Libya: an historical and class perspective Interview with Raymond Lotta

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Libya: What the West wants
14 March 2011. A World to Win News Service. Despite their rhetoric about democracy, the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Italy and other Western powers did not really welcome the "Arab spring", and for reason: most of the targets of the people's anger have been rulers and regimes that these powers have seen as serving their interests, including in Libya.
Now the Western imperialists are pursuing these same interests under new conditions and in some cases, such as Libya, by other means: not necessarily trying to prop up a regime that has been useful to them, but trying to make sure that any new regime is as good or even better for them.
It would be wrong to reduce an analysis of their goals to simply seeking expanded oil riches, since there are bigger strategic-imperial considerations. But it is striking that the two countries most eager for the West to intervene in Libya's civil war, France and the UK, were also the most eager to re-establish relations with the Gaddafi regime and the ones whose oil companies stand to gain the most in that country. As for their broader interests, these two former major colonial powers in the Middle East are also seeking to recover some of their former regional influence and prerogatives that have been usurped by the US, even while acting more or less in alliance with America.
In the same presidential palace where he welcomed Moammar Gaddafi to one of the grandest state visits in recent years, France's Nicholas Sarkozy has now received the envoys of the Transitional National Council that claim to speak for the broad Libyan opposition. Sarkozy announced that France would recognize the TNC as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people.
In diplomatic terms, this is an extremely unusual move because normally governments, not movements, are granted diplomatic recognition, and the TNC does not claim to be a government. Further, France's decision to take it upon itself to decide who it wants to run Libya is the kind of almost undisguised neo-colonialism that led it to risk "losing Tunisia" (as some French politicians fear) by openly treating the now-defunct Ben Ali regime as if he were Paris-appointed local official.
Sarkozy's haste to embrace the Libyan TNC – largely led by men who until only a few weeks ago were key figures in the Gaddafi regime – was matched by his calls for air strikes to put them in power as quickly as possible.
Sarkoy's frenetic stance was partly meant for domestic consumption. Being in a hurry to bomb Arabs abroad goes along with his domestic efforts to build an anti-(Arab) immigrant front. But some of the desperation seems to come from seeing the US further overshadow French influence in its former spheres of influence in the Middle East and black Africa.
While not going quite as far as Sarkozy in literally calling for bombs to be dropped on Gaddafi's residence (Le Monde, 11 March 2011), UK Prime Minister David Cameron was indisputably the first to call for military action, in the form of imposing "no-fly zones". UK has been no less in a hurry than France. It was the first county to send soldiers to Libya, a team of SAS commandos whose mission, officially labelled "diplomatic", has never been explained. If they were just there to make contact with the TNC, as claimed, they could have gone to Paris instead of sneaking around in the desert until some anti-Gaddafi forces arrested them. It seems that the commandos' job was to perform covert political and military reconnaissance to help plan British moves in rebel-held eastern Libya.
"Arab leaders killing their own people" – when the West allows it and when it doesn't
The kind of regime all the Western governments seek to force on Libya can been seen in the choice of regimes chosen for emergency visits by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, UK Foreign Minister William Hague and other top US and UK officials over the past few months and especially the last weeks. In addition to Egypt, they include three monarchies – Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain – and Yemen, whose leaders UK royal envoy Prince Andrew met with three times recently.
Last December US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the Bahrain government for its "commitment... to the democratic path". What she had decided to overlook, aside from the fact that the country is an absolute monarchy, is that the Sunni royal family denies the majority Shia population political rights, employment and the privileges accorded to the minority. Initially the protest movement that arose in February this year limited itself to calls for a constitutional monarchy, but King Hamad's reaction made many people, Shia and Sunni, feel that he must go. Protesters set up a camp in Pearl Square in the capital, Manama. On 17 February police swarmed in, shooting into the tents and killing seven people, some while they were sleeping. (See "A revolution paused", merip.org)
This failed to crush the opposition movement. On 13 March, as protesters tried to block off the city's financial district in the biggest demonstrations so far, the police again attacked with tear gas, rubber bullets and batons. But the crowds fought back and retook the square. That very day the US's Gates came to meet with the royal family. The next day a convoy of 150 armoured cars and other vehicles carrying 1,500 troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf State monarchies crossed into Bahrain to support the royal family and prevent the upheaval from spreading. While Gates may well have urged the king to make some reforms to save his regime, as he claimed, it is inconceivable that the US wasn't in on the Saudi move.
