On the Green Book

If I’m frank, Muammar Gaddafi is a pretty garbage political theorist. His Green Book is an attempt to maximize democracy beyond liberalism and Marxism, which he finds to be abject failures. As a result, he terms his political theory the “Third Universal Theory.” The text is divided into three sections.

The first is about politics, which he believes should be defined by a series of councils at the local level which then produce councils at a higher level and so on, until eventually there is a national council that “represents” lower councils. I put “represents” in scare quotes, as Gaddafi is opposed to representation as such, believing that no individual can possibly represent a larger whole. He is also opposed to referenda, which give the general population the opportunity to say “yes” or “no” to an initiative, but without their reasoning. To him, the critical point is to develop consensus through deliberation. On this, he seems a bit naïve, as consensus is something that will not necessarily emerge from such a system.

In the second section, on economics, he argues that wages should be abolished, as well as rents. Instead, every worker should receive the entirety of the fruits of their labor and can then do with it what they wish. This is a nice idea and I agree in principle, but it does not allow for the levels of coherent organization that you see under socialist or capitalist economic systems. Moreover, there is no landlordism under the Third Universal Theory. Every single person owns their residence. This actually was practiced in Libya under Gaddafi, and it basically resulted in people squatting wherever they wanted, refusing to pay rent, etc. Gaddafi also has an interesting discussion of transportation, where no transportation should be privately owned. The logical solution, then, is that transportation is something that should be operated by the state, which is something I agree very strongly with. The problem is that Gaddafi doesn’t give any information on how taxation might take place under the Third Universal Theory. In fact, one of the primary principles of Gaddafi’s economics is that no one can prevent the needs of another from being met. But, taxation could ostensibly impose an undue burden on citizens, therefore contradicting the general principle.

The last section is on the social basis of the Third Universal Theory. These points are largely disparate. The main point is that the nation should be the central social identity, but this can be supported by lower identities (the nation is an extension of the tribe, which is an extension of the family, in his view—in reality, this is not at all true).

Anyways, Gaddafi’s political theory is even less workable than the two that he seeks to supplant. While many of these principles became critical part of Libyan law (especially the economic and social sections), the political material is such nonsense that I’m not certain Gaddafi could even make sense of. It’s clear that he isn’t thinking very deeply about political, economic, and social issues, which is a shame.