Sting in the Tail: Going Legit (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Going Legit

The Camorra of Naples now rivals the Sicilian Mafia In wealth and power.

Now their huge profits from drugs, smuggling and extortion are being invested in banking, industry, agriculture, etc., to the point where -

. . . their legal income is now greater than their illegal one.

The Guardian 25 July

This move away from illegal to legal activities is nothing new. Many of Britain’s "noblest" families began just like the Camorra and made their fortunes from land-theft, banditry and piracy. For example, Lord Home, Tory Prime Minister in 1963-4, proudly boasted that his ancestors had been border cattle thieves.

These earlier bandits have long since legitimised their operations and now legally plunder the working class through the wages system. The Camorra is only following in their footsteps.

Showing by Example

The Socialist Workers Party condemns those Labour councils which make economies by sacking workers.

It was Liverpool council's turn in Socialist Worker 27 July -

City Treasurer Phil Kelly unveiled plans which will mean real anguish for thousands of people.

To close a £10 million deficit, the council wants to push through another 155 compulsory redundancies In addition to the 160 already announced and the 460 resulting from the bins service privatisation.

The SWP insists that under no circumstances should the workers be sacked, but back in 1975 the SWP (then called The International Socialists) had to make economies. Its national committee reported that -

. . . extra efficiency will not save enough money so we considered the running of all the departments to see if they could possibly function on less workers. We decided that two should go from the printshop, one from Socialist Worker, and 2.5 from admin.

Dally Telegraph 13 March 1975

So the SWP's solution was exactly the same as the councils they condemn. A clear case of the Trotskyist pot calling the Labour kettle black.

Labour's "Socialists"

John Molyneux's column in Socialist Worker is titled "Teach Yourself Marxism" although anytime Scorpion has read it there has never been anything about Marxism in it.

That is until the issue dated 27 July when we read that Marx stood for "smashing the capitalist state". In fact he did stand for the abolition of the state but not for attacking it head on. No evidence for this "smashing" was given but it's a bit rich when someone who can write such nonsense urges anyone else to "Teach Yourself Marxism".

But Molyneux's column was mainly about the agonising time "socialists" are having in "Kinnock's Labour Party".

Who are these "socialists"and what do they get up to in an anti-socialist party? Molyneux tells us they are, among other things, "usually the most energetic canvassers and recruiters".

So here are "socialists" who devote much of their political activity to peddling Labour Party policies to workers; policies which are aimed solely at propping-up British capitalism. Some "socialists" these!

Crime and Punishment

As newspapers reveal some of the skullduggery that goes on The City, where million pound frauds are commonplace It is interesting to compare the fate in the courts of those committing these frauds with that of the working class who have been at the fiddle.

A recent example was reported in Glasgow in the local Evening Times (7 August) -

A man who stole his sister's DSS giro and cashed it has been jailed for six months . . .  He also admitted cashing it at Tormusk Post Office, Castlemilk and defrauding the DSS of £37.05.

Six months in nick for stealing £37.05! At that rate of punishment how long would those city-slickers spend in jail for their muti-million pound scams? There is a lot of truth in the old saying — never steal anything small!

Housing — the Facts

Amidst all the nonsense of the reformist political parties and their practical plans to deal with the "housing problem" it is interesting to note some of the hard facts about the so-called "housing problem". A recent issue of The Guardian provided some useful information about the present position -

• 169,000 households are classed as homeless in Britain this year.
• Between 30,000 and 40,000 people around the country are believed to sleep rough from time to time. About 5,000 sleep out in London each night.
• There are 700,000 empty homes in the country, many awaiting repair; 100,000 are owned by councils, 600,000 by private landlords.

This ghastly situation is made all the more horrendous when you realise that there is no "housing problem" only a poverty problem. One that will last as long as we have wealth produced to realise a profit instead of the socialist society where everything, including housing, will be produced to satisfy human need.

Housing — More Facts

In case anyone imagines that a cause of the "housing problem" is a physical shortage of the ability to build houses we would point out a report in The Times (5 August) -

A quarter of a million construction workers are likely to lose their jobs during the recession, according to forecasts from the Building Employers Confederation...

Using official statistics, the BEC calculates that 150,000 construction jobs have been lost since the middle of last year. The federation predicts a further 100,000 will be lost by the middle of next year.

So there you have it — 160,000 homeless households, hundreds of thousands of houses needing repairs; and at the same time a quarter of a million construction workers thrown out of a job. But that is typical of capitalism — the economics of the madhouse.

The Pope Knows It!

The notion that state interference in the day to day running of capitalism has something to do with socialism is more and more being discredited. The events in Russia and Eastern Europe are glaring examples of this but now this fallacy has been so well exposed that even the Pope knows it now.

Pope John Paul II's latest encyclical Centesimus Annus commenting on the idea that government Intervention in the market system is socialism states:

In the struggle against such a system, what is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist system, which in fact turns out to be state capitalism . . .

Weirder than fiction (1986)

Book Review from issue 2 of the World Socialist Review

"Citizen Hughes" by Michael Drosnin, published by Bantam, $4.50, is a classic account of power gone mad.

The author deals mostly with the last decade of Hughes life most of which was spent as a recluse in a blacked-out penthouse in Las Vegas. Drosnin's work is detailed, readable and presents a graphic account of an emaciated, meglomaniac, junky using wealth and power to satisfy his personal whims (such as buying a TV station so he could watch whatever program he wanted, when he wanted) and petty malice; and does not, like some writers, lapse into snivelling, moralizing, suggestions about preventing such men using power recklessly. Drosnin does in fact, portray Hughes as very much a product and a symptom of his times.

From his penthouse lair, the crazy billionaire sought increasingly greater power. It wasn't enough to buy one Las Vegas hotel, he bought all Las Vegas — mafia? — small fry. It wasn't enough to buy Vegas, he bought Nevada; but, it still wasn't enough, the greedy bugger, wanted all 50 states.

There was one sure way to go about it, first — buy the president: however, here things didn't exactly go to plan. Poor old L.B.J., holed up in the White House, afraid to show his face on the street, in case it got shot off, had enough problems — no deal. Nixon took Hughes' money, and with immense gratitude repaid him by testing A Bombs in Nevada and by dumping hundreds of tonnes of nerve gas in the sea off Paradise, Bahamas, while Hughes was involved in negotiations with view to purchasing Paradise.

Dicky boy didn't have the last laugh: it is the author's contention that Watergate was a result of Hughes-Nixon machinations. Larry O'Brien, ex-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was an employee of Hughes, (how come, is a fascinating story, but I ain't telling you everything here) and as such, might know a heck of a lot about Nixon that he didn't want the whole world knowing. Hence, the screwball burglary aimed at getting info, to 'neutralize' O'Brien, and the whole colossal cock-up of a comic opera, called Watergate.

As symptomatic of Capitalism, Hughes is shown as a man of great contradictions. His company manufactured nuclear weapons, but he fought to prevent them being tested, because of his fear of contamination, even to the ludicrous extent of identifying himself with the peace movement.

His fear of contamination was so great that every document handed to him had to be sterilized first, and his aides, who handled it were required to wash their hands several times in a manner prescribed by him. Yet he never washed, cut his hair, and nails or had the bed sheets changed or washed. His room was never cleaned: there were mountains of dust and used Kleenex everywhere: his hair was lodgings for every flea in Vegas, but boy! gotta watch those germs!

Hughes considered himself anti-establishment, (don't get your eyes checked — you read it correctly), his image of himself was a corporate John Wayne cum Darryl Zanuck — a board room swashbuckler, bucking and swashling all politicians, executives, Capitalists etc., who stood in his way.

Like any Capitalist, he would have liked to have had everything his own way — subservient politicians, a docile working class and no government interference or taxation: and came as close as anyone can to achieving that unblessed state of affairs.