In Yemen, also on 13 March, the security forces of President Ali Abdullah Saleh attacked demonstrators camped on the grounds of Sanaa University who were demanding that Saleh step down. Police snipers on rooftops fired into the crowd, while other uniformed security forces assaulted the protesters with bullets, clubs and tear gas and plain-clothes thugs charged with knives. About 1,200 demonstrators were injured, 250 of them seriously, according to unconfirmed opposition reports, in addition to the seven killed the day before.
Why is it wrong for demonstrators to be attacked and killed in Lybia's Green Square in Tripoli, but not in Bahrain's Pearl Square or Yemen's Tahir Square in Sanaa? Where are the calls for international action to save Arab lives?
The US Navy's Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain. As a U.S. diplomatic cable circulated by WikiLeaks revealed, American commandos and drones are already fighting in Yemen in secret connivance with the Saleh government.
How can any of the Western governments that back and arm the Bahraini and Yemeni regimes claim to be concerned about the rights and safety of people in Libya?
When it comes to using a combination of bullets, bribes and religion to snuff revolt, or absolute and hereditary rule, Gaddafi has nothing on the Saudi royal family. These medieval, fundamentalist rulers can boast of being even more backward than the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially on the position of women. According to Independent columnist Robert Fisk, the US wants the Saudis to provide weapons and other support for the Libyan TNC. It was Saudi leadership of the Arab League that led it to call for a no-fly zone. US officials welcomed this resolution as providing an Arab blessing for whatever the West ends up doing.
But the single strongest proof that what the US seeks in the Middle East is not any kind of democracy but domination by any means necessary is Israel.
After all, the millions of Palestinians didn't get to vote on whether or not they wanted a few Zionists to kick most of them out of Israel and then go on to colonise much of the West Bank they were supposedly left with.
How can the US, which considers Israel its main bastion in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia an essential ally, which invaded Iraq with such disastrous results for the Iraqi people, and still maintains occupation troops to have the final say over what happens there, which backed Mubarak until almost the last minute and is still trying to keep the Egyptian people under control through Mubarak's military (far more willing to allow some sort of elections than lift the state of emergency and give people full political rights), now be allowed to claim that it cares about Arab rights and Arab lives in Libya?
The West has never stopped intervening in Libya
The US has been intervening in Libya in various ways for years. It imposed economic sanctions during the period when Gaddafi was a headache for Washington, and in a 1986 assassination attempt bombed one of his residences, killing a baby daughter.
Even while going along with the UK in gradually re-establishing relations with Gaddafi since then, the US also seems to have explored other options. In 2009, long before Sarkozy met with him, the US was courting people like the head of economic development under Gaddafi, Mahmoud Jabril, now the TNC's chief foreign representative. In a secret diplomatic cable to Washington (revealed thanks to WikiLeaks), the American ambassador to Libya described Jabril as "a serious intellectual who 'gets' the US's perspective."
Unlike the UK, France and Italy (which initially opposed changing a regime very favourable to its interests), the US has few economic interests in Libya. It considers Libya not a present or potential strategic asset but a distraction from the work of protecting or consolidating its own main levers of power in the region.
More basically, as the world's dominant power (in both alliance and rivalry with other imperialists), the US has broader and longer range interests to consider. This is related to the fact that the US would likely bear the bulk of the burden for any serious military intervention, but that's not the only consideration.
