose "mass tourism" and go ballistic over Overtourism for the wrong reasons. Why deny the right to affordable, care-free holidays to the 99% in the name of vague notions, usually some conservative 'responsibility' or guilt? In most cases, their real worry is not to be disturbed by the Hoi Polloi, in the same way that their colonial forebears created vast game reserves bereft of people, a land-grabbing process that still goes on in the name of conservation but is also about real estate, authoritarianism and geopolitics. Overtourism reminds one of pseudo "overpopulation" theories.

Progressive Ecology is not just concerned with the plight of Wildlife but also, and primarily, with the plight of Humans, not only concerned with obstacles to the migration of birds, but outraged with drownings of migrants in the Mediterranean. We should not only worry about if a resort is using the latest solar panels, but about whether it is stealing water, displacing communities, and treating employees as wage slaves. We realize the need of the Tourism & Hospitality sectors to change so as to improve livelihoods around the world.

While the mainstreaming of Sustainable Tourism is welcome, we need to be weary of greenwashing the status quo. We need to keep pressing and moving forward as some, otherwise ecocidal, corporations are eager to greenwash their exploitative, oligopolistic ways. Likeways, repressive regimes that persecute and murder journalists, dissidents, minorities, the indigenous - anyone they do not really like for any reason - sometimes are keen to develop pseudo-sustainable tourism, usually in a pharaonic manner. For most tourism multinationals Sustainable Tourism is more about generating and capturing new tourism markets, channels and revenue streams, rather than changing the existing ones. As the status quo hijacks our terms, structures, networks and initiatives, should we create new ones or stand our ground? Probably a combination.

Beyond terminology, we certainly need a Tourism which includes the "System Change" part of the motto "System Change not Climate Change. That prioritizes individual and collective political action to combat inequality and injustice, protect human rights and labour rights, and promote direct, genuine and economic democracy, within the tourism and hospitality sectors but also in the host communities, destinations and the society as a whole, in collaboration with the broad global progressive movement for a genuine (ecological/direct/workplace/economic) Democracy.

And we should NEVER again sacrifice freedoms, individual or collective to any "great leader" or "distant goal". A non-violent path of system change based on direct democratic dialogue and consensus is the civilized and effective way, even if it appears very slow to the impatient or the super-radicals (beware, in many cases they are agent provocateurs). The sense of freedom, including the freedom to travel, relocate, live as you wish and where you wish, is as important as freedom itself. Unlike neoliberals, who really care only about the 'freedom' of megacorporations to exploit (destroy) everything and everyone, true libertarians care for all the freedoms of all the people - "All is for All! ". And we never forget that one's freedom stops where the other's freedom starts - I am not "free" to demand you to work on Sundays, so that I can do my shopping on my day off. I am not "free" to enter your home, or sacred ground without asking, so as to take a selfie. I am not "free" to exploit you in any way or form.

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”

- Bertolt Brecht, 1953

So, who would and should be the agent of ecological & democratic change/progress in Tourism? We do not believe that a typical corporation, itself an example of a for-profit hierarchy, fits this role (and this why we never accepted impersonal 'companies' as "Members" of the Ecoclub Community, but only real people, practitioners and academics. No self-respecting progressive network can have large corporations as members). We believe that the agents of change in Tourism should be the tourism workers/employees/professionals, the self-employed, and their independent unions, associations and networks! The support and participation of citizens, members of host communities, travellers and progressive tourism academia is also paramount.

5. Practical & Theoretical Questions & Doubts (in no particular order)

Anyone who follows a theory without 'doubts, questions and objections' is not really enlightened and has not studied the theory's underlying assumptions or the results of the theory's (or past related theories) applications and experiments. A theory that cannot be proven, or one with results that are negative or inconclusive, remains just a theory, it is nowhere near 'scientific' status.

We are noting down questions here and then gradually incorporate some answers into this document. To suggest a question, or an answer, please contact us 

- Is Business (both as a structure and as a process) inherently hierarchic? Why are there so few worker-owned businesses in Tourism, Hospitality & Leisure? Even in, seemingly easy, small coffee shops.