Details are given of which politicians he bought, how much they were paid and how they earned it, by killing or delaying certain bills in senate and congress and which legislation beneficial to Hughes they had forced through, and which illegal takeover deals they had turned a blind eye to.

All books on Hughes will necessarily have the same broad, general thrust — the power of money. It is clearly shown in this one how political office is bought and how Hubert Humphrey failed to become president because he didn't have the loot. The reader is treated to a tear-jerky scene of poor Huby sitting helpless in a stalled, rented bus, broke, weeping tears of anger and frustration as he hears the private Kennedy jet roar overhead, carrying his well-healed opponent to victory in the West Virginia primary in 1960. Humphrey eventually became a Hughes man because he needed — guess what? He didn't beat Nixon in 1968 because Nixon had a lot more of Hughes money.

How the richest man in America was able to evade paying personal income tax for seventeen years, makes fascinating reading, (no kidding), and that ain't all: Hughes Tool, the holding company for his entire empire, avoided corporate income tax for three years. Like other so-called philanthropists, Ford, Rockerfeller, Carnegie, Hughes discovered a way to get great acclaim from the working class for hoarding his wealth and evading taxes, he created a foundation — The Howard Hughes Medical Institute. When legislation was about to be introduced to tax medical foundations, Hughes paid so much in bribes to ensure they would be exempt, one wonders if it wouldn't be cheaper to pay the damn taxes in the first place.

Drosnin gives several examples of how Hughes would become caught in web of his own making, a typical one being when he tried to corner the market on helicopters during the Viet Nam war. He quoted the U.S. government a ridiculously low price to get their orders, which, not surprisingly, he did. He immediately tripled the price, but when various people from congress and senate started asking, "what's going on here?" Howie baby, just as quickly, went back to his original price and lost $90,000,000 dollars.

One event which is of no profound significance, but does underline the sheer lunacy of Capitalism is when Hughes chief gofer, Bob Mahew, was in Miami, planning with the Mafia and C.I.A. an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro. Mafia boss Sam Giancana, wanted to leave Miami for Las Vegas because he'd heard his girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire, was having an affair there with comedian Dan Rowan. To keep Giancana in Miami, Mayhew sent a C.I.A. operative to bug Rowan's room. A hotel maid caught the guy, playing with his wires, and called in the F.B.I.

Drosnin sometimes takes his reader along a certain line of thought, but stops short of drawing a conclusion, as if to invite each reader to draw his. Such a case is the killing of Bobby Kennedy: was there a connection with Hughes? One must figure it out for one's self.

Whatever the answer, one thing's for sure, Hughes, his henchmen, political joe-boys and other sundry partners in crime, saw the Kennedys exactly for what they are, (the same thing as most of our folk heroes), glorified hoodlums. It's too bad the working class, as a whole, can't see through them.

In his treatment of people working for him , Hughes was a jerk. He liked to create hostile situations where there was no premise for any and constantly feed his antagonists anger while he put on an innocent, hurt act. Too much space is given to this nonsensical drivel, but if you like listening to little old ladies argue you'll love it.

The author claims that much of his book is in fact, an autobiography because it was culled from Hughes secret papers, which were stolen from his Los Angeles headquarters in June, 1974.

It is the author's contention that either Hughes or his executives acting on their own volition, were responsible for the break-in, possibly because three days previously the Securities and Exchange Commission had subpoenaed all documents relating to Hughes take-over of Air West. Nothing was more threatening to the billionaire since it was one of his more illegal than usual business deals. The Hughes people, unlike Nixon's crowd, enlisted the aid of a guy who was no plumber (and is referred to only as the 'pro'), who, on completion of the job swiped the papers for himself and tried to sell them back to Hughes cronies. They tried to find the pro, but lost interest after they S.E.C. did. Our friend the pro, stuck with his papers, bricked them up in a wall for a few years before giving them to Drosnin.

The author, who I assume, is no socialist, (I'm sure the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, who he worked for, as a reporter, don't make a habit of employing socialists), does not draw socialist conclusions, but his epitaph for Hughes is deeper than he could have imagined, "he was an American folk hero, a man who lived first the dream, then the nightmare — in that sense, perhaps the single most representative American of the twentieth century."

Ray Rawlings

"Old Nick" goes strictly legit

A Short Story from the April 1984 issue of the World Socialist

Nicolo Mephistophelio senior ("Old Nick") nervously fingered his neatly trimmed, gray, Beelzebub-type chin whiskers as he dropped into his luxurious easy chair at the head of the mahogany conference table. It was just 9 a.m. but he had been up some four hours already in order that he might tend to his religious duties, a daily practice with Nicolo from as far back as he could remember—from his childhood in Sicily, a long time ago since he was now in his 70s. He had breakfasted on his way home from mass and was free to relax for a brief spell before plunging into his busy, secular routine.

He was alone, for the moment, in this front room of his mansion atop the hill just inside the southern limits of the City in a swank neighborhood populated mainly by Yankee tycoons from the world of high finance. Nicolo relished the knowledge, gained from his bookish son Nicolo jr., a Senior at Harvard Business School, that these aristocratic neighbors—like himself—were descended from a line of highly questionable characters—in their cases slave traders. It made him, a Mafia Godfather, feel comfortable to be living—as he would jokingly put it to his close business associates—among his professional colleagues.

The spacious front room in which he sat, ostentatiously furnished and decorated with a mixture of modern American business slogans: GO GETTEM!, DO IT NOW!, etc., and pictures of American and Sicilian scenes and dignitaries, served as the head office of the Mephistophelio Family operations—an extensive network of legal, borderline, and strictly illegal businesses running from the processing and purveying of olive oil to the production and distribution of drugs-licit and illicit. His staff was by now in place in the various offices that were scattered throughout the mansion but no meetings were scheduled that morning in the conference room—none but the private session he awaited with his son, "Young Nick". Nicolo jr. was so-dubbed by those who knew him well because of his being thought of as a carbon copy of his father in the fiendishness of his business acumen. The strategy involved in the selection of Harvard Business School for this scion of the Mephistophelio Family was a polishing job that would add a distinguishable and brand new touch of suavity and respectability to this ancient Sicilian clan.

But "Old Nick", usually outwardly calm and collected, seemed greatly upset on this particular morning. He had been alternating his gaze between the pictures, charts, and business-oriented slogans on the walls and the breathtaking sweep of woodland park surrounding his mansion, a park that afforded him temporary escape from his business cares, astride his Arabian horse or putting golf balls on his private links. Finally, he might be seen—had anyone suddenly entered the room—arms on table cradling his head, in an attitude of fatigue—or dejection.

Whatever it was that bothered Nicolo's thoughts on this morning would not seem to have been related to his health. He appeared, for a man of his years, to be in fine shape. His rugged, five foot eleven inch frame and clear eyes almost suggested a much younger man—a man of this late 20th century, sophisticated, variety. Considering the dangers involved in the life of a Mafia Godfather—the threats against life and limb—"Old Nick" might well have been forgiven had he begun to reflect that the life of a Mafioso capitalist was no bed of roses, that it was time he retired to some Mediterranean island or other. But the racketeering way of life was bred in his bones and now he had a terrible worry eating at his vitals— the worry about his son's future, for he had begun to suspect, strongly, that something was going wrong with the Harvard strategy. Was his son who had been destined to take over control of the Mephistophelio empire planning on abandoning the ship—going legit?

Yes! It was ironical, he thought. He, the father, had been so proud that his son had been accepted into Harvard Business School and was on the verge of graduating. He had been trained by the cream of the legit economist crop and "Old Nick" had firmly believed that this fact would be of invaluable importance to the fortunes of the Mephistophelio operations. But now, as "Old Nick" awaited this meeting with his son, he just knew in his heart that he would get the message—and that it would be bad news for him. "Young Nick", influenced by his professors and by his society buddies at Harvard, would announce his official rejection of the Mafioso way of doing business. He would have been sold that bill of goods—that the Harvard way is the pinnacle of proper enterprise while the rackets were nothing but bad business. The liberal fraternity of Harvard must have gotten to him, perverted his way of thinking!