Ironically, while US-asset and US-interest-friendly regimes have been the main targets of the popular upheaval and rebellions in the Middle East, the US has been somewhat successful in posing as above it all. Even though the US has been the main force behind constructing and perpetuating the reactionary political order in the region, for the most part, so far this hasn't been sufficiently reflected in these movements' demands or the consciousness of many of the participants. This is particularly the case in Libya, where the US and the other Western imperialists certainly did not bring the Gaddafi regime to power, and instead had decades of friction with it. (This is probably one reason why the US demanded his resignation a lot sooner and more forcefully than they did with Mubarak).
Leading military intervention against Gaddafi could work against US interests and influence. His regime has not inconsiderable support among some sections of his country's small and relatively better-off population. Western intervention in a country colonized for decades – one where a great many people at first welcomed Gaddafi's pledges to put an end to national humiliation, and one where the West demonstrated its cynicism by opposing Gaddafi when he made trouble for them and then accepting him when he bowed to their interests – might considerably improve the political conditions that Gaddafi faces. All the more so if the intervention is led by the country still occupying Iraq, that can never stop supporting Israel, and that has drawn a red line about any threat to the rule of the Saudi royal family.
While the main leaders of the Libyan TNC called for a no-fly zone and aerial bombardment, they have not dared call for deeper intervention. Other anti-Gaddafi voices have strongly opposed it. At demonstrations in Benghazi and other insurgent strongholds, people have carried giant banners written in English, and thus meant for the world to see, saying "No foreign intervention – Libyans can do it themselves."
While it would be ridiculous to confuse Gaddafi with the Taliban, one of the unintended consequences of the US occupation of Afghanistan was to revive the Taliban's sagging political fortunes by making many people believe that their only real options are to support either the foreign troops humiliating and killing the Afghan people or the Taliban and their allies who are fighting the occupiers.
Such a polarisation in Libya would be disastrous for the people's movement there and radiate negative political effects throughout the region. But it would also be very bad for the US in Libya and far more broadly.
What no-fly zones are good for
First of all, a no-fly zone would not be bloodless or without extensive civilian casualties under any circumstances. As US Secretary of Defence William Gates pointed out, the establishment of a no-strike zone starts with bombing the other side's aircraft, airports, command and control centres and so on. Its enforcement requires using missiles, bombs and other high explosives. The no-fly zones imposed on Iraqi Kurdistan under Saddam resulted in the killing of at least 300 people, 200 of them civilians, from 1998-2000 (Washington Post, 16 June 2001).
Secondly, so far at least, the Gaddafi regime has not used its air power to strafe and bomb civilians extensively. Nor have warplanes or even helicopters been decisive in most military engagements. The regime has mainly used tanks, artillery, trucks and men to win battles.
If the US and other Western imperialists want to knock down one regime and install another, they will probably have to send ground troops. The U.S.-imposed no-fly zones in ex-Yugoslavia and Iraq led to air bombing campaigns in both countries, which in turn basically prepared the way for soldiers to move in.
That is exactly what the US wants to avoid, as do some of Washington's allies.
However, there are bottom lines to this complexity. Just as for the US and its partners in crime the ultimate concern is not whether a regime is elected or openly despotic but whether it suits their imperialist interests, when it comes to warfare their ultimate criterion is not whether civilians and soldiers will be killed but whether war is necessary to achieve their aims.
Anyone who thinks that the US could fight a war without massacring the people should look at Afghanistan, just in the last few weeks: Nato air strikes killed 74 civilians in Kunar province according to local officials. Many children were hospitalised with severe burns. (US commander General David Patraeus claimed that parents had plunged their children into boiling water to "create a casualty incident"). A US helicopter opened fire on ten little boys gathering firewood in the same province, killing nine of them. And a Nato patrol shot and killed an elderly cousin of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kandahar, apparently because any Afghan who leaves their house at night is suspect.
Whenever an invader seeks to impose its will on a people, it ends up considering those people as a whole as potential enemies.
