Pathfinders: Dark capitalism (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers may have noticed that phishing emails have increased to almost epidemic rates lately. These are no longer badly spelled with wonky grammar. They are sophisticated efforts with corporate logos and plausible small print, purporting to be from banks or internet service providers, or even from your own club or organisation. Like Dracula, they can’t get into your system unless you invite them across the threshold, in this case by clicking the provided link. Once in, they aim to drain your bank account dry. A simple rule is to assume that anything asking you to click or open something is a scam unless you’re absolutely sure it isn’t. You can find some other good advice here.

There are phone scammers too, who are as annoying as they are persistent. In an effort to fight back, some computer scientists have set up honeytrap accounts, supposedly belonging to innocent and confused old ladies, but really controlled by an AI bot with the sole function of keeping scammers tied up in long phone calls answering silly questions.

But all that is a drop in the bucket compared to what’s really going on in that shadowy criminal dimension of the profit system, which we might call ‘dark capitalism’. Scamming is just one facet of this, but it’s not just a grubby little cottage industry anymore, it’s a multi-billion dollar global industry on the scale, by some estimates, of the illegal drug trade.

A deep and deeply disturbing analysis of this industry was provided recently in an 8-part podcast series called Scam Inc. by the Economist‘s South-East Asia correspondent Sue-Lin Wong. Since most of the series is paywalled it’s worth briefly recapping here. Just as AI can be used to fight scams, it is also being used to create them. There are two main types, love scams and crypto investment scams. Love scams target single, often older people, drawing them into a heady and convincing online or phone relationship until they are completely convinced it is real. AI is used to research and identify likely marks, and then deep-fake face and voice calls, as well as web and social media ‘histories’. The victim is cultivated over months, and then invited to make a small investment which sure enough sees a profitable return, reinforcing their sense of trust. When they are later invited to make a big investment, with huge returns, they have no reason to think it’s not genuine. And then, nothing. All the calls stop, the number is unobtainable, the scammer has vanished and so has the money. This, in the trade, is chillingly referred to as ‘pig butchering’.

Crypto scams target people, perhaps with retirement savings, who are persuaded that they can’t lose. Smart people are often at particular risk, largely because they overestimate their own sceptical faculties and underestimate how devious and tech-savvy the scammers are. One corporate finance manager paid over $21 million of company funds after his board of directors, all of whom he knew personally, told him to in a teleconferencing meeting. What he didn’t know was that the ‘board of directors’ were all deep-fake computer voices, and so convincing that he couldn’t tell the difference. How can anyone defend themselves against that? Sue-Lin Wong’s own solution has been to give all her family members a secret password, so that if ‘she’ ever phoned them asking for large amounts of money, they would have a way to verify it was really her.

You might think, at this point, that these scammers are the amoral jackals of capitalism, the worst of what Marx called the ‘lumpenproletariat’. But the truth is even more horrible than that. Having interviewed one love-scam victim in Canada who lost $75,000, Sue-Lin performed the almost miraculous feat of tracking down the very scammer who did it. And what she found would chill anyone’s blood.

This is where dark capitalism turns darkest of all. The guilty scammer wasn’t some ruthless money-grabbing parasite, she was a helpless kidnap victim terrified for her life. She had applied for what seemed like a promising job in Thailand, on the advice of a supposed friend, then was bundled into a car at Bangkok airport, trussed and blindfolded and driven across the border to a ‘scam compound’ in Myanmar, a barbed-wire fringed mini-city patrolled by dogs and armed guards. Her passport was taken away, and she was ordered to use the phones to scam westerners, on pain of physical beating, or even execution. Only if she scammed enough money would she ever be set free, they told her. In her compound were hundreds of other kidnap victims, all forced to do the same thing. And hers was only one of many such compounds.

Who are the gang lords behind all this? Very likely Chinese former Triad (mafia) bosses, kicked out of China by Xi Jinping’s crackdowns but able to operate scams from anywhere. Under pressure from China, Myanmar’s rebel forces recently broke open some of these scam compounds, releasing hundreds of trafficking victims. But such compounds exist in other places across the world. One was even uncovered on the Isle of Man.

Even socialists, who think they know the depths of capitalism’s depravity, must quail at its darkest criminal side, where no laws inhibit its drive to make a profit no matter who suffers. Here is where you see what money does to people, how low it makes them sink. Here is where the need to abolish capitalism screams, as loud as in any warzone, any overcrowded hospital, any sink estate, any overdose or private numb despair.

