Muammar Gaddafi — The Green Book, Part One: 'The Authority of the People' (1975; English translation of Arabic original)

The instrument of government is the prime political problem confronting human communities. […] All political systems in the world today are a product of the struggle for power between alternative instruments of government. This struggle may be peaceful or armed, as is evidenced among classes, sects, tribes, parties or individuals. The outcome is always the victory of a particular governing structure — be it that of an individual, group, party or class — and the defeat of the people; the defeat of genuine democracy.

Political struggle that results in the victory of a candidate with, for example, 51 per cent of the votes leads to a dictatorial governing body in the guise of a false democracy, since 49 per cent of the electorate is ruled by an instrument of government they did not vote for, but which has been imposed upon them. Such is dictatorship. […] In actual fact, dictatorship is established under the cover of false democracy. This is the reality of the political systems prevailing in the world today.

Parliaments are the backbone of that conventional democracy prevailing in the world today. Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people, and parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent the people, but this in itself is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people. True democracy exists only through the direct participation of the people, and not through the activity of their representatives. Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the people and the exercise of authority, excluding the masses from meaningful politics and monopolizing sovereignty in their place.

[…] Parliaments, therefore, have become a means of plundering and usurping the authority of the people. It has thus become the right of the people to struggle, through popular revolution, to destroy such instruments — the so-called parliamentary assemblies which usurp democracy and sovereignty, and which stifle the will of the people. The masses have the right to proclaim reverberantly the new principle: no representation in lieu of the people.

[…] Thus it is clear that representation is a fraud. […] Authority must be in the hands of all of the people. The most tyrannical dictatorships the world has known have existed under the aegis of parliaments.

The party is a contemporary form of dictatorship. It is the modern instrument of dictatorial government. The party is the rule of a part over the whole. […] The purpose of forming a party is to create an instrument to rule the people, i.e., to rule over non-members of the party. The party is, fundamentally, based on an arbitrary authoritarian concept — the domination of the members of the party over the rest of the people. […] No matter how many parties exist, the theory remains valid.

[…] This new theory is based on the authority of the people, without representation or deputation. It achieves direct democracy in an orderly and effective form.