Ghaddafi

[The Jay]

What was Ghaddafi's government really like? I know that they had socialized health care and the government helped with house payments but how progressive was he really. Having never read the green book nor knew anything about him previously, I'm reluctant to believe everything the media put out.

[Susurrus]

Basically if you took a reactionary muslim social view and combined it with a sham council communism system controlled by an authoritarian regime, you'd have Gaddafism.

[Zealot]

Well Gaddafi claimed that Libya was governed by workers councils and that he didn't really have any position of leadership. Obviously, I call bs but I haven't really looked into it either.

[Susurrus]

Well Gaddafi claimed that Libya was governed by workers councils and that he didn't really have any position of leadership. Obviously, I call bs but I haven't really looked into it either.

Yeah, the Green Book calls for more or less a Kropotkin-esque society, but with nationalism, tribalism, sexism, and lots of other traditionalist crap. In reality, the councils served as nothing more but a means of control and surveillance, and Gaddafi controlled everything.

[Sasha]

reading ht green book wouldnt help you much as the peoples councels who supposedly had the power never got much more to decide about than drainage and other utilities (and even they where stacked to the hilt with secret police informers and handsomely paid off regime cheerleaders) because all true power always remained in the so called "revolutionairy commitees" who where direcly appointed by gadaffi inc instead of elected.

basically gadaffi created a state not that much different than the oil states in the arab golf; weak civil society, escalated tribal tensions through favorism and corruption, complete dependence on exploited and discriminated against immigrant labor, nasty theocratic tendencies, a brutal internal (secret)police state, shockingly corruption with the "sheiks" sons throwing extravagant las vegas partys and all these things considered still relatively high education and public health standards thanks to the vast oil wealth. gadaffis lybia was all that and more, just with some pseudo leftist lipservice and a whole lot of grandiose narcissism thrown in the mix

[Hiero]

Basically if you took a reactionary muslim social view and combined it with a sham council communism system controlled by an authoritarian regime, you'd have Gaddafism.
That didn't really answer his question.

I believe that the Gaddaffi government had free socialised healthcare, ran literacy programs and focused heavily on education. Basic state weflare for it's citizens. I am not sure how well distributed it was, the claim is that welfare in Libya was unequally distributed amongst tribes. Libya was unique in that it was a third world nation that it focused on welfare.



escalated tribal tensions through favorism


One claim from someone on this forum awhile back is that Gaddaffi could not break the tribal politics of the nation.

[Susurrus]

That didn't really answer his question.

I believe that the Gaddaffi government had free socialised healthcare, ran literacy programs and focused heavily on education. Basic state weflare for it's citizens. I am not sure how well distributed it was, the claim is that welfare in Libya was unequally distributed amongst tribes. Libya was unique in that it was a third world nation that it focused on welfare.



One claim from someone on this forum awhile back is that Gaddaffi could not break the tribal politics of the nation.

Yes I did. The question was, what was gaddafi's government like?


He didn't want to.
"The social bond, cohesiveness, unity, intimacy and love are stronger at the family level than at the tribal level, stronger at the tribal level than that of the nation, and stronger at the level of the nation than that of the world."

"The tribe is a natural social "umbrella" for social security. By virtue of social tribal traditions, the tribe provides for its members collective protection in the form of fines, revenge and defence; namely, social protection."

[Geiseric]

welfare =/ socialism. A literate worker is much more productive than an illiterate one, as is a healthy one.

[DarkPast]

nasty theocratic tendencies

I definitely agree on the other characteristics you mentioned, but could you please provide some evidence for the theocratic tendencies?

I had the impression that Islamists didn't like Gaddaffi at all - there were at least some 2-3 assassination attempts on him made by Islamists, plus you have all the people chanting "allahu akbar" when news got out that he was dead.

[scarletghoul]

Yeah, the Green Book calls for more or less a Kropotkin-esque society, but with nationalism, tribalism, sexism, and lots of other traditionalist crap. In reality, the councils served as nothing more but a means of control and surveillance, and Gaddafi controlled everything.
Tribalism: libyan politics has always been dominated by tribalism, so to make any progress they need to deal with the current situation rather than just wishing the tribal differences away and ignoring them in the setting up of the political system (such an approach has led in many african countries to constant tribal warfare etc.. at least in libya there was a system put in place so that each tribe had representation in government). Sexism: womens liberation is one undeniable and huge achievement of the libyan revolution. there is more gender equality in libya than any other arab or african country.
In general the Jamahiriyah has been a very positive revolutionary force for the people of both Libya and Africa as a whole. Having said that, Gaddafi is petty bourgeois not working class, and the Libyan Jamahiriyah is not exactly a dictatorship of the proletariat,, but it is certainly an ally of the global proletariat and a leader in the fight against reactionary intercommunalism

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

What was Ghaddafi's government really like? I know that they had socialized health care and the government helped with house payments but how progressive was he really. Having never read the green book nor knew anything about him previously, I'm reluctant to believe everything the media put out.