And yet, decent humanity shines through even in such circumstances. When told the full story about the Myanmar scammer who took $75,000 from him, the Canadian offered to meet her to assure her that he didn’t blame her for anything, and that he wished her well in the future. She, sadly, was too traumatised to agree to the meeting.

Paddy Shannon

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 . . .

"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.)

Voice From The Back: Business as usual (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Business as usual

The International Monetary Fund calculates that up to £1,000 billion made from drugs, prostitution, fraud and extortion is sloshing around the world’s 15 offshore tax havens. The secret BND (German intelligence service) report, The Money Laundering Community in Liechtenstein, reveals that billions of pounds of assets have been placed in secret trust funds by the American Mafia, the notorious Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel and the Juarez drug cartel of Mexico . . . One secret service source said: “Liechtenstein is at the epicentre of money-laundering in the world. Tough news laws in Switzerland mean that the Swiss are moving all their dirty deals to Liechtenstein. They can pass all the laws they want there, but as long as the same bank experts and lawyers are in charge there will not be any change.” Financial Mail on Sunday, 16 July.

Cruel Britannia

One of the claims made by Blairite supporters is that we now live in “Cool Britannia”, a land where artists, film-makers and trendy “in” people thrive. A recent Unicef report paints a different picture: “The Observer (11 June) has obtained a report by Unicef, the children’s arm of the UN, which says that Britain has one of the worst records on childhood poverty in the industrialised world. Nearly 20 percent of young people live in families which are below the official poverty line—judged as a household income below half median earnings.” Behind the statistics lies real misery of almost Dickensian proportions: “Children are eating main meals which consist of little more than toast and beans, and rice pudding. Many live in terrible surroundings with damp running down the walls and inadequate heating. Parents often cannot afford to buy new clothes as the little money they have is spent on food. Some lone parents have less than £100 a week with which to bring up their children and pay the bills.”

Student letter

“I go to university all day, come home and do my projects and homework then work part time at the weekends. It’s exhausting. The final straw came when I applied for free prescriptions and was told that my wages (£30 per week) and my student loan, which is classed as earnings, is over the government threshold. According to ‘New Labour’, students can live on £46 a week. So I would like to ask our politicians: how can a loan be classed as earnings when it has to be repaid and how can a student live on less money than a pensioner?” Evening Mail, 29 July.

Greenpeace futility

The latest Greenpeace leaflet appealing for funds paints a gruesome picture of capitalist society in the future: “A flailing dolphin gasps madly for air. Where once there was living forest, now silence reigns. More and more of our children are choked by invisible poisons. Fields of genetically modified crops dominate the countryside, bereft of song and life . . . This is not science fiction. It is a realistic vision of a world without Greenpeace.”

So what do Greenpeace propose to do about pollution? They claim they have succeeded in getting Unilever to remove GM ingredients from their products; that they have forced the president of a G7 country to stop a nuclear test and have designed a “green” fudge. They hope to “keep the North Atlantic alive” and are striving to protect the Amazon rainforest from illegal logging”. All of these are doomed to failure because the cause of all environmental problems is the way wealth is produced. The whole purpose of production is to make a profit, and if it is necessary to pollute the planet in order to realise that profit then that is what capitalism will do. Persuading presidents and petitioning multi-nationals are pathetic operations. The need is for a new society based on production solely for use.

Profits first and last

A British company, Premier oil, went ahead with a £500m project to pipe gas through Burma despite warnings that its partner, the Burmese military, was using slave labour—including children—on the pipeline . . . Premier’s American partner, Texaco, has since pulled out of Burma. But despite the British government taking the unprecedented step in April of asking Premier to leave, the oil company has refused. Guardian, 27 July.

Crime and Capital (2020)

From the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private enterprise pays

At the beginning of July, it was loudly trumpeted in the media that hundreds of people had been arrested in operations across Europe. It was a directed strike at organised crime groups, enabled by French police compromising the communication servers of a company called Enchrochat, which offered secure encrypted communications. Believing themselves safe from police surveillance the criminal entrepreneurs using its services were caught planning drugs deals, kidnappings and murders.

The enterprises engaged in drug production on an industrial scale. Police uncovered ‘19 meth labs, 1,200kg of meth and 10 tons of cocaine’ (LINK). This industrialism is complemented by the horrifying fact that Dutch police found a shipping container that had been converted into a soundproofed torture chamber, complete with a chair to strap victims into.