- Can workers realistically rotate in all posts? What about differences in skills and knowledge? Should there be differences in remuneration, and if so according to what, "productivity", seniority, expertise, work difficulty, personal health risk, risk to others, demand & supply?

- (How) can a Democratic (Worker-owned) economic structure or model survive under a general socioeconomic system that is neither democratic or ecological?

- Is the use of money the ultimate problem? Can we ever go back to /attain a 'genuine/pure' Hospitality which is free of charge? Or at least a 'pay what you can', or 'a barter' (in exchange for services/goods) Hospitality?

- Are Home exchange models really progressive and inclusive? Can they be scaled up or are they reserved for a tiny enlightened western(ized) elite? 

- Is hosting friends for free the only genuine form of Hospitality? Given that costs are involved, and the friends will end up paying, does this affect how genuine Hospitality really was? If the host did not allow friendly guests to pay anything, is it implied that they owe some favour, or need to pay-in kind? Or do they simply owe hospitality? Or nothing, since it was genuine hospitality? How would the answers change, if we substitute the word 'friend' with a 'friend of a friend', a 'friend of a friend of a friend' or a total 'stranger'?

- Is there something demeaning/servile about Hospitality and Leisure as a paid service? Someone cleaning your toilet, whereas at home you do it yourself. If you are hosted in a friend's house you are expected to assist with some chores. You are equally expected to do some of the chores in short term rentals, self-service restaurants, and coop cafes/restaurants. Does this really matter? Or are you stealing jobs? Remember that some hotel worker unions strongly object to guests not wishing their room to be cleaned daily.

- Should it be illegal for a foreign investor to purchase or develop tourism infrastructure? Is tourism a form of neo-colonialism, due to foreign investment? Or is foreign direct investment in tourism a key income distribution mechanism from richer to poorer countries? Can both statements be true?

- Is a certified 'sustainable' 6-star resort in an autocratic state that abuses citizens, communities and the environment even possible?

- Should green certification of businesses be optional or do we need green laws?

- How far (green, left) can ecolabels go in terms of preventing labour and community exploitation?

- Can you really certify a tour operator that operates various tours in various places and (all the rage, amusingly) a whole "destination" for "green" practices? In what detail, and how frequently? Does it make it worse when money is involved, as there is an incentive for certification?

- Should certification bodies be private, state-owned, non-profit or municipal? Can a tiny operation honestly certify something huge in return for $$$?

- Should there be spot checks to verify certification results?

- Should the state have a monopoly on services such as Tourism Education (e.g. for tourism guides) so as to guarantee impartiality and to offer these for free to all, or at a low cost? Will it result in a low quality service offered by indifferent bureaucrats? Does an all powerful, centralized state become undemocratic, serving propaganda rather than proper education? Are local government, public-private partnerships, and non-profits preferable? Try everything and see what works/what people prefer?

- Do we need 'protected', licensed tourism professions to guarantee quality? In the same way that a surgeon or a civil engineer has to have a license otherwise they would kill a lot of people. Or will tourism, hospitality and leisure will be the perenial provider of entry jobs and last resort jobs to the masses of the otherwise unskilled and unemployed?

- Does the phrase "People and Planet above Profits" mean anything? Are profits necessary, are they ethical? Beyond corporate profits, are there also personal profits, community profits, public profits? Are profits made only through exploitation of people and resources? How can a government raise taxes without corporate or personal profits? As long as we have money, a market and an elected government, do we also need to have taxes? Could voluntary donations by benevolent multinationals and affluent individuals replace taxes (and the elected government)? What about those tax havens (some are major tourism destinations), who really controls them and how democratic are they?

- Are Travel boycotts, against a cruel regime or a country that oppresses apartheid-style (part of) its population, minorities etc, justified, or do they simply harm the weakest? Are targetted boycotts against regime-affiliated companies better?

