Gaddafi's Little Green Duck - American democracy in Libya: no consent, no problem.

The Green Book (1975-81) is Gaddafi's version of Mao's Little Red Book (1964). The purpose of this type of work is to provide political rhetoric which can be taught in schools and act as a vague socio-political framework.

Western critics of these types of political manifesto highlight the end product. The state totalitarianism of Gaddafi, Mao and Stalin is absolutely anti-democratic. The manifestos that legitimized their power were pro-democracy. It is important to recognize the disconnect between democratic communism as a method and state totalitarianism as a result.

A counter-revolutionary ideology overtook the Libyan, Chinese and Russian states but that doesn't discount the utopian frameworks of their political legitimacy. The Libyan, Russian and Chinese anti-socialist counter-revolutions are similar to the 1798 American counter-revolution where Adams started legitimized partisanship and targeted political opponents with the federal government.

THe American historical narrative doesn't center around counter-revolutionary state actions. This Sprit of 1776 narrative is defined by the American constitution and this genius document has protected the republic from too much democracy and vice versa since it's inception. Of course, this is propaganda for babies. Even so, the constitutional conflict [between Federalists and anti-Federalists, abolitionists and slave holders, men and women, Anglos and everybody else, merchants and farmers, urban and rural, Anglophiles and Francophiles] are secondary to a nationalist union. Once again, this is an inadequate history.

What makes American history an Orwellian construction is the how Washington D.C. elites reinforce their narrative with public declarations, standardized curriculum, monuments and other nationalist symbolic accoutrements. The federal government has appropriated symbols like the Obelisk from the Egyptians, the Fasces from Etruscans, the Aquila eagle from Rome, the Greek columns from Athens, the Arc de Triomphe from France. Appropriating these symbols is fine (albeit uncreative.) The Orwellian part is using these symbols to represent Democracy and Republicanism without acknowledging the counter-revolutions that destroyed the democracies that built the monuments. Simply--the Roman Empire didn't stop using the Obelisk, Fasces, columns or Aquilla just because the Roman Republic had ended.

The same is true of American's [partisan-authoritarian] counter-revolution in 1798. The 1798 revolution ended the republic of 1787. The 1798 partisan-authoritarian Adams regime didn't renounce the symbols of 1776 as he embraced partisanship and the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Modern America operates with the counter-revolutionary ideology of Adams. The Alien, Sedition (and Espionage) Acts are rediscovered by every generation of Americans as their heroes are imprisoned for being heterodox to state truth. There is nothing Orwellian about living in a partisan, authoritarian society. The Orwellian part is when that society believes it is the first and free-ist country in history. The result of this disconnect between ideology and action is America's impulse to build nation-states around the world in America's image.

A country cannot impose its version democracy on another country. Not without the permission of the people and their revolutionary leadership. America is even more unqualified to export democratic republicanism because that is not something which is not plentiful enough in the country to export. America's appropriation of republican symbols and democratic language doesn't make it a republic any more than the Roman Empire was a republic based on its historical proximity to that social system.

The Americans are enamored of one eleven year period of eighteenth century history. Their domestic and foreign policy is based on the false assumption that the 1787 Republic wasn't ended by Adams. Partisanship and federal spying have hindered operations of the American system. They did for the Jacksonians, Jefferson Davis, Alice Paul, Eugene Debs, Bob La Follette, Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale, Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Julian Assange. Because American's believe in the 1787 Republic, the partisan domestic operations that started with the countries second president and continue today are seen as anomalies. The Orwellian formulation might be: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and democracy is authoritarian.

Libya was one of the targets for American nation building. Unfortunately, for the Americans, the Libyan government had a robust political ideology which emphasized democratic ideas like those found in the American constitution. One reason Gaddafi kept power for so long was the robust democratic-socialist ideology of his regime. This is the same reason Venezuela has had three successive anti-imperialist regimes in the face of American meddling. Both states (Libya and Venezuela) had resource wealth that stabilized their socialist regimes. This resource wealth also made them the target of American imperialism.

The three parts of The Green Book propose fixes to the anti-democratic elements of both capitalism and communism. First, a direct democracy and General People's Committee are proposed. These two organs combat and replace populism, partisanship, parliament, classes, referenda, institutions, minority rule and the corporate press. The big problems with representative governments (like partisanship, minority rule and gerrymandering) are mediated by the General People's Committee which functions as an executive intermediary between the voters / parliament and the leadership.

Second, a middle path between communism and capitalism is proposed. Wage-slavery is outlawed in favor of a partnership between the industry, the worker and the production process which is facilitated by the state. The state is also empowered to eliminate need, end houselessness, provide transportation, distribute land equally and outlaw domestic servitude. These are the economic implications of his "Third Universal Theory."

Third, he explains the social implications of this "Third Theory." The state is central to his economic and social analysts. This partially explains why western analysis sees Gaddafi as a failed theorist. Westerners believe Communism to be a big state philosophy masquerading as a stateless ideology which refuses to wither away in the face of entrenched politics and money. This is a conflation of Marx (the revolutionary) and Stalin (the counter-revolutionary). Gaddafi's revolution requires the nationalistic state remain as the primary focus of society.

