Judith Chubb, The Mafia and Politics
Cornell Studies in International Affairs, Occasional Papers No. 23 Copyright, Judith Chubb, 1989 Part I: The Mafia and Politics: The Italian State Under Siege In the 1970s and the 1980s the Italian state
came under
The Traditional Mafia: The "Man of Honor" As a point of departure it is essential to
define what is
Mafia is the consciousness of one's own worth, theA similar definition of the mafia was voiced by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, parliamentary deputy from western Sicily and Prime Minister from 1917-1919, who owed his own political success in large part to mafia support. Questioned about the criminal activities of the mafia, Orlando denied that the mafia as a criminal phenomenon existed. Instead, he equated the mafia with all that was best in Sicilian culture: if for mafia one intends the sense of honor carried toFranchetti and Sonnino noted that in Sicily violent actions carried with them no stigma of immorality, that might was accepted as the criterion of right. This they linked to the personalistic basis of Sicilian society: There is absent in the majority of Sicilians theThe same principle is embodied in a Sicilian proverb: "Cu dinari e cu amicizia, 'nculu a giustizia" ("With money and with friendship, you can screw justice"). The clearest expression of this disregard for the law and the dependence on private forms of power and justice is the principle of omerta or silence, the refusal to cooperate with legal authorities in the pursuit of someone accused of a criminal action. Again, the point is succinctly made in a popular Sicilian proverb: "Cu e surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent'anni 'mpaci" (He who is deaf, blind and silent will live a hundred years in peace"). Students of the mafia debate whether omerta should best be understood as an expression of social consensus surrounding the mafia or whether it is instead a pragmatic response based primarily on fear. While the "mafia spirit" described above may have developed over the centuries in Sicily as an expression of revolt against outside domination, it developed after 1860 into a "Sicilianist" ideology, a rhetoric of self-justification against the Italian state and against outsiders who identified the source of Sicily's ills in presumed flaws of the Sicilian character. The Sicilianist ideology reacted against such accusations by exalting (like Pitre and Orlando) the Sicilian code of honor, identifying the mafia with broader subcultural values, and thereby denying its existence as a distinct criminal phenomenon. Pre-existing cultural codes were thus manipulated in a self-serving fashion by the mafia itself to justify its existence and obscure its ultimate reliance on violence and intimidation and by local elites to deflect attention from their own complicity. It is a mistake in any case to see the mafia purely as an expression of the Sicilian character or of pre-modern cultural values. To understand the development of the mafia in the 19th and 20th centuries, it is necessary to place the mafia in the context of the economic, social and political arrangements within which it emerged and thrived. Recent scholarly analyses of the origins of the mafia depict it not as a residue of a feudal past, but rather as a product of the disintegration of the feudal system and the penetration of the market and the modern state into the Sicilian countryside in the 19th century--a situation of transition in which traditional relationships of economic and political power were breaking down but not fully replaced by the impersonal structures of the market and the state. These processes were set into motion by the attempts of the Bourbon rulers of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies beginning in the 1820s to undermine the feudal structure of landownership and the power of the barons by passing reforms intended to encourage the creation of a new class of smallholders. This process of breaking up the vast feudal estates or latifondi was continued after the Unification of Italy, in 1860, through the sale of Church and communal lands. Unlike the rest of southern Italy, however, the process of breaking up the feudal estates proceeded much more slowly in Sicily and with consequences quite different from the original intention of creating a small-holding peasant class. Land did change hands, but the structure of land tenancy was not significantly altered; in fact, with the sale of Church and demanial lands, the weight of large-scale private property further increased. The main effect of the reforms was to create a new bourgeois landowning class (a prototype of which is found in the character of Don Calogero Sedara in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel, The Leopard) alongside the landed aristocracy while further increasing the number of landless peasants and the pressure of population upon the remaining available land. This rising bourgeoisie perpetuated a semi-feudal relationship between the landed elite and the peasantry. Thus, despite the destruction of the legal basis of feudalism and the emergence of a new landowning bourgeoisie, the latifondo as an economic and social system continued to dominate central and western Sicily until the end of the Second World War. The 19th and 20th century latifondo system which prevailed in the interior of central and