He heard his son's entrance and cheery "hello" and he snapped into alertness. The moment had arrived. "Old Nick" straightened his shoulders, resolved to summon every argument he could remember in defense of his heritage. He would concede nothing other than that aura of sophisticated respectability attached to Harvard; something he had already conceded when he had encouraged his son to enrol there. He was ready.

"Young Nick" was an athletically-built, dark featured, handsome enough fellow attired now in riding breeches, spurs, red blazer, cocked and plumed hat, and carrying a whip. He sat in a chair facing his father. "Yes, Papa," he spoke in a tone suggesting reverence, although not necessarily deference. "Young Nick" had arrived at an age at which he was certain that he knew much more than did his father about how society and the world were put together. And he was about to demonstrate to his own satisfaction, at least, that he certainly did. "Sorry about my delay" he said apologetically. "I was dressing for a chukker of polo—I've just been admitted to the Society at School. But I had something else on my mind so it took me a bit longer than I'd figured."

Ah yes! Something else on his mind, thought "Old Nick", but he managed a smile: "That's OK, Nicolo." He looked his son over approvingly. Although there was that fearsome worry attached, he felt a vicarious thrill at the acceptance of his son by High Society—and how much higher could one get in Society than Harvard Business School? His son was truly, now, in the same league as his aristocratic Yankee neighbours. True, some of the professors—he had been warned by Father Bulloni over at the Cathedral—were liberal do-gooders, even Communists or Communist dupes—to use an expression of his late hero, Senator Joseph McCarthy. There was that fellow Galbraith, for example: an advocate of socialism, Bolloni maintained and he, "Old Nick", had in fact listened to some of those TV and radio debates between Galbraith and Bill Buckley, the beloved defender of the Faith and of the American Way—which was not necessarily "Old Nick'"s way but which was certainly better than "Galbraith's socialism". But "Old Nick" had not imagined that his son would waste his time listening to the arguments of offbeat political reformers: not until recently had he suspected this. And the old man was now even beginning to fear that a type of mental illness that had afflicted his late wife some years back was beginning to disturb her son. He had even been compelled to have her incarcerated, for a time, where she had undergone electric shock treatment. He shot an anxious glance at "Young Nick"'s eyes as the memory gripped him momentarily. He recalled that it had not been easy to distinguish many of the inmates—when on visits to his wife—from mentally sound visitors.

He snapped out of his momentary reverie and reached for a parodi, an action that caused "Young Nick" to brace himself. The aroma from a previous, partially smoked stogie hung in the air and the son, knowing his father's infrequent smoking habit, sensed the old man's inward agitation. He had a strongly educated guess as to why this sudden session had been called; he knew that the time had come for a showdown, and he wasted no time in collecting his thoughts in order to be able to present his case as forcefully—yet with gentleness—as possible.

"Old Nick" lit up, blew a smoke ring or two, then looked his son squarely in the eye. "Yes, Nicolo, he said. "Polo is wonderful and there is no reason why you should not indulge in it although you should also spend time at the boccie games among our countrymen in the North End. We must not divorce ourselves altogether from our Old Culture in our social life. But now I want to talk to you about something much more important. You must realize, of course, that I want you to become the Numero Uno of all of my enterprises and you can take over immediately after your graduation—that will be your graduation present. Of course it will take some time before you really catch on to how everything should be done but I will still be around to help you and to give you good advice. I'll be in the backghround, like those old retired professors at your college—those emeritus people, you call them don't you? And everybody will know and will give you the respect and the honor that they should give you. With your college background and your financial power you can even make it big in politics some day!"

The die was finally cast! The old man had gotten it out and now he sat silently, puffing on his parodi, awaiting his son's response with ill-concealed tenseness.

"Young Nick" was silent for a moment, mentally polishing his approach. Finally, "Papa," he said respectfully, speaking slowly and with just a trace of nervousness showing, "I, too, have wanted to discuss my future with you for some time now. I've been putting it off but now it is time to tell you about my plans. I'm going to establish my own business and it is going to be a strictly legit operation. I'm going into food processing—from antipastos to spumoni with every known variety of pasta and sauce—maybe even some that are not known, entirely new ones. I'm going to make the Mephistophelio name famous instead of infamous. I'm going to be regarded as a public benefactor because I'm going to provide plenty of jobs at wages—I'll be thought of as a pillar of society and of the Church . . ."

It had come; his fears were well taken; the respectable do-gooders had gotten to his son. "Old Nick" was out of his chair in a flash, one hand raised with index finger wagging. "Look here, my boy, I too am a pillar of society and of the Church and a public benefactor. I provide plenty of jobs at wages, I make generous donations to the Church and to all sorts of Charities ..." He was flushed and "Young Nick" became nervous.

"Papa, your blood pressure. Remember your doctor warned you to keep away from tense situations. Relax, please, and let me explain why I think the rackets make no sense." The old man sat down and tried to calm down, resolving to hear his son out but with a mixture of puzzlement and worry in his expression. "Go ahead, Nicolo, explain to me why the empire that I and my father and grandfather built makes no sense, why all of this" he waved his hand to indicate the mansion and the estate, in general, "why all of this makes no sense."

"Young Nick" was by now forced into making a fast mental decision. His father's few words spoken thus far underlined the importance to the economy of Organized Crime and even the wide social acceptance, by respectable elements, of prominent and powerful crime figures such as his father. How could he forget the extravagant parties that his father had sponsored, on occasion, at which many of the most prominent and influential representatives from the world of politics, entertainment and Society were honoured to attend? He must scrap that part of his argument and get down to the meat—the substance.

"Papa," he said, "the fact is that the rackets make no sense because legit operation gives you everything you can make actually gratis—at least in the long run. And the most beautiful part of it all is that the very people who are producing all of this legit wealth for you and making you a present of it—these same employees regard you as a public benefactor because you are giving them the chance to do this for you. All they ask is that you pay them enough to make a living. . ."

"Old Nick" was really visibly shaken by now. He noted the crafty glint in his son's eye but mistook it for incipient insanity. "Nicolo," he said soothingly, "you've been studying too hard lately—hitting the books, like you call it. I know that too much of that college stuff, crammed into your head, can be bad for you mentally." In fact, "Old Nick" had even heard of cases of college students committing suicide because of pressure of their studies and he became genuinely worried. "Nicolo," he urged, pleadingly, "you'd better take a few days off before those final exams—forget the books, relax completely. Why don't you take some of those society sweethearts of yours up to the mountains?"

"Young Nick" smiled broadly. "Papa, I know that I must sound to you like I'm losing my marbles. But please hear me out. You know as much about legit enterprise as the average business man—after all, you do run all sorts of respectable businesses along with the racketeering. But like just about all businessmen you think that your profits come from your ability to take advantage of your competitors and the people you buy your merchandise from and those you sell it to. That helps, of course, but it really doesn't explain anything because those people, those other business people you deal with are taking it away from you as fast as you take it from them—or, if not from you, then from others. All that is happening is a continual redistribution of all of that wealth that is out there. . ."

"Old Nick" shrugged his shoulders, leaned back in his chair and watched his son with narrowing eyes. He would hear him out before coming to any decision on what to try to do with him. He could not restrain himself, however, from blurting out one question that was now eating at his vitals: "Do you mean to tell me that they are teaching you that kind of Communist garbage at Harvard Business School? Am I giving them my good dough to fill your head with that nonsense?"