The US already has stationed off Libya an aircraft carrier-led strike group (with troops trained for landings as well as planes), a destroyer, two missile-equipped warships and a nuclear submarine. It also has aircraft bases in nearby Italy, previously used to bomb Serbia. It is conducting AWACS surveillance flights 24 hours a day. Other countries are moving their lethal pieces into place to make sure they get a piece of the pie – Canada sent a frigate right away.
There is certainly the danger that in order to put an end to instability that could spread, assert its commanding place among the world's exploiters and demonstrate its might and determination to the region, the US might unleash this murderous fire-power. But whether or not it does, the rulers of the US will certainly do their violent best to satisfy their own imperialist interests and not those of the Libyan people and to deny the Libyan people the right to determine their country's future.


Libya: an historical and class perspective – Interview with Raymond Lotta
14 March 2011. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from an interview with Raymond Lotta entitled, "The Events in Libya in Historical Perspective... Muammar Gaddafi in Class Perspective... The Question of Leadership in Communist Perspective", conducted by Revolution, the newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. For the full text, see www.revcom.us, issue 226.
The uprising in Libya is an expression of profound discontent in Libyan society. Broad sections of Libyan society, taking inspiration from events in Tunisia and Egypt, have risen against an oppressive regime. And this uprising in Libya is part of the wave of rebellion sweeping through the imperialist-dominated Middle East.
But when you compare events in Libya with those of Egypt, there are two major differences.
First, in Libya, you have a situation where imperialist intrigue is commingling with genuine and just mass upheaval. This makes things highly complicated.
In Egypt, the uprising was overwhelmingly a product of mass discontent against a US-backed client regime. But US imperialism had a reliable base within the leadership and command structure of the Egyptian military. That military has been trained, financed, and equipped by the US. It's been the US's most vital asset in trying to stabilize the situation in Egypt to its advantage. I mean being able to stabilize from within the existing state apparatus in order to maintain Egypt as a key flank of US dominance in the Middle East. And the US also has large, direct economic interests in Egypt.
Now the outcome of the uprising in Egypt has by no means been sealed. Protests are still erupting, people are debating what’s been accomplished and what hasn’t, and things are still in motion. But what I’m getting at is that US imperialism has important capacities and assets inside Egypt.
That's not the case in Libya. You don't have that kind of military apparatus with such close ties to the US The Libyan state structure – here I'm speaking of key ministries and sections of the security apparatus – is fracturing and splitting in response to the uprising and the pressures of imperialism. And the US does not have the same kind of large economic holdings in Libya as it does in Egypt.
So this creates both necessity and opportunity for the US and West European imperialists. They are reaching out to and seeking to bolster oppositional forces in Libya who might be the embryo of an entirely new neo-colonial regime, one that would be a more pliant tool of Western interests. And it can't be ruled out that imperialist operatives have, from the very beginning of this uprising, been assisting some of the oppositional forces.
So as I said, while there is genuine and just mass upheaval, there are also significant elements of imperialist manoeuvring involved. These are things that we need to analyse and understand more deeply.
The second major difference between what's happening in Libya and the upheavals in other parts of the Middle East is Gaddafi himself. Muammar Gaddafi is not the same as Mubarak.
Gaddafi actually had popular support when he came to power in 1969, especially from sections of the intelligentsia and professional and middle classes. He had popular bases of support for many years of his rule.
For three decades, Gaddafi was viewed by many inside and outside of Libya as someone standing up for the genuine national interests of Libya, as someone who stood against imperialism and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
And the fact is that Gaddafi was for many years a real thorn in the side of imperialism, especially the US. Let's not forget that in 1986 Ronald Reagan launched fighter attacks and bombed Libya's two largest cities, tried to assassinate Gaddafi, and in the bombings killed one of his daughters.
Gaddafi is not the same as the openly servile Hosni Mubarak, even though the Gaddafi regime never fundamentally broke with or fundamentally challenged imperialism...