The GPCO functions like Lenin's Soviets councils. The difference is in Libya, this intermediary is based on geography and suffrage. The GPCO is the democratic bureaucracy that influences government policy. The Soviets were worker councils that eventually turned into a political party. This republican bureaucracy fomented bourgeoisie revolution. By sanctioning a democratic organ the state could encourage stability and participation.

Gaddafi's third way is not Marxist communism because it requires the state remain. The state regulated the worker-industry relationship outside of wage slavery. Gaddafi's third was not market liberalism either. Ideas like profit, landlords and wages are not motivating factors in this economic version. They are replaced by a socialist nationalism. This is not the same as Stalinism because it is intellectually honest. Gaddafi's theory is based on expanding the state's role in society.

Stalin's theory is a re-construction and counter-revolution of big state authoritarianism based on Marx and Lenin's vision of post-bourgeoisie rank-and-file liberalism.

Ghaddafi's ideology is as idealistic as Marx, Lenin or the 1787 American constitution. The functional pragmatism is based in institutional overlap and increased democratic participation. The Little Green Book builds upon the American republic--just like Marx and Engels did. The good faith attempt to create a balanced government socialism was overthrown by an American operation in 2011. The American's believed Gaddafi a dictator and Gaddafi believed the Americans were imperialists. Both were true.

The Gaddafi affair (and the Arab Spring in general) is Orwellian because the Hillary Clinton State Department promoted the events in 2011 as a grass-roots democratic uprising. Of course American influence operations meant this statement was false. This is typical state department double-speak. The weirder part concerns Libya specifically. Libya wasn't a belligerent state and hadn't been since 1984. The Libyan constitution--the Little Green Book--was a democratic document. America targeted Libyan oil reserves but their purported reason for overthrowing the regime was to bring Democracy to Libya. No country can export democracy--especially a non-democratic partisan-authoritarian state.

The assassination of Gaddafi started when NATO forces based in Las Vegas, Nevada attacked his convoy using a Predator Drone. NATO's allies on the ground captured, shot, beat, sodomized by a bayonet and then killed. America and the countries allies directed the public political execution of a head of state. They claimed this was in the service of exporting Democracy. Again, America cannot export a commodity which it does not produce.

Many news articles about the NATO directed execution have been scrubbed from the internet. The censorship of media to maintain retroactive continuity is as Orwellian as "four legs good, two legs better." One article about the event which escaped the memory hole is in Seymour Hersh's memoir Reporter. This was excerpted in the London Review of Books.

The excerpt is mostly about Syrian leader Assad. America wanted to depose Assad as a precondition for and end to American intervention in Syria. Democracy in action.

Russian president Putin was allied with both Assad and Ghaddafi against American hegemony. Putin's support for the Assad regime strengthened after the public Ghaddafi torture and assassination. In Hersh, "Putin had watched a video of Gaddafi's savage death three times, a video that shows him being sodomized with a bayonet. The JCS adviser also tole me of a US intelligence assessment which concluded that Putin had been appalled by Gaddafi's fate" and wanted to protect Assad from American sanctioned violence.

Hersh quotes Tulsi Gabbard from a CNN interview in October 2011, "The US and the CIA should stop this illegal and counterproductive ar to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad..." When the interviewer asked if Assad was "brutal" Gabbard responded "The things that are being said about Assad right now are the same that were said about Gaddafi, they are the same things that were said about Saddam Hussein by those who were advocating for the US to...overthrow those regimes..."

Gabbard was kicked out of the Democratic party for pointing out the anti-democratic nature of their primary process. Specifically, she took issue with DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Shultz support of one candidate--Hillary Clinton--during the 2016 primaries. Clinton's state department assisted in the torture and assassination of Ghaddafi in 2011 during the imperial destabilization they called the "Arab Spring."

The story of Ghaddafi's Little Green Book renders labels like Democracy, Republic and Socialism meaningless. They are replaced by a very basic real politic power politics. The American metropole is an imperial state that takes over countries under the guise of building democracy. Again, America does not have a domestic supply of republican democracy--there is nothing to export. America's chief international export is weapons--sometimes accompanied by soldiers. It is Orwellian that Americans define this imperial force as an arsenal of democracy.

The Green Book in three parts:
1. The Solution of the Problem of Democracy: The Authority of the People Libya: People's Committee (1975).
2. The Solution of the Economic Problem: Socialism Libya: People's Committee (1977).
3. The Social Basis of the Third International Theory Libya: People's Committee (1981).

Seymour M. Hersh "Military to Military: Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war." Vo. 31 No. 1 (7 January 2016). [lrb.co.uk]

Photo credit:The photo is from an [olatorera.com] article about the three accomplishments of Gaddafi. They are a social state with medical and education, free and nationalized utilities, promoting pan-African currency.

This is probably from the same Reuters photographer who supplied [The Guardian] with this photo.