"Young Nick" laughed. "Of course not, Papa. You can't run businesses on that brand of economics. They don't even make too much out of it in the Communist countries although it doesn't seem to hurt any that some of the top executives may very well understand the process. No. I didn't get my understanding from Harvard. I got it on my own by studying the kind of texts my professors either put down or mention only in passing." He paused for a moment to make certain that the old man was reasonably calm—in a mood to pay attention to what he was about to say. "Old Nick" was not smiling but he did wave his son on.

"Go ahead, Nicolo," he said, "explain how the legit operators get everything gratis; how their raw materials, plant space, machinery, taxes, insurances, cost them zilch. And the wages we pay out. How can you say that is not a cost to us?"

"Look, Papa," "Young Nick" spoke slowly, stressing his words, "of course you have to lay out dough for wages. But that money comes from a fund provided by the sale of what your workers have already produced. It's a continuous process once the operation has been founded and the workers are actually producing the money that you use to pay them the wages that you pay them.They've got to or you wouldn't keep them long, would you?" He looked sharply at his father's expression and he seemed to detect an alteration in it—a glimmer of understanding, he hoped.

"And not only that, Papa," "Young Nick" went on, "neither you nor any other business man is in business simply because most people must have jobs at wages in order to live. Of course if it wasn't for that fact you couldn't be in business, to begin with but your object can't be simply to provide jobs for working people. You have to pay all of your expenses of operation and you have go have a good margin left over to enjoy life, too. So those workers of yours have to produce a value far greater than what they get from their wages. . ."

The old man shifted uneasily in his chair. "And you mean to tell me, Nicolo, that my brains and abilities have nothing to do with it? That all those long hours that I put in are of no importance?"

"Of course what you do is important," "Young Nick" assured him. "But what you do has to do with protecting your interests, not in creating your wealth. And anyway, you're big enough now to be able to hire the best brains that Harvard turns out to look after your interests. The point that I'm trying to make though, is that the rackets make no sense because all those people out there who work jobs at wages in order to live and raise their families are making you an offer that you just can't sensibly refuse."

The old man sat silent, obviously mulling it all over. "Young Nick" then administered his coup de grace: "Look, Papa," he said, "let me give you an analogy. Supposing we were to make an offer like this to any of those workers nervousness you or who will work for me. Let's say that we offer to take his shiny, new car  to use in our business. We use it for eight hours each working day, we provide the gas, oil, and maintenance to keep it operating efficiently for us; letting its owner have it after working hours, even giving him enough to run it during his leisure hours. You know that he wouldn't go for a deal like that. Not with his car you can be sure. But he does it with himself and he's convinced that there's nothing else he could do and that this is how it's supposed to be. . . With all of the talk about socialism and communism in more than half of the world that's the way things operate in those countries, too. The goverments might be the legal owners but the basics are the same the world over. The legit operators—private like here or bureaucratic wheeler-dealers like in the Communiutst countries—have it made. It just doesn't make sense to get involved with the rackets when you've got a deal like that. It's an offer I can't refuse."

He had been watching his old man's face carefully while he was making his pitch. He could see the conflicting emotions as "Old Nick" seemed to be assimilating the message; he could almost see the wheels in his father's head turning. "Young Nick" sensed that he had made a sale. "Old Nick" smiled his most devilish smile. He stood up and seized his son's hand. "Nicolo," he boomed: "You're on! I'm going to go all-out legit. You want a partner in your Mephistophelio Pasta Company?"

Harry Morrison (USA.)

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The migrants are managed by a Mafia-run employment system, the caporalato, that operates like a 21st century chain gang. Saviano says that those who object to low wages or poor working conditions are simply eliminated — and not just by a pink slip. “It’s a military system. The farm and factory owners employ the Mafia caporali to bring the workers. The immigrants wait on the roads, the caporali pick them up and take them to the work. If they complain, they get killed.” 

[Dead Link.]

Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history:

[Dead Link.]

Civil freedoms around the world lost ground for the fourth straight year in 2009 with Iraq improving, Afghanistan falling back and China acting as if it were under siege by its own citizens, Freedom House said on Tuesday. Bahrain, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Yemen moved into “not free” category, raising the total to 47 from 42 in 2008. The number of electoral democracies fell from 119 to 116, the lowest since 1995: 

[Dead Link.]

Workers at a Sussex-based electronics firm were today left “devastated” after being told in a video message that manufacturing at their factories is to end and 220 jobs moved to Korea and the Czech Republic:

[Link.]

Zuma famously likes to spend as much time as possible among his cattle in his native homestead at Nkandla, in northern KwaZulu-Natal province, where he is building a huge palace. In South Africa, R3m (£250,000) buys a pretty decent house, but Zuma’s new house there is costing R65m (£5.4m). ..It is a strange sight. Zuma, brought to power with the support of the ANC left, the trade unions and communist party, is ever more imitative of the Zulu monarchy – even down to the leopard-skin attire. It may have nothing to do with socialism, but then nor do, or did, the quasi-royal dynasties of many communist states such as the Kims of North Korea, Romania’s Ceausescus and the Zhivkovs of Bulgaria. And it should not be thought that these contradictions are embarrassing to Zuma. On the contrary, he is having the time of his life: 

[Link.]

One of the most callous reactions to the Haiti disaster thus far has come from televangelist Pat Robertson, who told viewers of his Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday morning that he knew the real reason for the quake: The country’s long-standing pact with Satan: 

[Dead Link.]

It has emerged that Kim Kardashian, the American reality television star, commands at least $10,000 per post. Many of Kardashian’s tweets are mundane - “I must have pinched a nerve in my neck . . .  I need a massage” - but when she mentions advertisers such as Nestle or the fast-food chain Carl’s Jr, she receives four-figure sums:

[Dead Link.]

Pathfinders: Bodging the Badger Debate (2012)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bodging the Badger Debate

Whatever is all this fuss about badgers and the government’s badger cull in aid of? As if there aren’t bigger things to worry about. Socialists are not often accused of being sentimental animal-lovers, but don’t the anti-cull lobby have a point? Scientific surveys have shown that badger culls reduce TB in cattle herds by around 25 percent in the infected area, but increase TB by 25 percent outside the infected area due to the ‘perturbation’ effect of badger refugees running away in all directions from the shotguns. The 2007 survey concluded that closer monitoring of cattle would achieve more than badger culling, so what’s the point of the cull, apart from giving the huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ brigade something fun to do now that they can’t chase foxes and hang peasants?

Some commentators argue that the farmers are exaggerating the problem anyway, since there is no danger to humans thanks to the milk pasteurising process, and there have been virtually no proper studies of the actual cost of bovine TB to the livestock industry. Badgers, after all, are a protected species. You can’t just bang away at them with a twelve bore for no reason.

If for the sake of argument we presupposed a meat and dairy industry in socialism on the same scale as now, which is a rather large and shaky assumption, this is a good example of a hot topic socialists might be having. Naturally we would hope and expect the culling question to be settled by the science, rather than sentiment. We needn’t worry that the ground was being muddied by covert class antagonisms between country squire and townie prole, or about quasi-legal questions of who exactly ‘owns’ a wild animal, whether it is all of us in some abstract way, or the private owner of the specific tract of land upon which the animal resides.

The problem arises when the science is inconclusive. A more recent survey, for example, confirms the ‘perturbation’ effect, but notes that the spread of TB outside the target area is actually quite short-lived. The ideal solution would be to vaccinate the cattle but no such vaccine yet exists. There is a vaccine for badgers, but the problem is catching the buggers and then being able to tell which ones are vaccinated and which ones aren’t, since they both present the same antibodies.

Evidence from New Zealand shows persuasively that culling works. It reduced incidence of TB by up to 83 percent, and significantly, when it was suspended due to lack of money, the incidence shot right back up again. But they were culling possums, not badgers, and the behaviour patterns of infected possums were shown to contribute to their effectiveness as a disease vector. In short, just because it works in New Zealand with possums doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work in Britain with badgers.