In 1959 large oil deposits were discovered in Libya. US and European companies moved in big time to set up production operations. The banking sector grew rapidly, especially after an oil pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea was finished. Oil revenues soared through the decade of the 1960s. But the foreign oil companies were getting the lion's share of earnings. And what oil wealth did return to Libya was concentrated in the hands of a small mercantile, banking, and speculator elite.
Poverty remained widespread. And the opportunities for a new middle class growing in connection with the oil economy – they were limited. So, mass resentment against the Idris monarchy was growing.
Then you had the impact of regional and world events. In 1967, Israel attacked Egypt and Syria with the support of the US In Libya, students, intellectuals, and workers organized mass actions and strikes. There were also protests against the US war in Vietnam. Unrest was spreading in the face of the Libyan government's total subordination to the West.
In the 1960s, a wave of national liberation struggles – in Asia, Latin America, and Africa – was battering imperialism and shook the international order. This aroused literally hundreds of millions throughout the world to rise in resistance. This was a time when a new nationalist spirit was being stirred, when ideas of Arab unity against imperialism were taking hold. It was a time when revolutionary China was influencing social forces and Marxism-Leninism was a big part of the ideological discourse. But the fact that the US was under this kind of siege also provided openings for many different class forces who had been held down by imperialism. They saw new possibilities.
Gaddafi was part of a group of young army officers influenced by the separability and social reformist ideas of Gamal Nasser, the leader of Egypt. Gaddafi came from poor desert-tribal origins, and other radical-minded officers came from lower-class backgrounds. The military was one of the few institutions in Libyan society that afforded them any chance of training and mobility.
These young army officers were outraged by the corruption and subservience of the ruling regime. They saw themselves as the bearers of a new Libya. And in 1969, they organized a coup against the King and constituted a new government out of what they called their Revolutionary Command Council.
Gaddafi argued that Libya's national sovereignty had been bartered away, that foreign capital had been allowed to dictate to the Libyan people. He accused the old order of squandering Libya's oil resources and doing little to alleviate the suffering of the Libyan people.
He forced the US to accelerate its timetable for closing down Wheelus Air Base. He moved to nationalize banks. He made the government a major stakeholder in the oil industry. He promised to develop agriculture and industry and did direct some funds into these sectors. He enacted social programs in the 1970s that over the next 20 years led to real improvements in mass literacy, life expectancy, and housing. These actions and polices had popular support.
But for all of Gaddafi's anti-imperialist rhetoric, this whole project rested on the preservation and expansion of Libya's oil-based economy. It rested on Libya's continued insertion into the global capitalist system, its division of labour and international relations of exploitation.
Gaddafi relied heavily on Western Europe as a market for Libyan oil. He used oil revenues to buy French jets, to attract German manufacturing capital to Libya, and even to become a major investor in Italy's largest auto company. Italy, the old colonial power, was allowed to keep its operations going in Libya.
Gaddafi harnessed oil revenues to restructure society. He was creating a social welfare system with particular political features. He set up "people's committees" at local levels in order to widen his political support and to redirect tribal and clan loyalties toward the central regime. At the same time, he outlawed unions and independent political organization and muzzled press criticism of the regime.
He used oil revenues to build up a large security and military apparatus, both to put down any internal opposition to the regime and to project Libya as a political model and regional force in the Middle East and Africa.
Ideologically, the Gaddafi regime combined social welfarism and pan-Arabism with retrograde values. Islam was made the official state religion. Women had more opportunities than before, but patriarchal Sharia law was made the foundation of legal-social codes. Gaddafi was vehemently anticommunist and claimed to be finding a third way between capitalism and communism.
The reality was that Gaddafi was creating a state capitalism... based on oil revenues and beholden to world imperialism for markets, technology, transport, and investment capital.
Gaddafi was changing things, but within the existing framework of imperialist dominance, capitalist property relations, and a complex web of tribal loyalties and regional divisions.
There was nothing truly transformative in terms of breaking with imperialism. There was nothing truly transformative in terms of the masses having the kind of leadership and radically different political state power that could enable them to remake the economy and society in a truly liberating direction.