 

6. Beyond Sustainable Tourism, towards Ecological Tourism

Ten whole years after Murray Bookchin's seminal Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Barbara Ward (later Baroness Ward...) supposedly coined the term "Sustainable Development" which was "institutionalized" in 1987 through the Bruntland Report. The academic and political discourse has moved a long way forward (and in a way a long way back if we consider Marx's, Kropotkin's and early socialists' ecological tendencies) since to Social Ecology, Ecosocialism and Degrowth Communism. Despite the existence of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, progressive greens nowadays focus on Climate Justice and a Fair Transition rather than "Sustainable Development" which now sounds pro-growth, old-fashioned, and "business as usual".

In contrast, in Tourism, there is apparently a time lag and we seem to be stuck in the "Sustainable Tourism" era for over two decades. Most use it to denote the sustainable development of Tourism, the unfettered forever economic growth, a way to circumvent annoying green regulations and zoning. As an umbrella term, it sounds apolitical (= conservative) and could be easily incorporated in private and public, corporate and bureaucratic, documents, policies, brands and brochures without any serious policy changes: they just added "Sustainable" before the word Tourism! Even the World Tourism Organization, now UN Tourism, now uses a "sustainable tourism" byline, and is of course "committed", like every good multinational, to the UN SDGs. 

Being aware of the narcissism of small differences (which is eating the flesh of the Left and Greens around the world) we must engage - without forgeting where they really stand - with systemic tourism sustainability proponents, while encouraging the more progressive professionals, self-employed, family-businesses, and micro-entrepreneurs of the Sustainable Tourism to move to our side. In fact we should be ready to engage with the Devil personified if it advances our goals, if and when it gives us a chance to turn the tables. (We also need to become stronger, and this also involves operating under the financial constraints of the current system so trying to be "saints" or ascetics in the end weakens ourselves and not the system. It is a delicate balancing act however and one should be aware of the risks of being absorbed and coopted). Our main priority of course is supporting pioneering, genuinely green, worker-controlled and community-owned eco travel providers. More broadly, we must dare imagine, and build, gradually, from the bottom up - yet as quickly as possible - a better socioeconomic system in and through Tourism, Hospitality & Leisure.

Aspiring to all three, still unattained, goals of the French Revolution, Liberté, égalité, fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood/Sisterhood) our intent is to pinpoint the key elements of a better tourism & hospitality in the long term, using Science, more specifically the Science of Ecology, and relevant political and philosophical theories such as Bookchin's Social Ecology and Communalism, without discounting the short-term relevance of mainstream green, environmentalist and social democratic measures (e.g. welfare state, social tourism, social housing) and sustainable business practices tools and goals such as SDGs, ESG, CSR and green certification to improve actually-existing Tourism, to be radical and practical = progressive. Instead of throwing stones at the system from the margins, we are not afraid to peacefully engage, participate, discuss and convince, as it can only improve and sharpen our arguments and proposals. We celebrate and cherish free dialogue and free speech, however appauling or offensive it may sound. We are in favour of convincing, not forcing. We reject personality cults of all types and feel no responsibility to defend anyone's crimes, whatever the supposed reason or goal.

As "no theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world" (Bakunin) we must "cleave to no system", remain "true seekers" and be inclusive, choosing the best bits from each theory and tradition and in proportions adapted for local (geographic, political, social, historic etc) circumstances. (One size does NOT fit all!) And we must keep revising any theory when these circumstances change, or the results of application of the theory are unexpected! (rather than "dissolving the people and electing another" as Brecht famously and ironically proposed in the poem quoted above).

An Ecological Tourism Entity (operation, business, organization, initiative etc.) should include most of the following key criteria in various degrees, depending on local circumstances:

  • Political: It is owned, controlled and dominated by its workers/employees, the self-employed, small-family businesses, cooperatives, municipal and public organizations, as well as democratically run entreprises with flat hierarchies. Offers fair wages and good working conditions. Respects Human Rights and Labour Rights. Democratic, Local, Decolonised, Worker Ownership & Economic Democracy. Workers/employees participate in organizational decision-making and have the right to join and form unions. Takes place with the full democratic consent and participation of the local community in decision-making. 
     