The culls in New Zealand were also helped apparently by the fact that the possum is not an iconic animal immortalised in some Kiwi version of Wind in the Willows, but actually a pest that nobody likes. Many pro-cullers have pointed out that nobody would be making a fuss about these culls if it were a question of rats rather than badgers, and that this sort of ‘fluffy bunny’ thinking is what is really behind the ‘scientific’ objections. However, they themselves don’t care to point out that if badger culling works because badgers are the main TB vector in some areas, then deer culling should also be done because deer are the main vectors in others. Nobody wants a Save Our Bambi media storm on their hands. Even in America, home of the deer hunter, they shy away from deer culls for this reason, instead surreptitiously making hunting licences cheaper and hoping the weekend NRA nuts will do the job for them. Meanwhile, it’s a wonder that the Berkshire Hunt hasn’t trumpeted the fact that foxes can also be carriers.

Press articles on the subject argue that the science won’t persuade anyone because it’s a moral issue, which if true is unfortunate since most objectors are meat and dairy consumers and therefore somewhat morally compromised in this area. Other moral questions such as abortion are similarly not clarified by scientific considerations. In socialism, if there are such debates, we can only say that where the science is unable to make a conclusive case, the decision will have to be taken with a show of hands, whether they are fluffy bunnies’ hands or not.

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The dark side of the coin

Such is the alienating world of commodity relations that many people in rich countries don’t seem to care much about other human beings, for all that they can be reduced to blubbering sentimental wrecks over whales, badgers or trees. Well, if human solidarity doesn’t motivate them, perhaps this will. A new report reveals that up to 90 percent of tropical deforestation is not conducted by governments or licensed commercial corporations, but by the mafia. Organised crime, it turns out, controls up to 30 percent of the global timber trade (New Scientist, 6 October).

It’s surprisingly rarely that socialists are asked ‘what we would do about the mafia’. This is largely because the reality of organised crime does not impinge very much on the public consciousness, for all its petty, Daily Mail obsessions with muggers and benefit frauds. Organised criminals operate outside the state regulatory apparatus, or inside states with no regulatory apparatus. They are responsible for global slavery, which the naive imagine was long ago abolished. They are responsible for counterfeit medicines which form up to 50 percent of the African market. They are responsible for wholesale and reckless fly-tipping of toxic poisons into landfill, paid for by construction and manufacturing companies who find it cheaper not to ask questions. They slaughter protected species for the tables of exclusive restaurants, engage in organ trade for rich invalids, kidnap children for wealthy childless couples, and incidentally, bulldoze rainforests.

If capitalism can be represented by a silver coin held up to the light, then it has a shiny side that we all see, and a dark side that we don’t. Inevitably we all tend to talk about the shiny side, with its democratic institutions and ethical concepts, its science and culture, carelessly forgetting that this is only half the story. What happens on the dark side is obscure, largely unreported, the stuff of Hollywood myth and legend. To look on this dark side is in a sense to look into our history, to see the truly ugly nature of the profit-motive at work, without any mitigating factors.

Technically speaking, organised crime is capitalism’s problem, not ours. It couldn’t exist if we abolished private property, any more than bank robbers could exist without banks. But while it does exist, we should remember that it is there, in the dark, a major player in world economies, as anti-human and anti-worker as they come, capitalism’s ghostly and demonic twin.

Paddy Shannon

Italy’s New Brand: 5-Star Movement (2013)

From the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The breakthrough achieved by a new political movement, the 5 Stars Movement (its official name is Movimento 5 Stelle, abbreviated as M5S), was a key result of the election that took place on the 24/5 February in Italy. For the Chamber of Deputies the M5S got 25.55 percent of the votes.  The figure for the Senate of Republic was similar. This resulted in 109 seats for M5S in the Chamber of Deputies and 54 seats in the Senate. For the old political establishment this outcome is quite drastic, but what does the M5S stand for, and will the Italian workers benefit from this electoral outcome?

Corrupt from the start

In order to understand Italian politics we need to go as far back as the artificial creation of Italy by the dominant European powers of that time (i.e., Great Britain, France and Prussia). Since its very foundation in 1861, Italian capitalism and its political establishment have been deeply linked to corruption and collusion with secret societies, such as Freemasonry and illegal organizations.

Italian schoolbooks still teach that about 1,000 men led by Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered the southern part of the peninsula, dominated at that time by the House of Bourbon that could field an army of 150,000 men. Even with the addition of rebels and help from Savoy and Britain, Garibaldi’s army could not count on more than 15,000, ten times less than the Neapolitan army (as Marx pointed out in the New York Daily Tribune 23 August 1860). How did they do it? Corruption was the main weapon used by Garibaldi’s army.

The weapon of corruption worked very well and has dominated Italian politics since. ‘Unlike the rest of Western Europe, the disintegration of feudalism in southern Italy failed to produce an independent entrepreneurial middle class’ (Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy, 1982). This was in large part due to the colonial politics of the northern Italian bourgeoisie (Antonio Gramsci, Ordine Nuovo, La Settimana politica, Operai e contadini, 1919-1920). The banks of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were being systematically robbed by the new elite. From 1863 to 1866 the Bank of Naples lost 37 million lire (Gigi Di Fiore, Controstoria dell’Unione d’Italia, 2007). The Bank of Sicily’s director, Emanuele Notarbartolo, who tried to save it from bankruptcy, was murdered on the orders of Raffaele Palizzolo, another Member of the Italian Parliament and member of the management board of the same bank. Palizzolo was also a known Sicilian mafia boss, who took advantage like many others of the unification of Italy to make dubious investments (trafficking) for his own personal profit. The same year, 1893, another scandal involved another bank, Banca Romana, which to extinguish its debts printed fake money.  This scandal involved very important political leaders like Giovanni Giolitti and Francesco Crispi, founding fathers of Italy. These historical facts are just some early examples of how the Italian political system worked from the very beginning.

Things did not change during the Fascist dictatorship and after WWII the main party, the Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC), refined this rotten system even further. Their political machinery was based on clientelism and patronage. Amintore Fanfani, leader of the DC in the 50s, while advocating against clienteles and personality politics set up a scheme to recruit DC members called tesseramento which took clientelism to its extreme. Judith Chubb describes how these tessere (party membership cards) were crucial to get power within the DC political party. ‘The tessera of the DC is like a blank check: it can be given out to anyone – to relatives, to the deceased, to persons chosen at random from the telephone book or from health-insurance list’ (Corriere della Sera 7 November  1973). The trick was quite easy: you provide me with tesserati and I provide you with jobs in provincial councils, local government offices, agencies of the public administration. Of course the public sector grew like crazy with no equivalent growth in the private sector.

Organised crime was another very convenient partner for the political establishment because it controlled a part of the private sector, in particular the construction business. This system soon extended to the rest of Italy, in particular when ‘at the beginning of the 70s, Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian mafia) itself began to become a company. A company because, by getting a more and more hefty share – which sometimes became almost a monopoly – of the drug market, Cosa Nostra began to manage an enormous amount of capital’ (last interview with Paolo Borsellino, 1992).

As we have seen with Palizzolo, the connection between political class and organised crime has always been there, but now in the 50s, 60s and 70s, it became obvious, with people like Giovanni Gioia, Fanfani’s political secretary, Salvo Lima, a collaborator of Gioia with important connections with Cosa Nostra who was murdered by Cosa Nostra itself in 1992, and Vito Ciancimino, DC politician, mayor of Palermo and mafia member. To confirm Borsellino’s statement, we could just consider that Silvio Berlusconi started his empire by getting a surety from the Bank Rasini of Milan that was involved in Cosa Nostra money laundering. The best buddy of Silvio Berlusconi, Bettino Craxi, leader of the Italian ‘Socialist’ Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI), became clearly important when Cosa Nostra and the DC were having some ‘marital’ problems in the early 80s. It was known that this traditionally small party (9.6 percent of votes), which still carried the hammer and sickle logo until 1985, at once became ‘important’ and notoriously corrupted to the core.

