Muammar Gaddafi

Muammar Gaddafi was a Libyan revolutionary and leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1969 to 2011. His ideological thinking is distilled into an book called The Green Book.

During his leadership, Libya was the most prosperous country in Africa, with the highest GDP and the most effective democracy of any modern African nation.

The Green Book

The Green Book lays out a path separate from Western capitalism and Eastern "Communism", which he associated with the revisionist Soviet bloc. Naming those as the First and Second International Theories, the Green Book calls itself the Third International Theory.

It declares its legal basis not within a Constitution, but the Qur'an. It sets out a socialist, truly democratic form of government based on councils within regions and tribes. The economy would be governed by a combination of cooperatives and state-owned enterprises.

Gaddafi also includes some of his thoughts on the family, women, tribal divisions, and other topics. (For example, Gaddafi did not like Western-style mass sports watching. He believed in democratizing sports so that audiences would also have the chance to play in the same massive arenas.)

Caleb Maupin has published an English copy of the book with his own introduction.

Rise to power

In 1969, Gaddafi seized power by a coup against the imperialist-backed king.

Green Libya

Libyan socialism primarily focused on wealth redistribution of oil-rents to general public to rapidly increase living standards and quality of life.

A limit was imposed on the rents that landlords could charge, fixing maximum rents at about one third of the pre-revolutionary level. Tripoli until then had been the most expensive city in the Middle East. Many large properties were taken over and let to the people at low rents. The vast sprawling shanty town just outside Tripoli was torn down and replaced by new workers' housing projects.``

When Qaddafi took power, the literacy rate in Libya was a miserable twenty percent. The consequence of the transfer payments lifted the rate to ninety percent by 1980.

“One of the poorest countries in the world in the 1950s, Libya now ranks ahead of several other oil-producing countries in terms of per capita GDP.

Universal enrollment in primary education has been achieved and the illiteracy rate is well below the regional average.

Libya has some of the lowest infant mortality rates among middle-income countries. Laws and regulations do not discriminate against women.”

75% of the Libyan workforce was in the public sector.

Healthcare sector vastly improved. Lowest infant mortality rate in Africa

Name

Jamahiriya is derived from the Arabic word for "masses", jamaahir. It is the plural of "people", jumhur, which is the root of the Arab word for "republic", jumhuriya. Thus, jamahiriya can be roughly translated as "people's republic".

The state was initially called the Libyan Arab Republic (ٱلْجُمْهُورِيَّةُ ٱلْعَرَبِيَّة ٱللِّيْبِيَّة) in 1969. In 1977, the name was changed to the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (اَلْجَمَاهِيرِيَّة ٱلْعَرَبِيَّة ٱللِّيبِيَّة ٱلشَّعْبِيَّة ٱلْإِشْتِرَاكِيَّة). In this name, translating jamahiriya as "people's republic" would be redundant because the word sha3biya is included as an adjectival form of sha3b meaning "people".

Downfall

See also: Libya

The US onslaught on Gaddafi was briefly reduced as he appeared to be accepting US investment. However, by the mid 00s, Islamic extremist rebels (basically ISIS) were being deployed against him by the CIA. He offered to collaborate against ISIS, which the US pretended to accept, but the US continued to undermine him. In addition to covert CIA funding, open NED funding to Libyan dissidents began to ramp up.

Seeing the trajectory of CIA-sponsored unrest in the Middle East, Gaddafi predicted that the West would be overrun by migrants due to its own imperialist foreign policy.

In 2011, Obama and Hillary Clinton sponsored a US coup against him. CIA-backed rebels started the unrest, and Obama and NATO intervened with airstrikes, plunging the country into relentless civil war (see Libya).

Gaddafi refused to leave the country, willing to die to save his people, even if they turned against him. He was tortured and killed by ISIS-affiliated rebels.

Wikileaks of Hillary's emails later revealed the motivation behind this color revolution. It was done partly to appease France, which was upset by the invasion of Iraq. Western companies wanted to plunder Libyan oil. Above all, they feared Gaddafi's plan for a gold dinar - a gold-backed currency for Africa, which would be used instead of the Franc or the US dollar. This had the potential to unite Africa to true independence from Western imperialism.

Gaddafi's billions in gold stocks were plundered by NATO forces.

Legacy

As with other color revolutions, at the time, a good number of Libyans believed regime change could bring them to a Western standard of living. It was branded as part of the "democratic" "Arab Spring". Now, almost everyone regrets the fall of Gaddafi.