  • Environmental: Minimises its environmental impact, respects animal rights. It is based on renewable energy, sustainable transport, organic agriculture, recycling, upcycling, reusing, the circular economy. It supports a conservation model that fully respects the rights of indigenous people.
     
  • Economic: Workers/employees receive living wages, enjoy good working conditions and receive full health & insurance coverage. Maximizes benefits to the local community. Equitable. Aims & helps eliminate poverty & injustice. Meets real local needs & aspirations. Inclusive, Accessible, Affordable, Non-discriminatory. Economically Democratic.
     
  • Educational: Increases knowledge and intercultural understanding. Supports and participates in scientific research, cultural activities and heritage preservation. 

Workers' control, Workers' self-management, Worker/Employee-ownership, full community participation and direct democratic decision-making are in our view key ingredients for a new model. When possible, decision-making has to be inclusive, direct democratic, with each worker and community member (citizen) having one vote in the company assembly/council or the public assembly/council, and an equal share of proceeds (or an equal vote on how proceeds, after wages and costs, are allocated). This is of course, more practical when all community members are tourism workers and vice versa, if there is a single community tourism provider and if all community members take turns as tourism workers, rotating in various positions. 'Face to face' democracy is more challenging if the community is large and economically diversified. In every case, it is important to avoid chasms between what tourism workers and other community members/citizens want. If direct participation of all workers-citizens is not possible at all times for key decisions, then there should at least be joint committees. Hierarchy, both in the tourism provider and in the community should be as flat as possible, and consensus should be prioritized over close, divisive votes. On the other hand lack of hierarchy and focus on consensus should not be taken to extremes so as to stifle or sabotage initiatives and decision-making, so a mediation committee could help when there are major disagreements. This is of course just a generic framework, each community and tourism community provider should adapt it to its specific circumstances and needs. On the other hand we should keep in mind workers' control is no panacea. There are examples of worker controlled companies in the US supporting far right causes. A worker-controlled or employee-owned company which produces munitions as a subcontractor for the military-industrial-complex is as bad as any.

Daring to imagine Utopia - which can only be both ecological & communist: when and where all of the above characteristics are present, we could in theory get a lot closer to the original imaginary Genuine Hospitality that involved no give and take. Of course, we would not be able to fully attain a Genuine Hospitality or a Tourism for All unless all other sectors are also "for all", and probably unless there is no longer a need for monetary transactions, or at least for monetary transactions based on private profit, as opposed to time bank style transactions. For this to happen we would need a deep systemic change in all sectors, a full, broad societal transformation and a generalised affluence. This is hard to imagine in the current state the world is but also in the context  of Civilisation as we know it for the past 10,000 years. It may never fully happen everywhere, but it can partly happen somewhere! There can be no one-size-fits-all blueprint, only local best practices to be endlessly adapted and adopted. Rather than presenting the problems as unsolvable (an all time classic being the conservative "XYZ goes against Human Nature") which is a conservative stance, we must persistently, methodically and optimistically search for the progressive solutions, always with an open mind and always focusing on our fellow humans not some abstract or ideal.

Our original idea for Ecoclub.com in the late 1990s was to create an international network of ecotourism practitioners, professionals and academics, who shared at least some of the above thoughts and aspirations, along with an international network of genuine Ecolodges that met most of these criteria, and that could operate as beacons/oases/labs that help spread progress, "pleasantly, prudently, honourably and justly", at the grassroots. This system we thought, and still do, could operate through mutual aid and cooperation, with no financial incentives and without us hiring people "to exploit their surplus value", or having to exploit students with unpaid internships as so many others unfortunately do in the digital, tourism and non-profit sectors. Beyond our own shortcomings, the average ecotourism practitioner is less progressive and altruistic than we thought, while the advent of far more powerful, corporate social media platforms our message is lost in an endless cacophony of bad imitations. Then came the Pandemic....We will not give up or sell out, we keep adapting, changing and fine-tuning. We also hope that those bothering to read these lines will be inspired and join us to take the button further.