western Sicily has been described as a form of "rent capitalism" specialized in the production and export of grain for international markets and profitable as a result of exploitation of land and labor rather than of productive investment in the agricultural process. Most of the landowning elite, both aristocratic and bourgeois, preferred life in the great urban centers of Palermo or Naples to existence in the desolate Sicilian countryside. The large estates were leased out to long-term tenants or gabelloti, who ran the estates in the owners' absence, dividing them into smaller plots for sublet to peasant sharecroppers. These "rural entrepreneurs" thus effectively controlled the livelihood of the peasants, who depended upon them for access to the land and who, given the pressure of overpopulation and the scarcity of available land, could be squeezed to the limit of survival. At the same time they accumulated wealth as well at the expense of the absentee landlords whom they cheated at the other end and who, finding themselves in financial difficulties, could often be persuaded to sell off parts of their estates at advantageous prices. Many mafia bosses began their careers as poor peasants or shepherds, then, having distinguished themselves by their capacity for violence and prepotenza (the rule of the strongest), became gabelloti on large estates and eventually landowners in their own right. In addition to land ownership, many mafiosi also became involved in the transformation and commercialization of agricultural products, as well as illegal activities such as cattle rustling, and acquired a leading role in rural banks and cooperatives, thereby reinforcing their position as privileged intermediaries in the economic transactions between the village and the larger society. The mafia thus emerged in response to the breakup of the feudal system and the increased possibilities for entrepreneurship and upward mobility which that breakup engendered. With the abolition of feudalism, both wealth and the capacity to prevail throughThe mafioso can thus best be understood, in the words of Anton Blok, as a "violent peasant entrepreneur," specializing in a role of economic and political mediation between traditional social classes and between the countryside and the outside world. One of the most acute students of the traditional mafia, Blok defines the mafioso as a "political middleman or power broker, whose raison d'etre lies in his capacity to acquire and maintain control over the paths linking the local infrastructure of the village to the superstructure of the larger society" (Blok 7). He plays a key role in managing the processes of conflict and accomodation among the state, the landowning elite, and the peasants, as well as monopolizing the critical junctures between the countryside and the larger economic and political systems. First of all, the mafioso performed functions of economic intermediation. In the course of the nineteenth century, mafiosi, through the exercise or threat of violence, came to hold monopoly positions in a series of markets, both legal and illegal. In the countryside, through their position as gabolloti, they controlled access to the key resource, the land, managing the gap between the peasants and the absentee landowning class, and between production and commercialization of the main crop, grain, which was transported to and sold in urban markets through networks monopolized by mafiosi. In addition to such intermediation in legal transactions, the mafia also organized its own illegal activities, the most prominent being protection rackets and the entire cycle of animal rustling, clandestine butchering, and the transport of the meat to urban markets. While most studies of the traditional mafia have focussed on the interior latifundial zones of central and western Sicily, it is important to note that the mafia was from the outset an urban as well as a rural phenomenon. In fact, early accounts of the mafia emphasize its presence not in the latifondo but in the intensive agriculture (primarily citrus groves) of the fertile and prosperous coastal plain (the Conca d'Oro) surrounding the city of Palermo--both before and after Unification the center of economic and political power in Sicily. The historian Pasquale Villari wrote in 1875, the largest number of crimes are committed by theIt is probably most accurate, then, to see the mafia not as a product of backwardness but of possibilities of enrichment and mobility, not of the latifondo system alone but of the relationship between the city of Palermo and its agricultural hinterland, be it the desolate expanses of the interior or the flourishing orchards of the Conca d'Oro (Catanzaro 1988: 20-24, 109-116; Lupo). In the rich and diversified agricultural economy of the coast, the foundation of mafia power lay in the institution of guardiania, a system of oversight and protection of the citrus groves similar to that provided by the gabelloto in the countryside. As in the countryside, this also placed the mafia in a crucial position in the marketing of the produce, the wholesale markets of Palermo being cited already in reports of the 1860s and 1870s as bastions of mafia power. Finally, in addition to controlling transportation and commercial networks, mafiosi also monopolized the supply of irrigation water critical to the success of the coastal agriculture and