is targeting Libya
Finally, and above all, has sought to achieve what his spiritual father failed to do: to bring about
Arab unity. For this purpose, he states, in particular those on Libya's
THE RECENT acts of aggression by the US fleet against Libya followed a long series of US provocations in the Gulf of Sidra. They represent a qualitatively new stage in the campaign that Washington has been mounting for more than ten years against the Moamer
Qadhafi regime.
For the Reagan administration, in particular after its setback in
Lebanon and its "success" in Grenada, this was a new opportunity to "take off the gloves" against a small state (only about 3 million people).
Reagan had two complementary objectives. One was to overcome the "Vietnam syndrome." The other was to issue a warning to Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran and the USSR, the other "demons" of modern imperialist mythology.
SALAH JABER
It goes without saying that the revolutionary
Marxists is to defend a Third World country that is the prey of imperialist aggression. Nonetheless, to make clear in instance what has to be defended. Is it national sovereignty only, as was the case in the Malvinas war, in which revolutionary Marxists called at the same time for overthrowing the reactionary military dictatorship? Or is it also necessary to defend national and social gains achieved by a "progressive" regime threatened by reaction with imperialism, as was the case for Egypt in 1956 and 1967?
fit into the category of Leopoldo
Galtieri or that of Gamal Abdel
An initial indirect response has been provided by the attitude of imperialism itself. It never sought to overthrow Galtieri. It did, however, seek indefatigably to overthrow Nasser yesterday, and the same is true for
Qadhati today.
Reports in the Egyptian and US press coincide on the fact that Reagan even proposed to Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak a joint military operation to overthow the Libyan leader.
If Mubarak rejected this proposition, it is because the domestic situation in his country, as attested by the recent mutiny of the security forces (1), does not allow him to engage in such
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Why, then, this imperialist obsession with Libya? reasons that are intimately linked. They have to do with the nature of the regime and of its foreign policy. I will try to explain them briefly in coup d'etat-revolution of September 1, 1969, overthrew the monarchy, one of in a thinly populated country, whose considerable petroleum resources were exploited in every sense of the term by the Anglo-Saxon oil companies. It was a country, moreover, that had two British bases and one US military base on its territory.
The coup was organized by nationalist officers (captains) grouped in a "Free Officers" committee modelled on the Nasserist one. Qadhafi, like his second in command, Jalloud, is of Bedouin origin, and he has continued to be marked by this in several aspects of his social and political behavior, as well as in the ideology that he has been formulating.
In the intitial phase, nationalism of Nasser, whose disciple and successor he sought to be that Qadhafi imitated. That meant evacuation of all foreign nationalizing the foreign banks and then gradual nationalization of the
In the latter aspect in particular, after 1970 Libya vanguard role, dragging the other oil have failed. While the bourgeoisies of the countries concerned were attracby the smell of Libyan oil, they feared the destabilizing effect Qadhafi could have on their states.
In fact, in his country, the Libyan leader was waging a vast campaign against the administrative bureaucracy inherited from the former regime.
The launched a the Maoist model. "little red book," which was redyed green [the color of Islam] for the
In reality, despite some genuine mass mobilizations, the power reconcentrated in the hands of the team led by Qadhafi and
Several factors induced the Libyan leader, starting in 1974-77, to radicalize his policy. They included the failures of his attempts to advance Arab unity, which he tried surmount by appealing directly to the masses over the heads of their rulers; and his clashes with the local trading bourgeoisie and the rightist opposition, as well as with sections of the state apparatus that wanted to invest locally the resources that Qadhafi was devoting to his foreign
Similar factors led to a radicalization of the Nasser regime in 1961-63. But in this area, as in others, Qadhafi, a real caricature of Nasser, carried the features of Nasserism to an extreme.
Private capitalism was abolished in Libya for the sake of a state capitalism, on a scale unparalleled in the framework of a bourgeois state. Not only were the main productive sectors, over by the state, services were as well to a large extent, is the time when Qadhafi went to the aid of another military regime that claimed to be Nasserist,
Revolution of the Sudanese dictator, who was overthrown last year, the fact that he faced the strongest workers' movement in the International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
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Why Reagan
to the point that small shopkeepers were supplanted by public-sector supermarkets.