Enchrochat charged £1,500 for a 6 month contract with its dedicated handsets, and it’s believed that 10,000 people in the UK availed themselves of its possibilities, out of 60,000 worldwide (LINK). The law enforcement agencies consider that this was a bespoke service for criminal enterprises, used by middle tiers and upwards of organised criminals. So this set of police raids, which have netted 800 arrests (so far) has also revealed the extent of organised crime.

Although those numbers sound large on their own, what they reveal is how small the organised criminal underworld really is, and how efficient their business is for so small a number to cause so much pain and mayhem. Just as with most other enterprises, modern industrial technology has increased the productivity of those whose output is crime.

The raids in the UK amounted to over 700 arrests, netting £54 million in cash. This is, though, not the full value of these businesses.

These are early days, and the state agencies have a vested interest in saying everyone who used these machines was a criminal (as opposed to legitimate business people with a need for privacy). What these events show, though, is the professionalisation of crime. Indeed, the root cause of crime is free enterprise, and entrepreneurs would be foolish not to make the best use of available technology to spread their businesses. They co-operate across borders with business partners (the press called them ‘gangs’) in other countries.

Like any other business, they need to co-ordinate their activities, and although this co-ordination remains hidden most of the time, this communication was used in this case to smash their organisations. They also need secrecy, lest their competitors take their markets from them (their competitors including capitalist businesses that are ‘legitimate’ and use the law to make their money rather than breaking it). Like the criminals, the police advanced their use of technology. As Joseph Cox (also at Vice) explained, there was:

‘…malware on the Encrochat device itself, meaning that it could potentially read the messages written and stored on the device before they were encrypted and sent over the internet’ (LINK).

Enchrochat themselves boasted that nothing was stored on their servers, and that their phones had an easy wipe feature. The malware prevented wiping and stored passwords.

The loss of Enchrochat has temporarily broken the bond of trust needed to engage in this type of business, but new encryption services are coming forward, and the criminal enterprises will learn and return to their pursuit of wealth and profit without restraint at the first opportunity. After all, isn’t that what capitalist ideologues tell us all to do: fill your boots?

Pandering to the wealthy

Similarly, a criminal enterprise broken apart by state action is Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. His ‘little black book’ of contacts has been released and while, it should be stressed, there is no reason to think any of the names listed in it are connected with his sex crimes, it is an interesting insight into the connectedness of the rich and powerful (LINK). Just as criminal gangs organise in international networks, so too do supposedly legitimate businesses.

Jeffrey Epstein famously committed suicide in prison (under murky circumstances that led many to claim he was ‘suicided’). He was convicted of sex trafficking, as his Wikipedia article relates:

‘Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring an underage girl for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He served almost 13 months in custody, but with extensive work release. He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal; federal officials had identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused’.

His initially lenient sentence after the plea deal was attributed by many to his having influential friends.

He was a wealthy financier from a modest background. He gained wealth in the ‘80s as a Wall Street trader. Steven Hoffenberg, who served 20 years in federal prison, claims Epstein was a co-conspirator in his fraud, and yet he was not charged. He moved in to managing the investments of the truly wealthy.

 He used his wealth to pander to other wealthy and powerful men. It is interesting to see who was willing to be a recipient of his largess, flying on his private jet – rather tastelessly nicknamed ‘the Lolita Express’ (apparently because of the number of teenage girls it flew to his private island). The list of those who flew on the jet included Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Andrew, Duke of York. Epstein’s contact list included Prime Ministers like Tony Blair (of course, this just means he knew their contact details, not that they had been in contact).

At his death, he possessed $112 million in investments, $56 million in cash and was worth an estimated total of $577 million, including his Caribbean private islands. As a fund manager he made his wealth looking after billions of dollars of other people’s money. To that end, his luxurious lifestyle was part of his means of impressing clients and potential investment partners.

That lifestyle included using his wealth to obtain and sexually abuse young women and girls. While still alive he settled a string of lawsuits with pay-offs. There are allegations he provided girls to his contacts (LINK). More will come out, doubtless, in the upcoming trials of his associates.

Like the Enchrochat criminals, wealth and respectability came to him from the proceeds of criminality. Like the, state intervention shows how the powerful and wealthy organise and connect to each other. The wealth stolen from our labour funds these lavish lifestyles. For the truly wealthy, the law becomes optional, and it took particularly egregious behaviour from Epstein to even get a slap on the wrist.

