The Green Book

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The Green Book by Muammar al-Gaddafi. First German edition.

The Green Book ( Arabic الكتاب الأخضر al-Kitāb al-achdar , DMG al-kitāb al-aḫḍar ) is a work by Muammar al-Gaddafi , which was published in three parts from 1975. It deals with the form of government of democracy and the social order, while at the same time distancing itself from the ruling systems of the western countries and those in the Eastern bloc of that time.

content

The book is divided into three chapters with subheadings and marginal notes on a green background.

  • Chapter 1: The solution to the democracy problem - “The power of the people”. The Political Basis of the Third Universal Theory.
    • Sections: The instrument of government - Parliaments - The party - Class - Referendum - People's congresses and people's committees - The law of society - Who controls the behavior of society? - How does society find its way back in the event of a deviation from its law? - The press.
  • Chapter 2: The solution to the economic problem - " Socialism ". The economic aspect of the third universal theory.
    • Sections: Need - Example of wage labor for society, wage labor for a private job, and unpaid work - Conclusion - Other examples.
  • Chapter 3 (with subheadings in green letters): The social basis of the third universal theory.
    • Sections: The family - The tribe - Advantages of the tribe - The nation - (in black letters with sentences highlighted in green in the running text :) The woman - (continued with green subheadings :) Minorities - The blacks will assert themselves in the world - Education - Culture and art - sport, horsemanship and events.

Since Libya did not previously have a constitution , The Green Book was viewed as such.

The work condemns the existing systems as not being truly democratic, since people can only appoint representatives on whose behavior they are from now on dependent, but do not have direct influence in the system themselves. Quote: “A political struggle, the result of which is the victory of a candidate with 51% of the vote, leads to a dictatorial body of government disguised as a democracy, since 49% of the electorate is governed by an instrument of power for which they did not vote, but which imposed on them has been. That is dictatorship. "After all, the people are granted the right to" fight, through the people's revolution to destroy the instruments that the democracies illegally take possession of and remove them from the influence of the masses. "

A proposal for a system is presented to ensure the participation of the people in the political process through the instruments of the People's Congress and the People's Committees.

It also expresses itself on the systems of rule at the levels of family , tribe and nation , which he regards as associations that, due to kinship closeness, are formed from the units of the next lower level and, in Gaddafi's opinion, form the three levels of society that are decisive shape the social order.

Gaddafi called his theories the "Third Universal Theory"; this is to be understood as an alternative to the systems of capitalism and communism .

In a speech to the highest Libyan body, the “General People's Congress”, Gaddafi declared his policies for the past three decades, and thus the Third Universal Theory as its basis, to have failed.

woman's role

Gaddafi's views on the role of women stood in marked contrast to other Arab socialists. In the Green Book, he explained that women and men in all of nature - and thus also in humans - have different characteristics: women are made delicate and beautiful, while men are strong and resilient. This results in different tasks for the two sexes: women are made to work in the house and bring up children, but unsuitable for physical work. The woman should be the owner of the house because nature intended her to raise children; Gaddafi compared day-care centers to poultry farms. Menstruation and pregnancy are also states of weakness that make it necessary to share tasks between men and women. Nature intended motherhood, housework and child-rearing as natural tasks for women, a woman who works physically is not free, even if she does not feel that way herself. The true liberation of women would be the recognition of their natural being.

The practical implementation of the theory consisted in the fact that women were allowed to keep the common house or apartment in the event of a divorce. Despite Gaddafi's theory, there were day-care centers for working women as well as women in traditional “male professions” such as policewomen or pilots. In 1979 Gaddafi set up a military academy for women. Most educated women, however, worked in health care and as teachers, and the female employment rate was below 10% in the mid-1990s. In contrast to neighboring Tunisia, polygamy remained permitted in Libya; the man only had to obtain the permission of the other wife to marry a second wife.

reception

Because of its symbolism as Gaddafi's fundamental work (regardless of its content), The Green Book is hated by its opponents. After copies were burned by protesters during the civil war in March 2011 , Libya expert Dirk Vandewalle of Dartmouth College said in a radio interview that the view was widespread that the book was not a self-contained philosophy, but rather a collection of Aphorisms . The “International Study and Research Center of the Green Book in Tripoli” ensured that the book was not only constantly present in Libya, where it was read in school and often quoted on radio and television, but also distributed it in numerous foreign languages . - Several editions were published in German by the Siegfried Bublies publishing house, which is considered to be extremely right-wing.