To an extent, the Italian political class underwent a transition in the period from 1969 to 1977, which in Italy was characterised by intense social and political unrest connected with the first serious economic troubles since the end of WWII. At the conclusion of this phase, the national political class represented not only a relative obstacle to the healthy development of Italian capitalism, but started to act as an absolute brake: the public debt boomed and in 1985 reached the warning level of 80 percent of GDP (in 1970 it was only 40.5 percent).

If in the past Italian politicians were not so different from their counterparts in other European countries – maybe just slightly more naive and less concerned with an effective capitalist industrial policy – from the first ‘pentapartito’ (i e. five parties) government in 1981 they began to act as a simple parasite clique who prompted an artificial economic development making use of what Marcello De Cecco referred to as ‘criminal (or bastard) Keynesianism’: unbalanced and unproductive public expense, generalised political corruption at all levels, competitive devaluation of the currency, high taxation rates on salaries together with widespread tax evasion in the self-employment sector, and, finally, heavy reliance on the protected export of low-technology goods related to the existence of the European Common Market.

Enter Beppe Grillo

When in 1986 Beppe Grillo, a successful comedian from Genoa, made a joke about the PSI being corrupt he said what everybody knew already. Grillo was banned because of this joke from Italian television. This showed how little people were then allowed to say in the mainstream media and how bad the political situation was.

Grillo’s activism against the political establishment became even more pronounced after that. At that time he was working in theatres, touching upon topics like corruption, pollution, consumer association matters, unemployment, bank scandals, etc. People who did not follow him in theatres could still see him on television on Tele+, where his live performances were broadcast every now and then. Grillo’s performances got mainstream media coverage when he talked about scandals like Parmalat’s, which broke before the media and justice system knew about it. The internet was the real breakthrough for Grillo. He could finally reach many more people, and his blog became the most popular in Italy.  Through Grillo’s blog, meet-ups were and are organised to allow ‘Grillo’s friends’ to meet face to face, discuss local problems and organise action groups, for instance against a local council that wants to build a new incinerator. In this way Grillo’s friends or followers started to become more and more proactive. In 2007 on the 8 September, a very symbolic date for Italy, a V-Day (Vaffanculo = Fuck off) was organised to gather as many followers as possible to protest against the political establishment. This was a great success, connecting 220 cities at the same time. On this occasion Grillo declared that he did not intend to create a political party but rather to eliminate them.

Grillo specified later that the M5S is in fact a movement and not a party. At the end of 2009 the M5S was founded. For some, Gianroberto Casaleggio is the real mind behind the M5S. It does not matter to us if behind Grillo there is Grillo or Casaleggio or Grillo and Casaleggio. What matters is what this political movement is about. They claim that they want to empower the citizens, getting rid of the old caste of politicians and their old systems based on clientelism and patronage. That’s reasonable and necessary in a country like Italy. We can sympathise with such a movement over this point, in the same way that Marx did with liberals like Garibaldi and Francesco Crispi in their battle against the Bourbon monarchy (Karl Marx, New York Daily Tribune, 8 August 1860), without this meaning that Marx was a liberal.   

The Five Star Movement’s platform

So let’s have a brief look at the M5S political platform. M5S complains that the state is disjointed from the citizens, that the constitution (which represents bourgeois law) is not applied, and that the state’s cost far outweighs its efficiency. Here a cry for bourgeois legality was expressed through the M5S.  Of course this message also appeals to workers, who have experienced years of abuse from the political class. M5S also proposes that the salary of the members of parliament be in line with the national average; this point has been seen as socialist, but in fact is just a sign that when a capitalist economy is in crisis politicians should get the blame too. Nothing socialist there! We think that the capitalist system itself should get the blame and not just its servant politicians.

An interesting proposal is to make debate available to all citizens with internet access via the live streaming of public meetings. This is not direct democracy, but the principle that workers could participate more closely in political debates is interesting. Following the same line, there is the proposal that new laws should be online three months before they are approved to get citizens’ comments. It is not clear if these comments will be enough to change the proposed laws or even stop them, but again the principle of participation is interesting. M5S asks for referendums without a quorum condition and for the obligation on Parliament to discuss laws proposed by a people’s initiative. All these efforts to make Parliament more accessible to the workers are welcome, however very limited they are by the fact that economic power will be still in the hands of a few who will be influencing the political world anyhow. A more transparent way of doing politics in Italy is the main reason why the M5S got such a large vote. This expressed a feeling amongst many, even some of the upper class who rely on the bourgeois legality of the constitution, that the current political system was not representing them. 

The M5S political platform includes several points about sustainability. Capitalism is not sustainable so to try to reconcile this with the health of the planet raises contradictions by definition.  In terms of economic policy the M5S wants to introduce class actions, abolish the dummy corporation system in the stock exchange, and abolish the so-called Biagi law in which workers with temporary contacts have no rights for holidays, sick leave or maternity leave, and have restrictions on their pension payments. Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute (Statuto dei Lavoratori, 1970) says that an employer ought to have a fair reason to fire an employee. Several governments have wanted to modify it, so allowing the employer to fire their employees quite easily, to create what they call ‘flexibility’. Grillo in his blog proposed that this article should not be changed but that instead the taxes on enterprises should be lowered. The fact that the M5S is against Biagi’s law and does not want to change Article 18 was a crucial point to gain votes from the working class. In principle not changing this article is good. Unfortunately the real problem is that the worldwide free labour market has considerably reduced the working class’s bargaining power. Instead of hoping that lower taxes on enterprises would solve the problem, workers should get involved in international movements to fight against capital. Instead, M5S national reformism seems to be the preferred way.  

Moreover the M5S tries to counter the anarchic nature of capitalism by proposing to forbid the closure of food and manufacturing industries which have the internal market as their main market and to ban cross share-holdings between the bank system and the industrial system; also that financial advice  institutes should share responsibility for losses; that a salary limit be established for the CEOs of corporations in which the State is the main shareholder; abolition of stock options; abolition of state monopolies such as Telecom Italia, Autostrade, ENI, ENEL, Mediaset, Ferrovie dello Stato. This is the part that seems to interest the Occupy Movement. M5S wants to reduce the public debt so as to reduce the costs of the State. As the Italian State costs a lot, the money will also need to come from somewhere else. Benefits to unemployed people are also mentioned in M5S’s programme.

M5S reached political power rather quickly as an anti-establishment movement, because in Italy politics, corruption and crime are so interconnected, and public opinion, influenced by bourgeois ideology, can no longer stand it. In economic terms, the M5S response is a Keynesian mixed economy, with the old illusion that government intervention will be able to control or even cure the anarchic nature of capitalism. Unfortunately, the mixed economy already proved to be ineffective in taming capitalism. But can the M5S at least get rid of corruption and collusion? We shall see. 

It may be interesting, from the social science point of view, to notice that reformist movements are becoming more and more hybrid and decoupled from traditional left and right alignments. The internet has become a powerful medium for people organization, but still people need human contact and public speeches to get convinced. For many people representing the old establishment, this has been a real revolution.  For the working class this is yet another reformist movement. The Italian bourgeoisie is in such bad shape that this quite moderate movement, which aims at a capitalist system regulated by the government with no obvious links to organised crime, seems to be asking a lot. The need to apply bourgeois legality is so urgent that voters from all sides were attracted to the M5S. Workers voted for the M5S with the hope that cuts to state expenditure and the abolition of Biagi’s law could improve their condition. Unfortunately, capitalism does not have a good face or a bad face, it follows profit. And although it is very appealing to kick the old politicians up the arse, the situation for workers is unlikely to be improved by M5S political reforms.