The connection between his world and the Dutch torturers is wealth and ego turning into impunity: wealth, secrecy and power go hand in hand which in turn enables criminality. Billionaires do not need a lift on a friend’s jet, but they like the flattery and affirmation.

Pik Smeet

Another look at law and order (1970)

From the May 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the next few months we shall all have to exercise considerable patience and understanding. All our politicians are going to be under a great strain. Everything they say will have to be assessed with due regard for the fact that a general election is not far off. They are all looking for a vote-catching Election Issue.

The Conservatives are probably rather happy about the votes they hope to win over the issue of Law and Order. This is a fine, upstanding, majestic phrase which has the added advantage of meaning almost anything the user likes. The Fascists use it to mean cracking down on coloured immigrants, with the implied conclusion that this would at once clean up all the brothels and drug-pushing. For the Tories, Law and Order is a convenient political weapon to use against the government. Quintin Hogg recently displayed their policy, like a salesman showing his samples, when he said, and at the same time did not say, that the Labour government is responsible for a higher crime rate.

It is so widely accepted that crime is increasing that to question it seems almost as crankish as questioning whether the earth is a sphere. As the criminal statistics come out they show an average annual increase in indictable offences known to the police of something like 7 per cent. The overall picture shows that, after a period of relative stability at the beginning of the century, the crime figures rose steadily; between 1915 and 1930 by an average of 5 per cent a year, between 1931 and 1948 by 7 per cent. For the years 1949 to 1954 there was an overall decrease, then the figure starts going up again. Between 1955 and 1965 it was 10 per cent; after a levelling off in 1967 it fell to 7 per cent in 1968 but for last year it is likely to have reached 10 per cent again. About 37.000 people are at present in prison, borstal or detention centre — and again this figure is rising, despite the attempts, for example the introduction of suspended sentences in the 1967 Criminal Justice Act, to cut the population behind bars.

So we have the popular hysteria that England, which was once tranquil and law-abiding, is now become a paradise for layabouts, junkies, sexual deviants, violent gangsters, all supported by massive handouts from the Welfare State presided over by sloppy penal reformers. Wc might expect that the judiciary should be in the vanguard of this reaction. Like Mr. Justice Eveleigh. wondering at York Assizes earlier this year whether "our attitude to crime and the criminal” was partly responsible for the increase in crime and violence. The judges are usually closely followed by the police in such sentiments. Robert Mark, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, recently complained (The Guardian 26/3/70) that the criminal law acts now as a frustration to the police instead of their ally.

However, a cold eye cast upon the crime wave may see it rather differently. Something like 3 per cent of recorded crime can be called serious. Sex and violence offences are never more than 5 per cent of the total. There are three or four homicides for each million of the population each year. As a whole, this country is reasonably peaceful. Old ladies — even judges — can sleep safe in their beds.

This leads to a more fundamental questioning of the crime statistics. First, let us be clear that the figures record only crimes which are known to the police, which means that almost certainly they are an underestimation. They are also susceptible to many other subjective influences, like a change in the method of recording or a temporary campaign by the police, energised by a chief constable with a zeal for hunting down a particular crime, or by a decline in public tolerance of it.

Legislation can itself also have an effect on the crime figures. On one side of the balance, an Act can reduce a crime rate by simply legalising something which was previously illegal. On the other side, a new law can create a new crime, as rationing spawned the black market and as the Theft Act widened the definition of indictable crime. Somewhere in this field is the example of the Children and Young Persons Act of 1933. This Act provided a gentler method of dealing with juveniles before the courts and this is widely held to be the encouragement which led to the rise in recorded juvenile crime after 1933.

What do the statistics, so widely quoted, so freely used, really register? Crime is not a static thing, to be related to a sort of moral index which eternally condemns some actions as criminal. It is an activity which can only be socially defined. So how do we define it, how do we measure it? Here we meet the first problem, because any definition or measurement might be dealing with some other social breakdown or development which is expressed in crime. It might be dealing with a slump, a war, the growth of towns — even something like an increase in hire-purchase trading.

One example of this is in the rise of the self-service store and the supermarket. These have vastly expanded the opportunities of the shoplifter and one well-informed source has it that a fall-off in shop-lifting causes some supermarkets to question the attractiveness of their displays. So what does an increase in shoplifting really register? An increase in criminality among foreign students and depressed, middle-aged women? Or more skilful marketing snares by the shop management?