7. For a (better) future

Each problem has more than one solution which means that there are more solutions than problems. Progress can take many forms and shapes, depending on the particular circumstances of a 'destination'. We are not luddites, we are in favour of science, reason and technological advances. We are not know-it-alls, or peddlers of absolute truth & justice, we are in favour of progressive dialogue and alliances. While imagining a better future, we support practical changes and initiatives TODAY, even if "imperfect", particularly those decided and undertaken by workers/employees themselves, in a direct democratic fashion. Equally, we oppose regressive, neocolonial and neoliberal-capitalist (tourism, conservation, energy, transport, social, labour etc) policies TODAY, such as, for example, the unlimited expansion of working hours in Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure, or the appropriation/privatization of everything (water, health, education, energy, land, nature and others). We are staunchly in favour of Human Rights and Labour Rights and do not believe these can be sacrificed for any lofty goal or circumvented in the quest to solve the Climate Crisis. While we certainly have to replace/fix/tweak the current system we should not move towards any form of Dictatorship, Centralism or Authoritarianism, not even a "temporary" one "on behalf" of the working class. (Can a "temporary" dictator that holds absolute power ever be trusted with abdicating?) There have to be serious checks and balances in place, including strong workers unions, an independent press, judiciary and more. At the same time we need to realize that in many countries people are living in something resembling to an invisible dictatorship, of capital, money, banks, deep states, mega-corporations and plutocrats (an industrial-military-financial complex) and they are not keen on abdicating either!  That invisible dictatorship we need to peacefully but emphatically avoid, delay, erode, even a tiny dent a day matters!

We need to break free from the perpetual quarantine of cheap virtual entertainment, joblessness, meager neoliberal coupons, violence, pandemics, never-ending wars and fear of one another. Two peaceful, practical ways forward are to focus (a) on electing progressive mayors that may experiment with new community-based institutions, infrastructure and instruments and (b) on democratizing workplaces, one by one. This includes supporting (buying from) such democratic (worker/employee-owned) businesses/social enterprises/cooperatives in every sector - we can not have a real democracy without an economic democracy. We should also resist the privatization of (what's left of) the welfare state (public health, education, housing, public utilities) and of the commons (parks, protected areas, beaches, forests, wild places etc). 

While ecological and progressive governments are pivotal, we also need an ecological, progressive and worker-controlled private sector and progressive green municipal initiatives and structures - the central state cannot and should not do everything. We need genuinely free markets (as opposed to 'capitalist' oligopolistic markets) with a level playing field and real checks and balances (independent judiciary, unions, press) that can really guarantee ALL the rights of ALL people, and certainly the basic ones: food, health, education, housing, security, leisure while respecting the environment. A situation similar to the one envisioned in Charlie Chaplin's Final Speech in the "Great Dictator"!  We need solidarity, cooperation and detente between all countries, we have to peacefully share this planet in a way that benefits all. Poverty and Injustice are violence, absolute global poverty and absolute global injustice can only lead to absolute global violence. We abhor all three: poverty, injustice, violence. It is just cruel but also ineffective to punish people, immigrants and refugees, seeking a better life. The only solution is to offer them this better life.