Cesco

Italy and its Criminal State (2015)

From the May 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the run-up to the 2015 Universal Exhibition that opens in Milan this month, the mainstream media carefully resumed the image of the old mafia boss, Toto’ Riina, dispensing death sentences from his prison cell. This concealed the real criminal power of the Calabrian mafia, Ndrangheta, which has deep roots in the Italian political machinery both local and central.

During the scandal about Expo 2015 politicians of the left and right have been convicted of collusion with the mafia. They had been buying votes and doing ‘favours’ to secure the juicy Expo 2015 public contracts.  The Calabrese mafia has huge amounts of capital to re-invest. According to a convicted Lombard entrepreneur:

 ‘If the mafia sees something that works, they invest in it, no bullshit, maybe they also do other stuff, sure! I know that! However, if it’s a serious business, the Mafioso sees it just like me, in the same way. He has the means to invest and he doesn’t need to go crying for money to the Bank, because he invests his own money’ (Monzin from ‘Ndrangheta in Lombardia: in manette politico Pd, infiltrazioni in Expo, Il Fatto quotidiano, by A. Bartolini and D. Milosa | 28 October 2014).

The mafia has the cash and has infiltrated the State machinery. No wonder that Italy is a country where its President  has recently testified about the so-called State-mafia negotiation of the 1990s.

What is the mafia?

How did the Italian ruling class get so entangled with organized crime? Moreover, what is the mafia in the first place?

The mafia is not a cool young Robert De Niro gaining respect in his block among southern Italian immigrants in New York at the end of the 19^th century. Even Bill Bonanno, son of legendary American mafia boss Joseph, who had every reason to cultivate a myth of his world, said that ‘The Godfather’ film gave a romantic image of the mafia. This image, though, still influences the behaviour of some young ‘Goodfellas’. The mafia is much more complex than a strong Italian accent, a big ring and a bulldog face.

A good overview in English of why organized crime was and is so nested into the Italian political and social structure, and why the mafia system has become so successful globally is given by John Dickie in his Mafia Republic. For those who read Italian Salvatore Lupo’s Storia della Mafia is definitely a must.

Nowadays, mafia is a general term used to identify a secret organization which operates according to its own set of rules that are outside the legal order of the bourgeois State. The means that the mafia makes use of are: violence (retaliation), intimidation, extortion, corruption, collusion of bourgeois institutions. Violence is usually the prerogative of the bourgeois State, but the mafia not only uses it, but counts on it to obtain silence from its own victims (omerta’). This silence is not a cultural tradition, as is often believed.

The mafia had its origin in a bargain struck with the Bourbon rulers of southern Italy and Sicily who were too weak to maintain internal as well as foreign order, combined with the weakening of the aristocratic class. During the occupations of the Italian peninsula, first by Republican and later Napoleonic France, the Bourbons did not mind using outlaws or brigands (briganti) to organize resistance. The Bourbons also made use of field wardens (campieri) as rural police (Compagnia d’Armi) to control public order, often giving weapons and power to common criminals. These emerging henchmen, either rural, in Sicily, or urban, in Naples, kept the Bourbons’ hated enemy, the liberal bourgeoisie, underdeveloped. Times were changing fast and the old regime had to keep up. Whereas in England Cromwell’s revolution had prepared both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie to cope with the emerging capitalist system, the old French, Spanish, Austrian and Neapolitan regimes were either crumbling or struggling.

The second even greater bargain that the southern Italian mafia entered into came with the Piedmontese occupation of the South of Italy (an occupation also called the Unification of Italy) after 1860. The political role that the occupying power gave to these secret groups during the Unification was vital. It set them up in the post-Unification capitalist era. A clear example of this can be found in how Garibaldi’s regime in Naples, represented by Don Liborio Romano, police prefect of the city, administered public order, nominating as City Guard the Onorata Societa’ della Camorra, namely the head of a band made up of little tyrants, loan sharks and racketeers. As Alexander Dumas wrote at the time, ‘Camorra’s power is the only real power Naples obeys’.

Not the same today

However, it would be a mistake to think that mafias, in Sicily called Cosa Nostra and in Naples called Camorra, were what they are today. Lupo captures this very well: the mafia

‘determines…internal hierarchies, independent from the general ones of the economy and politics, but throughout the entire first part of its history it remains a minor power compared with the power of major landowners and notables… the mafia during the liberal era or during the first republican period did not think at all to determine the content of the laws, leaving this type of problem… to major notables‘ judgment or… to local lobbies’ judgment. Then, things changed…  big landownership disappeared as a political and social entity… the notable gave way to the party machine… mafia affiliates… had much more freedom to interfere with politics itself, because politics redistributes the growing flow of resources it manages, by doing so paralyzing the administrative, public security and juridical apparatuses of the State’.

The third basis of the mafia was its discovery of America, and in particular, the Prohibition years. As a result of the colonial policy of the Piedmontese in the South of Italy, to which should be added the natural impoverishment caused by capitalism (described by Marx for England and Ireland in Capital), a huge mass of peasants who could not find jobs in the very few local industries, such as the salt and sulphur mines, nor in the northern industries, had to look for fortune overseas, mostly in America.

During the USA prohibition years, Italy was ruled by the fascist regime. The main reason why fascism reached power in 1922 was to stop workers and peasants causing trouble, which had characterized the years after the end of WWI. During WWI, in 1917, a self-proclaimed workers’ revolution succeeded in Russia and in 1919, for a few months in Germany and Hungary. Worker and peasant protests were widespread over the whole Italian peninsula. There were occupations of factories, such as Fiat in Turin, and of land, and mutinies of army regiments in Trieste and Ancona. The ruling class (upper bourgeoisie, landowners and industrialists) felt the need to suppress such movements. Thus, the violent acts of fascist squads against the workers and peasants were tolerated, and often welcomed, by the national and local authorities.

These fascist squads’ actions occurred mainly in the north and centre of Italy. In the South, and in Sicily in particular, the repression of workers and peasants was carried out by the local mafias. However, when the fascist regime won executive power it engaged in a campaign to destroy the mafias. There is general agreement today that only the lower layers of the mafias were touched by this. This was because the top layer was in bed with the political elite and so untouchable. In any event, many mafia affiliates moved to the USA, where business was good. Prohibition laws became the best business opportunity ever for the American mafia. It gave the American mafia led by families of Sicilian origin the chance to become the first organized crime network in the USA and to make a huge amount of money.

The Allies’ invasion of Sicily and the consequent second post-war period meant a real triumph for organized crime in the South of Italy. As Lupo points out, it is plausible that the Sicilian mafia organized itself at the end of the fascist era round the American model of Luciano, Coppola and Genovese, who had been expelled from the USA. Lupo thinks that without this American component the Sicilian mafia would have died out. But once more, the mafias in Italy acquired a political function.

At the end of WWII fascism had formally collapsed, while the Russian bloc had not. Worker and peasant conditions were the same as, if not worse than, before the war. There was a real risk that workers would again organize the same movements suppressed by the fascists between the two wars, and bring the country to the other side of the Iron Curtain. The risk was so stark that the US intelligence service was actively organizing prevention plans (e.g. a coup d’état).

It should not surprise anyone that there was a link between freemasonry, politicians, upper class members and mafia bosses. In the South, it was common for the Allied forces to put ‘men of honour’ in charge of local municipalities. Moreover, the suppression of those backing peasant struggle was carried out by the local mafias. In Sicily, the mafia killed 4 leftwing activists in 1945, 6 in 1946, 8 in 1947,  not including the 11 victims of the Portella della Ginestra massacre. The number of killings to suppress the peasant turmoil decreased only when in the 1950s agrarian reform brought about the systematic dismantling of the peasant cooperatives. Even so, it would be a mistake to think that at this stage the mafia had a political plan. Its aim was just to gain full control over its territory.