owned many of the mills and presses for grain, wine and olive oil. Some scholars have suggested that the distinguishing characteristic of the mafioso is that he is a vendor of trust - utilizing subcultural values of honor, instrumental friendship, and the legitimacy of private violence to guarantee stable economic transactions in a fragmented and highly competitive market situation characterized by the absence of the impersonal contractual or legal guarantees of the fully developed capitalist market and modern state (Catanzaro 1985: 38-41; Gambetta; Lupo 479; Schneider and Schneider 107-109). But the mafioso was more than a middleman regulating the interactions among distinct economic actors and markets. Through the use or threat of violence, he established and maintained monopoly positions in both legal and illegal economic ventures of his own, often moving back and forth between the legal and illegal sectors. What distinguishes the mafioso from other forms of entrepreneurship is the ultimate recourse to violence as a means of regulating competition and of acquiring both social status and wealth - a kind of "primitive accumulation" which will be utilized in the post-World War Two period to launch the mafia into new and even more lucrative economic activities. The economic bases of mafia power are reflected in its social composition. The sources are not unanimous as to the class basis of the mafia. While some observers have argued that mafiosi are to be found among all social classes, others have argued that the mafia is above all a middle-class phenomenon (see Catanzaro 1988: 16-19; Lupo 476). The latter explanation is the more persuasive. Examination of its key economic, social, and political functions shows the mafia to be positioned strategically between the peasants and the traditional landed aristocracy. The peasants were most often either the instruments or victims of the mafia, and the large landowners its accomplices or protectors. The mafia in the strict sense, however, was characterized already by Franchetti and Sonnino in their 1875 inquiry as "ruffians of the middle class": In Palermo and its hinterland the industry of violenceThis middle-class status is reflected in the professions typical of mafiosi. In the countryside and in the semi-rural towns and villages of the Conca d'Oro mafiosi, while often of peasant origin, rose to become estate guards, gabolloti and eventually landowners in their own right. Other typical professions were muleteers and carters (eventually mechanized transport firms), animal herders, wholesale and retail merchants, as well as middle-class professions such as doctors, lawyers, and pharmacists. Not only was the gabelloto cum mafioso a "violent entrepreneur" and a broker between the local economy and external markets; he performed important social and political functions as well. Critical to the emergence and persistence of the mafia was the absence of effective state power in the Sicilian countryside under both the Bourbons and the unified Kingdom of Italy. Except for the tax collector and the conscription officer, the state was distant and was viewed less as a legitimate source of authority than as a hostile and alien occupying force. In the vast empty expanses of the Sicilian countryside, the state as a guarantor of law and order simply did not exist. Thus, in the absence of one of the fundamental defining characteristics of the modern state--the territorial monopoly over the legitimate use of physical violence--private forms of violence and justice filled the gap. In such a context, it was not surprising that the abstract rule of law should carry little weight when confronted with quite concrete and immediate forms of power and coercion or that omerta, seen by many outsiders as a tragic flaw of the Sicilian character, should prevail as a rational response to the total inability of legal institutions to provide protection and redress. In the absence of state power, a kind of Hobbesian universe was created where individual violence and prepotenza reigned and gained greater popular legitimacy than the formal institutions of the state. The predominance of informal mechanisms of power and influence like the mafia was reinforced by the terms upon which Italian Unification took place. The relationship between the newly created Kingdom of Italy and the Italian South is the key to understanding the central role played by the mafia in Sicilian society and politics after 1860. It is precisely the relationship of the mafia to political institutions and the legitimacy that the mafia acquired through that relationship which most clearly distinguish the mafia from other forms of delinquency (e.g., banditry) and organized crime. Unification was based upon a tacit alliance between the northern industrial bourgeoisie and the southern landed elite, an alliance which shaped the fundamental outlines of the Italian political system until the Fascist takeover in 1922. The terms of this alliance were perpetuation of the social and economic status quo in the South, complete freedom of action for dominant elites at the local level, and access to government patronage by southern deputies in return for their unquestioning support in Parliament for any government majority, regardless of its program. Such an alliance removed the central government as a meaningful political actor at the local level at the