Supermarkets are another step in the process of town development, which goes back a very long time. There were periods of intense growth; for example during the years 1821 to 1831 the population of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds grew at least four times as fast as England as a whole.

There are plenty of accounts of what happened then, as the people poured into the towns, looking for somewhere to live and something to live on. In a word, they placed a strain on the social structure which it was not equipped to resist. Crime which was suited to an urban setting — prostitution, pocket-picking, shoplifting — flourished, and was checked only by urban organisation against it. One account of London in 1829 says:

   Street robberies have multiplied in the metropolis to a dangerous extent, and are perpetrated in the most daring manner. Gentlemen have frequently their watches plucked out of the fob, or their pocket-book or purse snatched or cut away, in the most crowded thoroughfares . . .

At the same time, to complete the picture, the towns supplied the resources to support their crime — a network of receivers and the notorious rookeries, where criminals could take refuge among the dense maze of festering alleyways and courtyards.

This is one example of the growth of crime in fact measuring some other social pressures. Another, more up to date, is in the increased possession and use of those drugs which the law defines as dangerous (there are plenty of dangerous ones which are legal; and although some of the illegal drugs are extremely dangerous it is another story, why the law legalises some dangerous activities and forbids others.) The use of drugs, in most cases, is a symptom of a dissatisfaction with society. Perhaps it is a matter of a massive frustration — a common enough thing in the suppressive, insecure world of capitalism. Or perhaps a sharpened sense of alienation from human priorities — of the boredom and futility of a lifetime of employment and the prostitution of our abilities to the one aim of getting and holding down a job.

The magistrate who cracks down on the cannabis smoker is not required — and rarely shows any sign of wanting — to consider such aspects of the “offence". In this, he is expressing some of the popular hysteria over Law and Order. We might expect, as in most cases where moral stands are taken up, to find some double standards. Few people can claim not to have offended sometime against capitalism’s laws — not to have bilked on fares, or kept money they have found, or not told the shop assistant who has given them too much change. Then there is the vast amount of “white collar” crime — fiddling expense accounts, “adjusting” the petty cash book — which goes undetected or, if discovered, is hushed up.

Capitalism, like other social systems, erects its own morals on its economic basis. The morals of capitalism are those of private property and as property is essentially a matter of minority privilege it follows that the unprivileged majority are all potential offenders against those morals. One thing which can be said with certainty is that about 90 per cent of crime consists of offences against property. This is not to say that criminals, whether hardened or petty, are a threat to the property system. They are as much in favour of capitalism as any dogged Tory; they are only interested in adjusting the balance of possession in their favour and are ready to break the rules to do so.

The phrase Law and Order illustrates that one is considered inseparable from the other. (In fact some actions — for example smoking pot — can be orderly but illegal and others — for example a war effort — can be legal but disorderly.) By order capitalism means an acceptance of its own social structure, morals and priorities. It means that the vast majority must accept their inferior status as wage slaves, keeping any efforts to defend or improve their conditions within defined limits. It also means that industry and transport can pollute, even destroy, the environment in the name of profit, with virtually no legal method of preventing them doing so. It means that politicians can break their promises, or adopt policies for which they have never asked for a mandate, and all this must be accepted. It means that everyone must conform to the pattern of a docile, respectable zombie who may have boiling frustrations but who never allows them to spill over.

If we accept that there is now more crime than ever before, this is another way of saying that capitalist society exerts a fiercer pressure than ever before and that the lives of its people are more unsatisfactory than ever before. Only a small part (about 3 per cent) of crime is the organised work of professional criminals. Most of it consists of actions, or gestures, which are the result of acute deprivations or alienation. In capitalist society, with its family structure and its wage labour system, with its privilege and suppressions, it is all too easy to fall into the sorry ranks of the deprived or to become a cast-out, unemployable and therefore unwanted.

This is a social problem, as virulent as any of those the reformers claim to have eradicated. It is usual for such problems, at some time in their lives, to become material for vote-catching politicians. So it is with Law and Order. Craftily, the government have pushed through measures like the abolition of hanging and the Misuse of Drugs Bill some time before the election, in the hope that such provocations to punitive workers will be forgotten when the votes come to be cast. Equally craftily, the Tories harp on the theme, encouraging the idea that crime can be reduced by the imposition of harsher penalties. (If it were that easy there would be a lot fewer ulcers in the Home Office.)

This may be all very well for the politicians but the rest of us are left with the unpleasant fact that Law and Order, like racialism, is a bandwagon which once rolling will be difficult to stop. At all events it will do damage along the way — and not only capitalism’s criminals will suffer under it.