Business enterprises

The post-war reconstruction period (Marshall plan) was a key moment in the history of mafias in Italy. The mafia ‘does not make distinctions between sectors: agriculture, construction, commercial. What is important for the mafia is its monopoly on certain activities, first of all control, it is important that this is reserved to the gang (clan)’ Salvatore Lupo, Storia della Mafia). During this period, the mafias went through changes. They become less and less linked to the rural heritage and more and more to the entrepreneurial spirit, following the American model. Where the large landed estate system (latifundium) was dying, the mafia transformed itself, taking possession of public funding for reconstruction. Although this was a parasitic entrepreneurial system, entrepreneurship became a mafia speciality. This is the time of il sacco di Palermo (sack of Palermo), where ugly buildings would appear anywhere like mushrooms. The now republican State did not oppose this criminal entity, but actually became a tool of development for the mafia phenomenon. This is captured by Paolo Borsellino’s statement:

 ‘Mafia and politics are two powers, which rely on the control of the same territory: either they fight each other or they reach an agreement. The ground on which they can reach an agreement is the division of public money, the illegal profit on the public works’.

Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) represented the ideal political party with whom to share reconstruction money. The DC-mafia machine was just perfect. It was based on the old clientelism and patronage. This machine formed in a few years a huge inflated service sector, while industrial development remained paralyzed because of the mafia regime. This was a colluded Keynesianism, where public money went to Cosa Nostraand Cosa Nostra ensured DC political domination. Now ‘the mafia associate does not camouflage himself as entrepreneur: he is an actual entrepreneur, who makes use of the additional advantage of being part of Cosa Nostra’ (Giovanni Falcone e Marcelle Padovani, Cose di Cosa Nostra).

Beside the big public funds business,  in that period the business of the century -- drug trafficking -- grew. Sicily became a central hub for the refining and distribution of drugs. This was because of their preferential channels of distribution with the American families (clans) of Sicilian origin. This huge amount of money soon needed to find laundering outlets. It was no coincidence that during this period, the ‘60s and ‘70s, financiers, entrepreneurs, and constructors emerged from nowhere. In short, this was the time for people like Sindona and Berlusconi.

Not just Sicilian

Mafia in Italy does not mean only Cosa Nostra. In the ‘50s and ‘60s we see other criminal societies emerging, such as the Calabrese Ndrangheta and the Neapolitan Camorra. But these mafias should not be understood separately from Cosa Nostra. They already existed from the second half of the 19th century, but they too now follow the Sicilian-American model and have become modern. Even though those three mafias are fairly independent from one another, they are still interconnected.

If we analyse the last 30 years we can see three main transformations in the mafia world: the decline of the Sicilian mafia in favour of the Calabrian Ndrangheta; the capillary expansion of the mafia into the North of Italy; the infiltration into the State apparatus -- the Anti-State that becomes the State.

The myth that the mafia is a problem only in the South of Italy is indeed a myth. Mafias expanded systematically thanks also to the forced exile of convicted Mafiosi to the northern regions of the country, such as Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia Romagna, Liguria. This showed the poor understanding of lawmakers of the mafia phenomenon. The mafia no longer depended on the control of the poor rural territory of the South. The mafia was a form of violent and rule-less entrepreneurial bourgeoisie. The North was an ideal virgin land for them. The Ndrangheta, in particular, was very effective in this expansion, because unlike Cosa Nostra, it clones itself, looking for the same basic criminal structures as the original. For example, Lombardy is also the name of the criminal organization bound to Ndrangheta, which has the same rites, language, customs, structure and hierarchal order as the Calabrian Ndrangheta (Atlante delle mafie. Storia, economia, società, cultura, a cura di Enzo Ciconte, Francesco Forgione e Isaia Sales, Vol II).

In the North the mafia, and in particular Ndrangheta, has evolved from the criminal point of view, in its ambitions, projects of control of the entrepreneurial and economic activities; broadening its relationships with public officials and public security and becoming attractive partners to earn votes in the elections. Ndrangheta is now present on the five continents, in particular in Canada, USA, Colombia, Australia, Switzerland, and Germany. Today Ndranghetais the world leader of cocaine trafficking.

We can now see why the Italian ruling class got so entangled with organized crime. It has always been and on several occasions has made political use of organized crime to accomplish its own aims. The mafia changed itself and became an integral part of the State. It is clear that the mafia is a criminal organization that today has only one interest, profit.

So the question arises: What is the actual difference between the lobby system and the mafia system? It is the code of written and non-written laws, but these two systems have the same aim. Both are based upon exploiting non-paid work. Both systems make use of force. The mafia system, on the one hand, is less predictable, but, on the other hand, it still needs thebeneplacito agreement of the bourgeois State, which has a repressive capacity hugely bigger than the mafia itself.

Finally, will the ‘legal’ bourgeoisie be able to defeat the mafia or will it accept it as an expression of itself? The problem is not only a moral one but also an economic one. At the moment the ‘legal’ bourgeoisie has used or has collaborated with the mafia, allowing the mafia to grow and to become competitive even in the ‘clean’ sectors. Since the bourgeois State has in principle the tools to annihilate the mafia, but so far has not done it, this suggests that it does not want to; but on the contrary, that it wants to make use of it.

Nowadays, the mafia has infiltrated the structure of control of bourgeois power, so things have become rather complicated. A pure repressive action may no longer be sufficient. It is a bit like the situation that the fascist regime had to face. In Italy, as well as in other countries, destroying the mafia means also amputating a part of the bourgeois State itself. The mafias have worsened workers’ quality of life and even working conditions, and the bourgeoisie did not, and does not, hesitate to make use of it to exploit or repress worker and radical movements. Therefore, the struggle against capital means also struggle against one of its peculiar expressions, which is the mafia, regardless of the ruling class’s moral crisis. 

CESCO.

Guns and protection (2009)

Book Review from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Lane: Into the Heart of the Mafia. Profile

I didn’t expect a book on the Mafia to be all that interesting or relevant, but in fact Lane’s investigation can be interpreted as shedding some light on the operations of capitalism.

Italy became a unified state fairly late on, in 1861, and the south of the country was for a long time isolated and barely under the control of the central government in Rome. As a result, a sort of private police force filled the vacuum and administered its own kind of ‘justice’. Basically, a set of thugs and gangsters, they evolved into the Mafia, a term which covers at least the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in Campania and the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria.

Their activities now include robbery and murder, loan sharking, extortion and protection money. Anything that involves money-making attracts them, such as the university in Messina on Sicily, which is the town’s biggest business. The construction industry, and public works in general, is another area where the Mafia can extract money. It’s estimated that about half of the £24 billion paid for reconstruction after an earthquake near Naples in 1980 ended up in the hands of the Camorra. Burying toxic waste with no regard for the environmental consequences also brings in big profits. All this goes on with the connivance of many in business, government and the Catholic church.

The south of Italy still represents a relatively unattractive place for companies to invest in, since a return on investment requires a level of security that is mostly lacking. Capitalism, then, needs its version of law and order, and the Mafia-controlled regions are a clear demonstration of what can happen when this does not exist.

For the working class, the consequence of Mafia rule are dire, with very high levels of unemployment and high drop-out rates from school. With legal jobs hard to come by, many are attracted to work for the Mafia. Someone who then wishes to break free may be killed as a warning to others. At the same time, though, members of agricultural cooperatives farming ex-Mafia land show a great deal of courage in resisting sabotage and intimidation.

As one of Woody Guthrie’s songs says, ‘Some will rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen’. There is more than one way for workers to be exploited and oppressed, and the Mafia are the way of the six gun.

Paul Bennett