Libya had an alright social services net in some regards and in some cities, at least as much as any other oil-rich state. However it was very unevenly distributed, and there was little ability to publicly complain about the inefficiencies of government services without getting tossed in prison.

Their government did do some good things with the oil money, but he was a very brutal man, and over time he and his family became increasingly unaccountable, wealthy and autocratic. He increasingly used the wealth of his country to finance palaces and a lavish lifestyle for his family, which probably contributed to dissatisfaction in Libya with his rule.

Gaddafi also did little to make his population politically and socially educated or engaged with the social and economic system of his country, despite the superficial similarities his government has with bottom-up organizing. He did not come to power by popular revolution but took power by arms.


I definitely agree on the other characteristics you mentioned, but could you please provide some evidence for the theocratic tendencies?

I had the impression that Islamists didn't like Gaddaffi at all - there were at least some 2-3 assassination attempts on him made by Islamists, plus you have all the people chanting "allahu akbar" when news got out that he was dead.

The problem that Islamists had with him was that he wasn't fundamentalist enough. He was a Muslim theocrat but he saw the fundamentalists as dangerous and unpredictable.



I believe that the Gaddaffi government had free socialised healthcare, ran literacy programs and focused heavily on education. Basic state weflare for it's citizens. I am not sure how well distributed it was, the claim is that welfare in Libya was unequally distributed amongst tribes. Libya was unique in that it was a third world nation that it focused on welfare.


There was some amount of welfare state in Libya. But it was very unequal. Some communities had much better social services than others. Obviously Sirte had great social services, but others, particularly areas which had local opposition to Gaddafi, had poorer services. From what I understand, the worst social services were in the areas which protested against Gaddafi initially and then rebelled. Perhaps it should act as an example of why they rebelled to begin with.

One example of the "Socialized health care system" in Benghazi is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_trial_in_Libya


The HIV trial in Libya (or Bulgarian nurses affair) concerns the trials, appeals and eventual release of six foreign medical workers charged with conspiring to deliberately infect over 400 children with HIV in 1998, causing an epidemic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic) at El-Fatih Children's Hospital (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=El-Fatih_Children%27s_Hospital&action=edit&redlink=1) in Benghazi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benghazi), Libya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya).[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_trial_in_Libya#cite_note-Doctors_face_murder_charges_in_Libya-0) The defendants were a Palestinian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinians) medical intern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_intern) and five Bulgarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarians) nurses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse) (often termed "medics").[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_trial_in_Libya#cite_note-HRW-Photos_of_the_Bulgarian_health_workers-1) They were first sentenced to death, then had their case remanded by Libya's highest court, and were sentenced to death again, a penalty which was upheld by Libya's highest court in early July, 2007.

...

The epidemic at El-Fatih and the subsequent trials were highly politicized and controversial. The medics say that they were forced to confess under torture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture) and that they are innocent. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi later confirmed that Libyan investigators tortured the medics with electric shocks and threatened to target their families in order to extract the confessions, and confirmed that some of the children had been infected with HIV before the medics arrived in Libya.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_trial_in_Libya#cite_note-SaifGaddaficonfession-4) He said that the guilty verdict of the Libyan courts had been based on "conflicting reports", and said that "There is negligence, there is a disaster that took place, there is a tragedy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_%28event%29), but it was not deliberate."


Some of the world's foremost HIV experts had written to courts and the Libyan government on the medics' behalf, blaming the epidemic on poor hygiene practices in the hospital.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_trial_in_Libya#cite_note-sentencesconverted-2) The epidemic is the largest documented outbreak of HIV within a hospital in history, and it was the first time AIDS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS) became a public issue in Libya. Two of the world's foremost HIV experts, Luc Montagnier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier) and Vittorio Colizzi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Colizzi), supported the medics' case, and reaction to their convictions was swift, with a number of appeals from scientific and human rights organizations, and various official condemnations of the verdict along with diplomatic initiatives.
It might be a little indicative that the protests and then the rebellion both started in a city where the hospitals are so unhygienic that hundreds of children contracted a deadly infectious disease which is non-contagious. It is also indicative that when this happened, the first thing that the government did is put the proletarians on trial and then gave them the death penalty.


Sexism: womens liberation is one undeniable and huge achievement of the libyan revolution. there is more gender equality in libya than any other arab or african country.

Except a woman who was said she was raped by Gaddafi's army was accused of being a whore, drunk and insane on national television, and was arrested for making the accusation. I agree that Gaddafi's Libya is better for women than, say, most of the 1960s Arab world, but that does not justify his government's policies on women today at all. Most governments have progressed to some extent on women's rights but can still be quite bad in some regards.