In addition to the Libyan edition in German, which does not mention a translator, there is a new translation from Arabic by the Islamic scholar and sociologist Heiner Lohmann in the appendix to his dissertation (2006, see literature) as well as a translation into English by Hans Schmid in the appendix on Gaddafi's book Vision - Talks and an open exchange of views with Edmond Jouve , which was published in 2009 by the Munich publishing house Belleville.

When asked "Dr. Lohmann, what is the 'Green Book'? "Was Lohmann's answer:" A myth. It has often been misunderstood as a political theory, but it has no line of argument. It serves to create an identity. When you read it, you actually don't understand it at all, because it's very contradictory in itself. "

The recipients and propagandists at the International Study and Research Center in Tripoli saw it differently (back of the Libyan edition, gold lettering on a green background): “What really distinguishes the thinker Muammar Al Qaddafi is that he does not come up with his ideas out of weariness or pleasure presents, nor has it recorded, for the entertainment of thoughtless, marginalized people for whom thinking is just a puzzle. [...] "

Others

In the 1987/1988 season, the ice hockey club ECD Iserlohn - financially badly hit - did one game of jersey advertising for Das Grüne Buch before the public media outcry caused the German Ice Hockey Federation to prohibit the club from continuing to advertise. The club then only played one more game before going bankrupt . It is not known whether a contract with Gaddafi actually existed and what financial scope it might have been. The chairman of the association, Heinz Weifenbach , had actually visited Libya some time before.

swell

  1. ↑ Mustafa Fetouri: Libya after the Gaddafi dictatorship: The-bought loyalties of the "Brother Colonel". In: Qantara.de of October 24, 2011. Retrieved October 24, 2011.
  2. ↑ Muammar Al Qaddafi: The Green Book. Ed .: Internationales Study and Research Center of the Green Book, self-published, Tripolis (no year, maybe 1988), p. 6.
  3. ↑ Muammar Al Qaddafi: The Green Book. Ed .: Internationales Study and Research Center of the Green Book, self-published, Tripolis (no year, maybe 1988), p. 9.
  4. ↑ Andreas Vrabl: "Libya: A Third World - Revolution in Transition" , thesis, Vienna 2008, p 128th
  5. ↑ Gerrit Hoekmann, between Olive Branch and Kalashnikov, history and politics of the Palestinian left , Münster 1999, ISBN 3-928300-88-1 , p. 39
  6. ↑ Karin El Minawi, Emancipation above the clouds , Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 28, 2010.
  7. ↑ Andreas Vrabl: "Libya: A Third World - Revolution in Transition" , diploma thesis, Vienna 2008, pp. 68–71.
  8. ↑ What's In Gadhafi's Manifesto? In: National Public Radio of March 3, 2011, last accessed October 21, 2011.
  9. ↑ Small inquiry: The structure of the "Prussian Media Service" and the Siegfried Bublies publishing house. on dipbt.bundestag.de from December 12, 1997; (accessed November 1, 2011).
  10. ↑ Florian Flade: Gaddafi's Evangelium , Telepolis interview on heise.online of February 27, 2011; (last accessed October 21, 2011).
  11. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Ice hockey cracks advertised Gaddafi's "Green Book"; ( Memento from February 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

literature

  • Muammar al-Gaddafi: The Green Book. The third universal theory. In German language. Publisher: International Study and Research Center of the Green Book. Tripoli, Libya around the mid-1970s. (In the book without the year, 119 pages, about 200 words on each page, postcard format). Lots of reprints.
Last: Muammar al-Gaddafi: The Green Book. The third universal theory. Verlag Siegfried Bublies , Koblenz 1988 to 2000, ISBN 3-926584-02-5 ; Reissued 2014 in Beltheim-Schnellbach: ISBN 9783937820095 .
  • ders .: vision . Conversation and open exchange of views with Edmond Jouve, translated from English by Hans Schmid, Belleville Verlag Michael Farin, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-933510-51-8 ; therein: Appendix I, Muammar al-Gaddafi: The Green Book, pp. 96–144.
  • Senta Stillmark: Dreamer and Builder - Thoughts on the future state of the Jacobin Saint-Just and the Green Book of the revolutionary leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Boarding school Progress Organization, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-900704-06-6 .
  • Heiner Lohmann: Structures of Mythical Thought in Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi's Green Book. A communication-theoretical investigation into the rationality of a sociocentric worldview in Islam with a new translation of the Green Book in the appendix. (Diss. University of Münster) LIT Verlag, Münster, ISBN 978-3-8258-1680-3 .
  • Herta Müller: Green Book , in: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism , Vol. 5, Argument-Verlag, Hamburg, 2001, Sp. 1071-1077.

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