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Libya After Gaddafi, A "People's Capture" Of History?

By Dave Fryett

03 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org

A great deal of nonsense is being said and written about Moammar Gaddafi these days. It is clear that his partners in the West no longer see him as viable, and have turned against him. The same savages who called for the "liberation" of Iraq now cajole for a "humanitarian intervention" in Libya. Not for the first time have vast petroleum reserves educed lavish concern for the well-being of those who live amongst the derricks, but in this case these would-be expropriators may find the populace a little more difficult to subdue. While oil revenue remains the animating force behind the partisan news coverage and the manoeuver of interested parties, there are other factors which make the revolution in Libya a particular danger for international capital. From the very beginning it was apparent that the rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt were poorly organized, leaderless, and ideologically incoherent, insurrections usually are. Tumult does not often yield to organization and strategy. Egypt and Tunisia succeeded in routing despised heads of state, but they have thus far failed to find a unifying revolutionary agenda, or an effective alternative framework for democratic governance. In Libya, both of these essentials pre-exist. They were created, and were subsequently undermined, by the Brother-leader and Guide of the Revolution.

Gaddafi is often described in the West as controversial, but that is not what is meant. For the rulers of the developed world, he is a pariah. Few if any dispute it. But it is among the exponents of the Third World, however, that opinions, often extreme, diverge sharply. Some see him as a champion of noble popular causes such as African unity and pan-Arabism. They cite his philanthropy; his willingness to deploy Libyan troops abroad in what are perceived to be worthwhile causes; his arming, funding and training of revolutionary paramilitaries ( which the West would call terror squads ); his advocacy for, and generous funding of, the African Union. His detractors claim that he is more concerned with power than justice; too close to Western capital and their intelligence services; has subverted the African Union with his oil money; collaborated with the worst despots in Africa; and, most damning of all, that he is, or has become, an agent of those Western economic elites whom he professes to detest.

In 1952, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser and and a handful of fellow soldiers, known as the Free Officers, overthrew Egypt's King Farouk. The military coup became a template for revolution in the Arab world and the process was repeated in Iraq and elsewhere. In 1969, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi, at the head of the Movement of Free Officers, Unionists, and Socialists, overthrew King Idris and established the Libyan Arabic Republic. Soon a Revolutionary Command Council ( RCC ) was established with Gaddafi at its head. Among his first public actions was to announce that he intended to eliminate all foreign military bases within the country, which he did, much to the chagrin of the US and UK. He then proceeded to nationalize, wholly or in part, those industries which the corrupt Idris had privatized and sold to foreign firms. He then made Islam the state religion.

Throughout the 1970s, he wrote a number of theses on political philosophy and organization which were published as the Green Book. In it he set forth what he called the Third International Theory. It is neither capitalism nor communism, which in those days was understood to mean USSR-style socialism, but a different approach distinct from both. His influences, as he acknowledged, are Islam; the Islamic Socialism of Ali Shariati and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto; the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin, Pyotor Kropotkin, and Errico Malatesta; and the democratic ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato in particular.

In the Green Book he introduces the term Jamahiriya, which loosely translates ( I'm told ) as government by the masses. Here's how it works: There are three strata of political power. At the neighborhood level there are the Basic People's Congresses ( BPC ), numbering approximately 1,500. There are three scheduled sessions annually, and more can be convened as needed. Every adult can attend and has voting and speaking rights. Matters pertaining to local businesses are discussed, as are regional, national, and international affairs with an eye to electing delegates to higher Congresses who reflect the views of the majority.

At these Congresses, deputies are elected to the twenty-four Sha'biyat ( regional ) People's Congresses. These comprise the second stratum of government and their areas of responsibility include health and education.

The General People's Congress ( GPC ) is the top or national level. Here foreign policy is determined. It has the power to declare war, to negotiate and ratify treaties and other international agreements.

Jamahiriya extends to economic life as well. Here one finds a strong socialist ethic. In the Green Book Gaddafi condemns "slave wage labor". All who participate in a business own it. "Partners, not employees" is the guiding principle. The previous ownership was compensated by the state and allowed, if they wished, to remain involved in their former enterprises, but only as an equal. This process was christened the "people's capture" of industry.