With all of the above in mind, and without fully discounting the relevance of revolutionary theories especially at the time of their writing (especially their accuracy in describing, less so in explaining, and even less in predicting) in a world that seems to be rudderless and with mad & bad leaders and actors, and a vicious circle of global mistrust and second guessing, proliferating, it is worth remembering one of the key raison d’être of ecology and progressivism: the rejection of violence and wars, a strong preference for synthesis, consensus, inclusive, constructive discussions, intelligence, research, diplomacy, and where needed, staunch opposition, but peaceful and lawful, to ecocidal plans. In terms of the class struggle - which is ongoing along with many other struggles - our main goal should be to abolish classes, not to permanently or 'temporarily' impose one on the other, we want neither a "temporary" dictatorship of the proletariat nor a dictatorship of capital, thank you! Violence exists in nature, however it is not mindless, sadistic or vengeful and is largely linked and confined to feeding and survival (with some exceptions like orcas playing volleyball with seals). Darwin's survival of the fittest aside, it is also true that Nature brims with mutual aid, as Kropotkin analyzed. The fittest include those offering and benefitting from mutual aid. Poverty in human societies is indeed a form of 'frozen' violence, but we can reverse-engineer the process without violence! We can and must do better. We can and must evolve further.

And ....we also need luck! Our civilization will hopefully avoid collapse due to war, climate change, pandemics, cosmic accidents, or human-induced (from scientists or leaders) blunders, but this is a never ending marathon. There is no perfect system and, most probably, there will never be, even if we were all fully replaced by AI! But there are better systems, and worse systems, in relation to the wellbeing of the polloi. The full humanization of Humanity could take another 10,000 years, since the first agrarian societies emerged, or even another 4 million years, since Australopithecus afarensis walked upright! However, we should remember Lao-Tzu's "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" and Cavafis' "when you set out for Ithaca ask that your way be long...". 

The simple truth is that, apart from inertia, nothing really prevents us from taking the important first step by helping each other today and every day, from "living prudently and honourably and justly" and thus "living pleasantly", every single day. As there is no evidence of supernatural beings, deities and extraterrestrials that could come to our 'rescue', the survival and future progress of our species is up to each one of us. Because this is what Civilization really is, an endless quest to encourage the best in us (in our 'human nature') and discourage the worst, so that we can evolve further. 

Beyond absolute truths, ideologies, religious and secular dogmas, it is our inquisitive minds, 8 billion of them, Logic (Reason), Humanity's most powerful tool - that brought us here and can take us somewhere further and better. Eco without Logic is just echo!

ecosunEcoclub.com, as a latter-day, virtual Garden of Epicurus, aims to bring together all who broadly share the above ideas so that we can discuss and improve them and then apply them. It was established in 1999 in Athens to support ecotourism professionals around the world. Our growing global community includes leading eco practitioners, employees, consultants, academics and students. Ecological tourism examples, such as Ecoclub Ecolodges and Ecoclub Recommended businesses, pop-up every day, so we collectively try to reinforce them, promote and propagate them.

ecosunOur Logo: The colour (teal) is one of a few colours named after an animal (a duck, the common teal, whose eyes are surrounded by this colour). The smiling sun symbolizes a pragmatic, positive, non-violent, non-sectarian, non-dogmatic, philosophical attitude to life which combines the Epicurean "LATHE VIOSAS" ("ΛΑΘΕ ΒΙΩΣΑΣ" = get through life without drawing unwarranted attention), "ATARAXIA" (ΑΤΑΡΑΞΙΑ = tranquillity) with MUTUAL AID, the will to assist each other, solve real problems, "to get up again and start over", rise up every day, in a peaceful, daily revolution in all our individual and collective dealings; it also symbolizes solar power - renewable energy in literal and figurative terms and light - the light of science, enlightenment. 

This is a working document, frequently edited, corrected, updated and expanded. It inadvertently includes contradictions, errors and omissions and is not meant to be a blueprint. We do not really believe that blueprints are either possible or beneficial on the road to a better future. Ideologies, including those claiming to be 'scientific' are just a form of post-religion. Anyone who blindly follows or "believes" an ideology without having serious questions, doubts and objections is no more enlightened than the one who blindly follows a religion. Caveat Lector!

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ecosunAncient Greek Writing Tablet, Red figure Kylix by Eucharides, 480 BCE (U. of Pennsylvania Museum)Ancient Greek Writing Tablet, Red figure Kylix by Eucharides, 480 BCE (U. of Pennsylvania Museum)Ecoclub Reading List (Books, Essays, Articles):