same time as, through the institution of elections and the gradual extension of the suffrage, it greatly strengthened both the autonomy and the national political leverage of local influence brokers. Thus, the new Italian state formally proclaimed a monopoly of violence, but at the same time delegated to local elites the power to govern in its name--those same local elites who were either the perpetrators or the protectors of the system of private violence which ruled de facto in the place of the state. Given the physical absence of both the central state and of much of the propertied class from the countryside, the local elite came in many cases either to be identical with the mafia or, at the very least, to protect it. In this context, these "violent peasant entrepreneurs" assumed a series of essential functions in social and political life. One set of functions revolved about the maintenance of order and social stability in the countryside. One form this took was "protection"--in return for the payment of tribute--of life and property against attack by thieves or bandits. Although, given the endemic insecurity of the countryside and the inability of the state to provide its own form of protection, such a service was certainly necessary, in reality it was often an extortion racket in which the mafia skimmed a profit off peasant and large landowner alike. If anyone refused to come to terms with the local capo-mafia, he would soon find himself subject to thefts, fires, and destruction of property until he saw fit to pay for the necessary "protection." While protection rackets placed the mafia in an ambiguous position vis-a-vis the dominant classes, other aspects of their social role placed mafiosi more squarely on the side of the established order. As we have seen above, central to the mafioso's raison d'etre was his role as mediator--not just in the relations between the village and the outside world, but also with regard to conflicts within the local society. In a Hobbesian universe where an intense and unbounded competition for individual honor and wealth would otherwise prevail, the mafioso, once having achieved a position of prestige through violence and aggression, then began to seek ways to regulate the intense war of all against all, which would otherwise tear the society apart and threaten his own position. As Calogero Vizzini, one of the last of the "old-style" bosses put it, The fact is that in every society there has to be aIn addition to the typical conflicts concerning land rights, debts, the honor of women, and the like, one form of intervention in which the mafia was particularly successful was the restoration of stolen property. In the exercise of this function the mafia proved much more efficient than the police. Some interesting data in this regard were reported by the Fascist Prefect of Palermo, Cesare Mori. According to Mori, in 75% of thefts in his district the official authorities failed to achieve any result; in 15% of the cases they succeeded in finding the guilty party; in only 10% of the cases did they also recover the stolen goods. By contrast, still according to Mori, in 95% of the cases the mediation of the mafia met with full success (data cited in Arlacchi 1986: 34). A final aspect of the mafia's role as guarantor of order and social stability regards the repression of both common crime and political deviance. In effect, the central government delegated to the mafia the function of maintaining public order in the territories under its control. In this role the mafia became not so much an enemy as a collaborator of the state. It is in this face of the mafia as a guarantor of public order and social peace which illustrates most clearly the contrast with other endemic forms of delinquency such as banditry. The bandit or brigand was a marginal figure, in constant and open conflict with both the state and the dominant classes. The mafia, on the other hand, was at the same time both a competitor and a collaborator of the state and the dominant elite, seeking to preserve and profit by existing structures of power rather than rebelling against them. It is precisely in this ambiguity that the uniqueness of the mafia as a social and political phenomenon lies. Not only did the mafia effectively curb banditry and common crime in areas under its control; it also served when necessary as the armed agent of the state in the repression of political deviation. Although this face of mafia power emerged as early as the 1890s in response to the formation of the Fasci Siciliani (a socialist reform movement), it assumed its most virulent form in the immediate post-World War II period. The period from 1943 to 1950 in Sicily was marked by widespread peasant unrest and mass occupations of large estates, led primarily by the Communist and Socialist parties, in order to put pressure on the government to enact land reform. This mobilization of the peasants helped the Left to win a plurality of the vote in the first elections for the Sicilian regional assembly held in April 1947. During this period the mafia, allied initially with the Sicilian Separatist Movement (dominated by the large landowners fearful of left-wing influence at the national level) brought many bandits into the Separatist "army" to be used as front-line troops against the peasant movement and the left-wing parties. The threat posed to the