Bob Avakian has this very incisive formulation about "three alternatives" in the world. Now I am paraphrasing here, but he basically says this. The first alternative is to leave the world as it is, which is totally unacceptable. Or you can make some changes in the distribution of wealth and forms of rule, but leave the basic exploitative production and oppressive social relations of society and the world basically intact. That's the second alternative.
Or, and this is the third alternative, you can make a genuine revolution. A revolution that aims to transform all relations of exploitation, all oppressive institutions, all oppressive social arrangements, and all enslaving ideas and values – a revolution to overcome the very division of human society into classes. That third alternative is the world proletarian revolution to achieve communism.
Gaddafi's programme, his social and economic model, fits into that second alternative that changes some aspects of the status quo but keeps the oppressive essence of existing social order the same.
You know, this notion of the "strongman"... it's a "straw man." It obscures the essence, the class essence, of things. This is what Marxism enables us to understand.
Look, all societies at this stage of human history are divided into classes. Leaders don't float in some ether. They concentrate the outlook, the methods, and aspirations of different classes. Gaddafi and those military officers who took power in 1969, what I was talking about earlier... they represented and concentrated the outlook of a radicalised sector of the petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie of a nation oppressed by imperialism.
They felt stymied by imperialist subjugation. And from their class standpoint, the problem, as they saw it, was that Libya was getting a bad deal. They wanted to make market mechanisms, which are based on exploitation and the production of profit, somehow "work" for the benefit of the whole nation. They had this illusion that they would be able to wrench concessions from imperialism... and force imperialism to come to terms with them. But the fact is: global capitalism operates according to a definite logic and imposes its norms on these societies and economies.
These bourgeois nationalist forces claimed to speak for the whole nation. They saw their interests as being identical with the interests of all social classes in the nation. But there are dominant and dominated classes in these nations.
One of the slogans that Gaddafi raised, I think it's in his so-called "Green Book," was: "not wage earners but partners". In other words, here you have this system based on profit and integration into capitalist world markets, but somehow you could turn everyone into equal stakeholders. That was both populist rhetoric and illusion.
Wage earners, or proletarians, do not own means of production. In order to survive, they must sell their labour power to those who do command control over the means of production: the capitalists. The capitalist class exploits workers in the production process to make profit, and to continue to make profit on an ever-expanding scale. And when sufficient profit cannot be generated, wage-labourers are cast off. The basic condition of wage labour is its domination by capital and its subordination to the accumulation of capital. There is a basic antagonism between workers and capitalists.
In Libya, wage-labour is part of the foundation of the economy. In Libya today, there's 20 percent unemployment. The reality is that wage earners cannot be "partners" of capital.
Politically and ideologically, these aspiring bourgeois forces feared the basic masses – they feared that the masses would step beyond their reformist, let's-make-a-deal-with-imperialism programme. And they tried to control and contain those on the bottom of society.
My point is that whatever idiosyncrasies Gaddafi might have; if you want to understand the Gaddafi programme, you have to analyse the class interests and outlook that he represents and how those interests were interacting with the world situation. I mean, you can call Barack Obama "calm" and "worldly", or whatever, but what he's really about is that he concentrates the exploitative and murderous interests of empire and the world outlook of an imperialist ruling class.
When Gaddafi consolidated power in the early 1970s, the regime had certain things going for it in world politics and world economics. To begin with, the US was facing defeat in Vietnam and its global economic power was weakening. So that created some space.
Second, the Soviet Union was challenging the US globally. Now the Soviet Union claimed to be socialist. But socialism in the Soviet Union had been overthrown by a new capitalist class in the mid-1950s. The Soviet Union became a social-imperialist power. By the mid-1970s, it was contending for influence and control in different parts of the world. Part of its global strategy was to build up client regimes in key areas of the Third World. The Soviet Union began offering economic aid, oil agreements, and diplomatic support to regimes like that headed by Gaddafi, and the Soviets became a major weapons supplier to Libya.