The essence of Jamahiriya is given full expression by the slogan: "Power, wealth and weapons - in the hands of the people." In 1977, the name of the country was changed from Libyan Arabic Republic to the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Unfortunately for the people of Libya, the proper exercise of democracy was stymied by the presence of dual power, the bane of socialist transformation. Unlike the revolutions in Germany, Russia, and, to a lesser extent Spain and Mexico, the existence of rival structures was not the unhappy compromise of competing, irremediably adverse, ideological factions, in Libya's case, both spheres of governance were instituted by the same revolutionary agency -- Gaddafi.

There were two orbits of authority: In addition to the "Jamahiriya sector" described above, there is also a "revolutionary sector". The RCC is an unelected body composed of those Free Officers who effected the coup d'etat in 1969. It appoints the Council of Ministers, which serves as the nation's cabinet. Its power paralleled and exceeded that of the GPC.

Ostensibly to teach the precepts of his philosophy to the populace, in 1973, Gaddafi launched a "cultural revolution". He sent disciples out to businesses and schools and the popular assemblies to instruct them on the best methods for implementing Jamahiriya. These cadres of acolytes would come to constitute what by 1977 Gaddafi would call "revolutionary committees". These were tasked with identifying and correcting ideological drift; infiltrating and/or liquidating counterrevolutionary cliques both foreign and domestic; and generally to promote the Leader and his policies. These committees' observers are present for each meeting of all the People's Congresses.

In a Macchiavellian manipulation eerily similar to Bolshevik usurpation of the soviets, Gaddafi convinced the GPC to institute a General Secretariat, wherein, of course, he would serve as general secretary. Authority to conduct the affairs of state was then ceded by the GPC to the new body. The Secretariat, the Sovnarkom of the Libyan revolution, appointed the General People's Committee, which supplanted the Council of Ministers. Once this was achieved, Gaddafi dissolved the RCC. Dual power was thus eliminated, but at a terrible cost. The revolution was over. Power had passed from Idris to Gaddafi.

The cultural revolution and the revolutionary committees may initially have been necessary to popularize Jamahiriya and combat the counterrevolutionary machinations of the embittered domestic bourgeoisie and the international petroleum oligopoly, but they soon evolved into instruments of oppression. They became the eyes and ears of Gaddafi's police state, growing to comprise, according to some estimates, twenty percent of the population. If true, they surpassed, at least in proportion, the Russian Cheka and the East German Stasi. The stifling presence of the revolutionary committees is one of the main causes of the sporadic outbreaks of unrest in Libya since Gaddafi seized power.

Jamahiriya, this elegant homage to egalitarianism, never had a chance to take root as Gaddafi, as Brother-leader and Guide of the Revolution, stood athwart Libyan real politique like a collossus. At best Jamahiriya is the gifted but developmentally-challenged child who never emerged from the long, opaque shadow of a celebrity father. At worst it was the oleaginous marketing ploy of a sociopath. Nevertheless, Gaddafi, be he seminal political theorist or mere ordinary demagogue, crafted a social and political orientation which might well survive him. The abolition of the General Secretariat, and a few lesser reforms, would transform Libya into a model people's democracy. Despite having dislodged their heads of state, the people of Tunisia and Egypt are still fighting to overcome the bureaucratic state their nemeses left behind. In Libya, the people have a functioning revolutionary body politic which needs only to be decapitated.

International capital is not going to stand idly by while trillions of dollars in oil profits pass to a small, radicalized populaion practicing anarchist-style democracy in the desert. Their agents are already afoot in Libya while the media and governments they control gin up support for a military intervention. Fear of all that money falling into the hands of people willing to use it in the service of permanent, global, revolution is more than enough for the Lords of Capital to do their worst. And they will, they always do. It will not be easy for our brothers and sisters in Libya, but they have the best chance of all.

And if they prevail...

 


 




 


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