Dr Glenville Ash­by

For months, a steady dose of men­tal poi­son­ing against Colonel Gaddafi was ratch­eted up against the back­drop of a ques­tion­able NA­TO bomb­ing cam­paign-be­yond the UN man­date. The se­quel, we all know. In­ter­est­ing­ly, as Libyans open­ly tram­ple and dis­card the ubiq­ui­tous Green Book, au­thored by the Colonel in 1975, it is now gen­er­at­ing in­ter­est among stu­dents, jour­nal­ists, and lit­er­ary crit­ics world­wide.

Fash­ioned along the lines of Chair­man Mao's Red Book, Colonel Gaddafi's ef­fort is less de­tailed, but equal­ly am­bi­tious and cov­ers a broad­er spec­trum of sub­jects. Some crit­ics have dis­missed the doc­u­ment as "pseu­do in­tel­lec­tu­al­ism," and em­blem­at­ic of cere­bral quirk­i­ness. But are such crit­i­cisms prej­u­diced by an al­ready pri­or dis­dain for any­thing Gaddafi? I am led to be­lieve that much. Not that the Green Book of­fers a panacea for the short­com­ings of our so­cial and po­lit­i­cal sys­tems-far from it.

Gaddafi's at­tempts to ad­dress com­plex prob­lems with an amal­gam of the­o­ries si­phoned from so­cial­ism, Sharia (Is­lam­ic Ju­rispru­dence) and Lu­mum­ba-style eco­nom­ics. Noth­ing is wrong with this ap­proach. But Gaddafi's pro­nounce­ments and gen­er­al­i­sa­tions can be slo­gan-like, and some­times pe­cu­liar at best. And the book reeks of in­duc­tions-mak­ing for quite a de­fec­tive tem­plate. That said, Gaddafi piques the in­ter­est with sweep­ing philoso­phies-stok­ing dis­cus­sion on women's rights, Pan African­ism and the des­tiny of na­tions and peo­ples. The Green book is di­vid­ed in­to three parts: The In­stru­ment of Gov­ern­ment, the Eco­nom­ic ba­sis of the Third Uni­ver­sal The­o­ry; and the So­cial Ba­sis of the Third Uni­ver­sal The­o­ry.

Gaddafi views the emer­gence of any form of gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture as the de­feat of the peo­ple's voice. He as­sails West­ern style democ­ra­cy, stat­ing that "51 per cent of the votes leads to dic­ta­to­r­i­al gov­ern­ing body in the guise of false democ­ra­cy since 49 per cent of the elec­torate are ruled by an in­stru­ment of gov­ern­ment they did not vote for..." He is al­so crit­i­cal of par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tion, call­ing it "a false so­lu­tion to the prob­lem of democ­ra­cy....and that votes can be bought and fal­si­fied." And of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, he states: "The pur­pose of form­ing a par­ty is to cre­ate an in­stru­ment to rule the peo­ple, ie, to rule over the non-mem­bers..." He pro­motes pop­u­lar con­fer­ences and peo­ples' com­mit­tees as the true or­gans of democ­ra­cy-an idyl­lic if not neb­u­lous so­cial sys­tem he refers to as Jamahiriya. He de­nounces clas­sism, even trib­al­ism -al­though he lat­er views fam­i­lies and tribes as an or­gan­ic growth of the nat­ur­al or­der of things-un­like the state. Gaddafi ram­bles, at mo­ments sound­ing very much the part of the so­cial sci­en­tist. Over­all though, this trea­tise lacks analy­sis and depth.

Through­out there is a de­fin­i­tive re­li­gious un­der­pin­ning to the Green Book. Gaddafi re­jects usury and wealth ac­cu­mu­la­tion and ex­tols col­lec­tivism, es­pe­cial­ly part­ner­ships where needs are not ex­ploit­ed. His brand of so­cial­ism is clothed with ay­at (vers­es) of Mus­lims' sa­cred text (the Quran) which men­tions the ills of ri­ba (usury) mul­ti­ple times. In­nate to re­li­gion, he ar­gues, are the fun­da­men­tal laws nec­es­sary to guide a so­ci­ety. He lat­er dis­cuss­es the rights of women, ac­cus­ing the West of "not recog­nis­ing their fem­i­nin­i­ty," and courts con­tro­ver­sy-at least by West­ern stan­dards: "Dri­ving women to do man's work is fla­grant ag­gres­sion against fem­i­nin­i­ty with which she is nat­u­ral­ly pro­vid­ed and which de­fines a nat­ur­al pur­pose es­sen­tial to life. They are like blos­soms which are cre­at­ed to at­tract pollen and to pro­duce seeds." Here, the Quran­ic in­flu­ence is more than palat­able: "Your women are a tilt for you to cul­ti­vate so go to your tilt." (Baqara 2: 223).

But the Broth­er Leader (as he was af­fec­tion­ate­ly called) is soon more mea­sured, some­what, as he states that "work should be pro­vid­ed by the so­ci­ety to all mem­bers who need work -on the con­di­tion that in­di­vid­u­als work and not be co­erced in­to car­ry­ing out un­suit­able tasks." In­deed, the Green Book of­fers a glimpse in­to the Pan African mind of this po­lar­is­ing fig­ure -his ef­forts to cre­ate a Unit­ed States of Africa, his bankrolling of in­sti­tu­tions through­out the con­ti­nent, his co­terie of black Africans even at the very end, and the stunned si­lence of Sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa at his demise. That there was ad­mi­ra­tion among Third World lead­ers is al­so un­de­ni­able. Then again, in a cli­mate where all must dance to a so­cial beat even his own tribe (the Qad­had­hfa) must cow­er. In the end, the Green Book adds lit­tle to the field of eco­nom­ics, and hard­ly any­thing to so­cial thought. The fail­ure of his much tout­ed mod­el in Libya speaks vol­umes-with Gaddafi him­self an­swer­ing the ques­tion on vi­o­lent rev­o­lu­tions that tum­ble en­trenched regimes.

He writes: "Vi­o­lence and ef­fect­ing change by force are both un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, even though they take place as a re­ac­tion against an un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic pri­or con­di­tions. The so­ci­ety that re­volves around this con­cept is back­ward." With Colonel Gaddafi's death, an­oth­er chap­ter in Libya's check­ered his­to­ry has be­gun.

• Colonel Muam­mar Gaddafi Gar­net Pub­lish­ing and Itha­ca Press, Great Britain, 2005 IS­BN -13:9780863723025 Rat­ing: In­ter­est­ing

• Dr Glenville Ash­by

New York cor­re­spon­dent

The Guardian Me­dia Group