And there was a third factor. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the world oil industry was going through changes. The major oil companies were entering into new arrangements with oil producers in the Third World. Formal control over production was allowed to pass into the hands of Third World governments and their state oil companies. Imperialist domination was exerted through control over oil refining, marketing, technology, and finance. But now producer countries had more latitude at the production level – you have the Third World producers cartel, OPEC. And in the 1970s the price of oil was rising. These developments worked to Gaddafi's advantage.
All of this gave Gaddafi some manoeuvring room economically and politically – but to do what? Bourgeois nationalist forces such as Gaddafi were neither willing nor able to lead the masses to break with imperialism and to carry forward a liberating social revolution. As I said, they chafed under imperialism but also feared the masses. Again, this has to do with their class nature of these rulers: they were held down by relations of imperialism but could not see beyond a world in which they control exploitative relations, rather than a world that has abolished exploitation.
So here you have Gaddafi securing his hold on power, wheeling and dealing with imperialism and seeking to modernize an oil economy subordinated to the norms of world capitalist production. Over 95 percent of Libya's export earnings were coming from oil, and in the 1973-83 decade, Libya became one of the three largest weapons importers in the Third World. This was distorted and dependent development.
As things unfolded, these national bourgeois forces in power evolved into the core of an oppressive ruling bourgeois elite dependent on and tied into imperialism.
On the international stage, Gaddafi criticized conservative Arab regimes and presented himself as the real champion of the Palestinian people's rights. He voiced support for African liberation. This was part of his popularity.
In the 1980s, Gaddafi was daemonized by the US imperialists as a mad-dog ruler, but this had nothing to do with the repressiveness of the regime or Gaddafi's style of rule. The US was propping up brutal client regimes and "strongman despots" in Central America – and their human rights violations made Gaddafi look positively benign. The problem the US imperialists had with Gaddafi was his close ties to the Soviet bloc. The problem they had was assertiveness in supporting certain radical movements and groups that might benefit the Soviet bloc at a time when the rivalry between the US and Soviet-led blocs was heading towards a global military showdown.
In the 1980s, the US ramped up the vilification of Gaddafi. Reagan provoked aerial fights with Soviet-made Libyan jets off the Libyan coast and launched that military attack on Libya that I referred to earlier. The US set out to punish the regime with economic sanctions and diplomatic pressures. US oil companies suspended operations.
Now, as I have mentioned, Libya has been a significant energy supplier to Western Europe. This was a source of tension between the US and the West European imperialists. I think there is strong evidence that Reagan's military attacks on Libya were also aimed at bringing the West European imperialists more closely into line, as the face-off with the Soviet social-imperialist bloc was intensifying.
Under US pressure, the UN imposed sanctions on Libya. These moves to isolate Libya began to pinch Libya's economy and periodic declines in world oil prices hurt the economy as well. And Libya's oil industry was in need of upgrading and new investment.
Then in 1989-91, the Soviet Union and its bloc collapsed. This marked a qualitative shift in international relations. It knocked a lot of the wind out of Gaddafi's project. He no longer had this great power backing. And the demise of the Soviet Union gave the US new freedom – and it moved to exploit this new freedom in the Middle East and other parts of the Third World.
In this changed situation, Gaddafi began cultivating closer ties with the West European imperialists. By the end of the 1990s, relations were restored with Great Britain. Italy was allowed greater sway over Libya's oil and natural gas sectors.
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was another turning point. It put more pressure on Gaddafi – would Libya be next? Gaddafi was also worried about a fundamentalist Islamic challenge to his rule. So he began making overtures to the US After 9/11, the Gaddafi regime started sharing intelligence about al-Qaida-type forces with the US In 2004, Gaddafi announced that he was giving up various nuclear and other weapons programs. The US took Libya off its list of "terrorist states". Gaddafi became a valued ally in the US war against terrorism. Bush gave the green light to US oil companies to sign new contracts with Libya. Gaddafi began privatizing some sectors of industry.