In general the Jamahiriyah has been a very positive revolutionary force for the people of both Libya and Africa as a whole. Having said that, Gaddafi is petty bourgeois not working class, and the Libyan Jamahiriyah is not exactly a dictatorship of the proletariat,, but it is certainly an ally of the global proletariat and a leader in the fight against reactionary intercommunalism

Then why did his government kill working class protesters on Feb 17th 2011? Why did he tell the Tunisians that they were wrong to rebel against Ben Ali and that the Tunisian president was a "Good man"? Why did he support Idi Amin, the RUF in Sierra Leone and Charles Taylor in Liberia? If he was really an ally of the global proletariat he would have admitted that the protesters had a point and reformed his government or retiring and selling his family's personal assets instead of assaulting or even killing the protesters, and he certainly wouldn't have supported such thuggish leaders internationally.

[RadioRaheem84]

Gaddafi had a moderately well run welfare state. It began to really degenerate when he began to be coddled by the West and reforms were put into place due the new advisors he gave power to, the same ones that now run the NTC.

There was nothing truly socialist about Gaddafi's regime. He was another non-aligned nationalist like Sukarno but was well on his way to becoming a Mubarak if he continued the path he was going on.

The ironic thing is that the people of Libya who support the rebels rose due to the corruption and the neo-liberalism installed at the behest of Gaddafi's new advisors. What they do not seem to realize is that the same people who made Gaddafi's regime worse, are the ones who will completely destroy it. At least Gaddafi had some restraint on letting these Libyan Chicago Boys have the whole cake.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

His Green Book seems to have led to the degenerate cousin of the Cuban system: at the national level a non-meritocratic, un-democratic clique controlling the political system, and at the local level the CDRs taking into consideration the democratic input of locals.

It seems that Libya, however, had a system where at the national level the ruling clique controlled the economy as well as the political system (I mean directly, rather than indirectly through non-democratic state ownership as in Cuba), and that the workers' councils, unlike the CDRs in Cuba, actually fulfilled no function.

If someone is more well-versed, though, i'd be interested to hear from them.

[Susurrus]

Sexism: womens liberation is one undeniable and huge achievement of the libyan revolution. there is more gender equality in libya than any other arab or african country.


"...a natural difference exists between men and women is proved by the created existence of men and women. This necessarily means that there is a role for each one of them corresponding to the difference between them. Accordingly, there must be different prevailing conditions for each one in order that they perform their naturally different roles. To comprehend these roles, we must understand the difference in the created nature of man and woman, that is, the natural difference between the two."

"A woman, whose created nature has assigned to her a natural role different from that of man, must be in an appropriate position to perform her natural role.

Motherhood is the female's function, not the male's. Consequently, it is unnatural to separate children from their mothers. Any attempt to take children away from their mothers is coercion, oppression and dictatorship. The mother who abandons her maternity contradicts her natural role in life. "

"To demand equality between them in any dirty work which stains her beauty and detracts from her femininity is unjust and cruel. Education that leads to work unsuitable for her nature is unjust and cruel as well."

"This idea will destroy the appropriate and necessary conditions which constitute the privilege which women ought to enjoy apart from men in accordance with their distinctive nature, and upon which their natural role in life is based."

"f a woman carries out men's work, she risks being transformed into a man, abandoning her role and her beauty. A woman has full right to live without being forced to change into a man and to give up her femininity."

"A woman is tender; a woman is pretty; a woman weeps easily and is easily frightened. In general, women are gentle and men are aggressive by virtue of their inbred nature."

[Comrade Gwydion]

I definitely agree on the other characteristics you mentioned, but could you please provide some evidence for the theocratic tendencies?

I've heard stuff like capital-punishment for drinking alcohol and other 'sharia-inspired' rules. It was mostly just a phase during his reign, just as his nasserist welfare-nationalism was just a phase.

[Tim Cornelis]

The cutting of of limbs as punishment, the prohibition of alcohol, and up to five years imprisonment for homosexuality. That basically answers the question "how progressive" he was.

[el_chavista]

The cutting of of limbs as punishment, the prohibition of alcohol, and up to five years imprisonment for homosexuality. That basically answers the question "how progressive" he was.
This is de sharia in most of these despotic Islamic regimens: The murder of Gadafi (http://bit.ly/ncXoiu)

[RedGrunt]

The cutting of of limbs as punishment, the prohibition of alcohol, and up to five years imprisonment for homosexuality. That basically answers the question "how progressive" he was.

Progression can't be measured in a static formula.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

I would more or less consider him to be a benevolent dictator. Certainly far, far, far better than the US backed dictator will be getting with the Libyan NTC.

[Susurrus]

I would more or less consider him to be a benevolent dictator. Certainly far, far, far better than the US backed dictator will be getting with the Libyan NTC.

Have you read any of the above posts?

[blake 3:17]

What comes next is very very bad.