Customer Reviews

The Green Book

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"The Green Book" is a book written by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, in which he outlines his personal philosophy. Green is the colour of Islam, and also the colour of the Libyan national flag. The name "The Green Book", perhaps unintentionally, alludes to Mao Zedong's "The Little Red Book".

Qaddafi's book has been translated into many languages, including Swedish. It's divided into three sections, titled "The solution to the problem of democracy", "The solution to the economic problem" and "The social basis of the Third Universal Theory". The entire work is rather short, and is available free on-line. It's not clear to me where Qaddafi's ideas come from. Did he develop them himself? Or do they have Muslim antecedents?

Personally, I consider "The Green Book" to be both hypocritical and contradictory. In the first section, Qaddafi rejects rule by parliament, plebiscite, party or class. He seemingly calls for direct democracy. But does he really? Since there are no political parties, it's unclear how people can organize themselves to express an opinion. Only "the people's committees" have a right to publish political newspapers. Associations or individuals don't have the right to publish such newspapers. The law of the land is identical to some kind of natural law, rooted in religion, and cannot be changed. The religion is presumably Islam. And although Qaddafi rejects parliaments, there actually is a parliament even in his system, the General People's Congress. The direct democracy is therefore a sheer paper construction. Interestingly, the Congress is to some extent elected on a corporatist basis. And since every people's committee has a secretariat charged with carrying out the decisions of the General People's Congress, there is in effect a bureaucratic state apparatus as well. But no political parties, no freedom of the press, and the entire system is based on unchanging religious laws!

The second section, subtitled "Socialism", calls for an economic system based on individual or family-based small-scale production. The third section, on the social question, calls for patriarchal relations between men and women, who are said to be different by nature. Further, it states that the nation is the natural form of organization for humans. It also calls for corporate minority rights, presumably for national or religious minorities. While this sounds good on paper, it may actually be based on the dhimmi or millet systems. More sensationally, there is a chapter entitled "Black people will prevail in the world" (in Swedish it has an even more dramatic title, best translated as "The Blacks shall rule the world"). This statement is probably in keeping with Libya's leadership ambitions in Africa, and has also earned Libya the support of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

"The Green Book" never discusses Qaddafi's own position, but it's pretty obvious that he is Libya's real leader. The direct democracy is simply a figleaf for Qaddafi's own personal power.

How should we characterize the ideas in "The Green Book"? Corporatism, patriarchy, theocracy, organic nationalism, racial supremacy and a personal dictatorship behind a smokescreen of people's power...

It sure sounds familiar. It is, of course, what we usually term...fascism.

I give this book three stars for one simple reason: it is IMPOSSIBLE to review such works of political theory without mixing a variety of factors, including applicability, relevance, and readability. That being said, I'll give a short synopsis of Qadhafi's work and then describe my rating based on these factors.

The Green Book is Qadhafi's version of Mao's Little Red Book. Simply put, it his ideological foundation, and acts as the de facto constitution of Libya under Colonel Qadhafi, despite the fact that Qadhafi holds no formal role. The Green Book is short in length and is divided into three sections: The Solution to the Democratic Problem, the Solution to the Economic Problem, and the Societal Basis to the Third Universal Theory, which sums up Qadhafi's overall world-view. These sections are inherently contradictory, as Qadhafi, for example, blasts political parties in one section of the book but then promotes them in another. Despite this, it provides insight into the Basic People's Conference system that provides for a veneer of democracy in Libya under Colonel Qadhafi.

Applicability: 0 Stars
-The theory doesn't work, it has never been put into practice (in reality it's a form of direct democracy mixed with anarchy, which are contradictory in themselves, like the rest of the book).

Relevance: 5 Stars
-I read this book in a North African Governments course prior to the outbreak of revolution in Libya. That being said, the Green Book, even if Qadhafi is removed from power, provides a clear insight into the nature of the Libyan system in that the democratic system was contradictory and not practiced as written. The Green Book has never been fully carried out; this exhibits clear problems to a post-Qadhafi Libya in forming a democratic tradition.

Readability: 3 Stars
-The book is easy to read, although, as mentioned, it is contradictory throughout. The translation is of a good quality from the original Arabic.