I have to say – Gaddafi can't restrain himself in scraping before the imperialists. Last year he signed an agreement with Italy to seal off the crossing routes for undocumented African immigrants coming through Libya to Europe. This was ugly. He demanded billions in payment for patrolling borders – and he issued racist warnings that Europe would turn "black" unless it adopted stricter measures to turn back African immigrants.
This was the "rehabilitated" Gaddafi whose son met with Hillary Clinton. This was the Gaddafi that the London School of Economics was accepting huge donations from, the Gaddafi that the British were now selling arms to. The imperialists found Gaddafi useful and "workable".
In early February 2011, the International Monetary Fund released a report on Libya's economy and commended the Gaddafi government for its "ambitious reform agenda" and "strong macroeconomic performance" and "encouraged" authorities to keep on this promising path. What higher praise, than from the IMF!
But now, when it suits them, and it's really brazen, when they might be able to utilize mass discontent to install an even "more workable" regime, the imperialists are back to the master narrative of "Gaddafi the madman", "Gaddafi the strongman".
Over the last decade, oil wealth and nationalized properties were becoming the province of a narrower and narrower circle, including the extended Gaddafi family, and more of this wealth was being invested abroad.
The regime brooked no criticism. The widespread censorship became increasingly unbearable at a time when people were seeking outlets for expression. Dissidents were being arrested. There was a thirst for political life outside the official structures. The so-called "people's councils" were largely discredited, having become arms of a patronage system and tools of a surveillance network. There was a thirst for cultural diversity – until recently, foreign languages could not be taught in the schools. Health care has deteriorated recently. Unemployment has risen.
Gaddafi's response has been heavier repression, while looking to invigorate the economy with infusions of Western capital. One of the paradoxes of recent years is that when the sanctions were lifted, and the sense of siege abated, Gaddafi's anti-imperialist and nationalist appeals did not have the same resonance. His militant "lustre" had worn thin. The allegiance he previously commanded was dissipating...
In Libya, as in Egypt, different class and social forces have been in the field. They are bringing their interests and outlooks into the fray, and various forces are vying for leadership and seeking to push these movements in certain directions.
You have lawyers assembling in eastern Libya who want to restore the old 1952 constitution, which served a decrepit political and social order. And doctors, university professors, students, disaffected youth, and workers who had taken to the streets – well, they are part of a larger swirl in which reactionary tribal leaders, former ministers, and colonels are angling for position and leadership. You have some people who are trying to settle old scores. You have youth raising slogans "no to tribalism and no to factionalism". And in this same swirl, the imperialists are manoeuvring.
Different class forces are bringing forward leadership, programs, and agendas that correspond to their interests. And different sections of society are looking for leadership.
What I'm trying to say is that the question is not leadership or no leadership. No, the question is what kind of leadership? Serving what goals? Using what methods to achieve those goals? And where there is no truly revolutionary and communist leadership, history has repeatedly shown that the masses lose, the people who are the most bitterly oppressed and exploited and who yearn for and most desperately need fundamental change – they get left out and betrayed.
In his recent statement on Egypt, Bob Avakian speaks to these issues very powerfully, and I want to read from it. He says: "When people... in their millions finally break free of the constraints that have kept them from rising up against their oppressors and tormentors, then whether or not their heroic struggle and sacrifice will really lead to fundamental change, moving toward the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, depends on whether or not there is a leadership, a communist leadership that has the necessary scientific understanding and method, and on that basis can develop the necessary strategic approach and the influence and organized ties among growing numbers of the people, in order to lead the uprising of the people, through all the twists and turns, to the goal of a real, revolutionary transformation of society, in accordance with the fundamental interests of the people."
This brings me back to issues of class. To make the kind of revolution that can really emancipate all of humanity requires bringing forward the basic sections of the people as the backbone and driving force of revolutionary transformation and as conscious emancipators of all humanity. It requires a leadership capable of doing so...