Moreover, this statization was not carried out against a background of poverty, as was the case in Nasser's Egypt, which was confronted with a serious problem of overpopulation. Libya, in fact, faced the opposite problem. It suffered from a shortage of labor power in relation to the potential for investment, which required resorting on a large scale to imported labor power. "Socialism" with money
Qadhafi's "socialism," unlike that of Nasser, is rich. The standard of of the Libyan population increased considerably - free healthcare and education, modern housing for everybody. The regime plunged into a series of development projects, which, in the image of Qadhafi, were overambitious.
For example, in agriculture, lions of dollars bringing in certain techniques, which for growing crops best of cases, be imported at infinitely
This, moreover, is far from the only irrational aspect of a regime that would have been quite impossible if Libya did not enjoy a tidy
"subversion" in Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan.
This policy of wide-ranging support anti-imperialist movements and regimes is a great irritation to world imperialism. Libya is the only state in the world that has put its petrodollars anti-imperialist struggles. It is an invaluable ally for
-its only rich ally -although the Kremlin is often embarrassed by Qadhafi's braggadoccio. campaign of the imperialist states. The "worldwide terrorism" that the imperialists accuse Libya of supporting also supposedly includes all of the Palestinian organizations, National Liberation Front], the IRA, and the Central American revoluion, all thrown together.
On the other hand, the genuinely
Abu Nidal, presumptive author of the attacks at
Rome airports, supported mainly by Syria. As for the grouplet of Abul Abas, the author of the seizure of the Achille Lauro, it has with Libya but is dependent on Iraq, Libya's sworn enemy.
These few facts should be sufficient to show the hypocrisy of the imperialist hysteria campaign, attributing to
"state terrorism," of which the imperialist governments and their South African and Zionist allies are the champions anyway.
Against them, it defend Libya, to defend Libya's frontiers against imperialist aggression, and also to defend the national and social gains achieved in Libya against imperialism and Libyan and Arab reaction.
Such defence has to be carried out, however, without any of the all-toocommon illusions about the social and political character of the Libyan regime. It is true that the Libyan regime has achieved some impressive results. But for the reason explained, it is an exceptional case. It cannot be seen as some special sort of workers' state. The Libyan state is essentially bourgeois. The Libyan economy is essentially capitalist. The class nature of the regime
Let us start with the state. It has never been broken up in Libya. Despite Qadhafi's myth of the "state masses" (Jamahiriya), the of the regime born out of the 1969 coup remains essentially a military dictatorship of the bourgeois army led by a team with petty-bourgeois aspirations. And various vicissitudes of the Libyan "cultural revolution" change nothing in this respect.
It is true that the "people's base communities," which have been established since 1977, represent to a degree a form through which the masses have been able to express themselves at the level of local adminioil income that puts it among the countries with the highest per capita
Second issue of Arab journal
Qadhafi is also extremist foreign policy, as well as in his nationalism, Semitic touches. As Nasser did before him in 1974-77, when he was radiQadhafi turned to a close alliance with the USSR, which went hand in hand with almost total military dependence, in the name of a common struggle
Qadhafi did not confine himself to the Arab region. He has supported in various ways — politically, financially, militarily and sometimes purely verbally - anti-imperialist regimes or movements around from Kanaky (New Caledonia) in the East, to El Salvador and Nicaragua in the West, including the Philippines, Ethiopia, Burkina, Ghana and Ireland.
In the Arab world, Qadhafi supports the Palestinian nationalist left and the Lebanese left. He maintains special relations with Syria, South Yemen, as well as with Iran, which although not an Arab country is involved in the politics of the region. Moreover, he is accused of supporting
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986 out now THE SECOND issue of the revolutionary communist review for the Arab region is now out. Al Mitraqa is jointly produced by the sections
Fourth International Lebanon, Tunisia and the Israeli
In this second issue (JanuaryMarch 1986) there are articles on: the conflict in South Yemen; the situation in Morocco; the political Israeli state on the eve of changes in the government; the lumpen bourgeoisie in Lebanon on the verge of collapse; and a balance sheet of the
Orders should be sent to 2, Rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France. Price £1, 1.40 US dollars.
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.. •• 8 ENI 21