Libyan Communist Party

The Libyan Communist Party (Italian: Partito Comunista Libico, PCL; Arabic: حزب الشيوعي الليبي) was a Marxist–Leninist communist party in Libya.

Libyan Communist Party
Founded	1945
Dissolved	1952
Newspaper	Corriere del Lunedì
Ideology	Communism Marxism–Leninism
Political position	Far-left
Politics of Libya Political parties Elections

Historically, Marxism came to Libya through bourgeois intellectuals who studied abroad and through Marxists that settled from Italy.^[1]

The party was established shortly after World War II, but the Libyan authorities began a crackdown on the party soon after the founding of the Communist Party in 1945. In November 1951, seven of its leaders were forced into exile including Nino Caruso [it] and Valentino Parlato [it], and the Communist Party was under police surveillance.^[2][3] The party's headquarters was in Benghazi. The influence of the party was limited to a small group in Cyrenaica.

Communist militants took part in student demonstrations.^[1] In 1952 the government banned all political parties, forcing the party underground.^[4] A second wave of repression came with Gaddafi coming to power in 1969 and a subsequent wave of repression against communists.^[5][6] In 1973, during the Libyan cultural revolution, Gaddafi stated:

We must purge all the sick people who talk of Communism, atheism, who make propaganda for the Western countries and advocate capitalism. We shall put them in prison.^[7]