Ivan

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.

Material World: Mexican Drug Wars (2013)

The Material World Column from the April 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the late 19th and early 20th century opium was imported into Mexico, mainly by Chinese immigrants. But by the 1920s and 1930s Mexicans were growing the poppies. Opium, cocaine, heroin and marijuana crossed the border into the United States with relative ease. With the outlawing of narcotics in the US, exporting became a very profitable line of business for those prepared to take the risks.

During the Cold War, a number of top officials of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) were involved, together with elements of the CIA and the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), in trafficking drugs into the United States. This apparently continued for at least 40 years.

Nevertheless, the Mexican army was used as part of a national campaign to eradicate the drug trade, and the growing of poppies. Much of this was ineffectual as growers bribed officials to leave their crops alone. In some states, such as Guerrero, the army was involved in armed conflict with local peasants. Indeed, when I was in Guerrero in 1979, travelling in a bus between Acapulco and Monelos, we were stopped by a unit of the army and forced to get out. In fact, the army was as much, if not more, concerned with combating ‘subversives’ as drug traffickers.

In Drug War Mexico: Politics, Neoliberalism and Violence in the New Narcoeconomy (Zed books, 2012) Peter Watt and Roberto Zepeda detail what, in 1976, was called Operation Condor, which involved the aerial spraying of opium fields with such chemicals as paraquat. It was a partial success. For a while the volume of drugs entering the United States was halved. But the demand for drugs in the US was, and still is, insatiable.

The Mexican state and drug traffickers have had, as the authors note, ‘a long history of collaboration, and it was generally state actors who supervised the entire business.’ This increased in the 1980s. Interestingly, the actual consumption of drugs including marijuana is and was lower in Mexico than in other Latin American countries and insignificant compared with the United States.

Since the 1980s, however, the poverty of the working class has exacerbated and perpetuated both drug production in Mexico and export to the US. According to Watt and Zepeda:

‘The prevalence of drug production, combined with economic reforms that essentially excluded much of the rural workforce from legitimate commercial activity, meant that it was very difficult to create suitable alternatives within the formal economy.’

By the mid-1980s Colombian drug cartels joined Mexican traffickers in establishing smuggling operations into the United States.

The election of Vincente Fox to the Mexican presidency in 2000, brought with it massive opportunities for the increasing and expanding of business by the narco-traffickers. And it allowed Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán Fuentes, the Capo of the Sinaloa cartel, to become the world’s most powerful and richest trafficker. ‘Perhaps the most significant charge in narcotrafficking as the new millennium began,’ say Watt and Zepeda, ‘was the cartels now started to treat members of the army, police forces, bankers and political officials as their employees,’ a reversal of the old arrangement. The development of a limited, bourgeois democracy in Mexico from the old authoritarian regime actually increased the power of the wealth of the narcotraffickers! As a result, Mexicans now live in a society characterised by ever-rising crime and insecurity.

The authors of Drug War Mexico note that although narcotics have been prevalent in Mexico since the 19th century, the level of illicit drug production and trafficking has now reached unprecedented proportions. For example, 90 per cent of all cocaine consumed in the US is trafficked through Mexico.

Many towns and cities in Mexico are suffering from organised crime. The exact number of deaths related to drug cartel violence is not known. Between 2006 and 2011 it was officially estimated at 39,000. More than 5,000 persons were reported as missing or disappeared, and 9,000 corpses have yet to be identified. My guess is that up to 100,000 Mexicans have died since 2005. More than 500,000 Mexicans are now directly or indirectly involved or employed in organised crime related to drugs. According to Juan Ramóde la Fuente in Foreign Affairs Latinomérica (2009), ‘We are confronted by a brutal and very sophisticated force, which has submarines, helicopters, airplanes, and sophisticated weaponry.’ The anti-drugs activities and efforts of both the Mexican and United States authorities have had little effect to date; although the Mexican army appears to have had more success in combating the so-called Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (the Zapatistas oppose the consumption of both narcotics and alcohol).

Is there a solution or solutions to Mexico’s drug wars, violence and killings, or the trade in drugs? Watt and Zepeda see some hope in legislation and in pressure groups – but not much. The brutal facts are that, within capitalism, in Mexico, the United States and globally, the commodification of drugs will continue as long as there are big profits to be made from their production, sale and trafficking.

Peter E. Newell

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