traditional social order by large-scale peasant mobilization, combined with the broader international context of increasing Cold War tensions, led as well to contacts with representatives of the Christian Democratic Party, already emerging as the dominant political force at both the regional and national levels. An exemplary illustration of the way in which the mafia used bandits to serve its own ends, as well as broader poliitical interests, is the case of Salvatore Giuliano. Initially an enemy of the great landowners and the mafia in the tradition of the southern Italian brigand, Giuliano was coopted by the mafia to terrorize the peasants who were organizing to occupy the great estates. On May 1, 1947, two weeks after the electoral victory of the Left, Giuliano's band attacked a peaceful gathering of peasants celebrating Labor Day outside the town of Portella delle Ginestre, leaving 11 dead and 56 wounded. The massacre at Portella delle Ginestre marked the peak of a campaign of terror in which the mafia, either directly or through intermediaries like Giuliano, assassinated scores of peasant leaders and trade-union organizers. This campaign of violence and intimidation successfully decapitated the peasant movement and seriously undermined the electoral base of the left-wing parties. When Giuliano's usefulness had been exhausted, however, and he threatened to become politically dangerous, he was in turn eliminated through a joint effort of the mafia and the carabinieri--testimony once again to the ambiguous relationship between private and official violence. During the 1951 trial of the surviving members of Giuliano's band for the deaths at Portella delle Ginestre, the role played by the mafia and national political leaders emerged clearly; as Giuliano's lieutenant, Gaspare Pisciotta, announced at the trial, "We are a single body--bandits, police, and mafia--like the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" (Antimafia Commission 1976: 131). However, no judicial action was taken against those to whom the finger of political responsibility pointed. As for Pisciotta, who swore that he would eventually reveal the truth about those responsible for the crimes committed by Giuliano and his band, he died a suspicious death of poisoning inside the high-security prison of Palermo. The political role of the mafia, however, went beyond the maintenance of order in the countryside and the repression of political deviance through violence and intimidation. It also served the critical function of political mediation, linking the local society to broader structures of political consensus and democratic representation. In a situation where politics was dominated by personalistic ties, where neither mass parties nor broader structures of interest representation had penetrated, mafiosi, as the holders of significant positions of local influence, quickly became great electors, mobilizing support for candidates in both local and national elections or, in some cases, went beyond the function of brokerage to assume local elective positions in their own right. As Franchetti and Sonnino put it in their 1875 report on conditions in Sicily, "The primary responsibility for the disorder in many local administrations lies with the mafia, which has penetrated all the parties and prospers there at the expense of the public interest" (Franchetti and Sonnino xxv). In a similar vein and in the same year, the magistrate Diego Tajani proclaimed in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies, "The mafia ... is not dangerous or invincible in and of itself, but because it is an instrument of local government" (cited in Catanzaro 1988: 109). This direct link to the institutions of local government gave the mafia access to public funds and to a wide range of patronage resources which allowed it to further consolidate its wealth and power and its hold over the local population. In addition, because of its control of many local administrations and its crucial role in the election of many parliamentary deputies, the mafia in turn received protection, recognition, and legitimation from national authorities. In the words of the Sicilian historian, Francesco Renda, what distinguishes the mafia from other forms of delinquency is that "it commits crimes with the almost total certainty of impunity from justice, being able to count on complicity, connivance and support in order to throw sand into the machine of justice" (Renda 1983: 153). The combination of omerta (the code of silence) among the population and the complicity of high-ranking politicians and public functionaries insured the almost certain acquittal of those mafiosi who were brought to trial. In fact, a long record of acquittals for lack of sufficient evidence came to be one of the hallmarks of the "true" mafioso. Despite the recurrent use or threat of violence which distinguishes the mafia from mere corruption, the mafia boss within his own community was considered not a criminal, but rather a community leader--prestigious, influential, and respected as well as feared. The career of the typical mafioso passed through two distinct stages. The first was the competition for honor and wealth in a Hobbesian universe without social or legal constraints and the affirmation, through the commission of acts of violence, of the mafioso as a "man of respect." The second stage could be considered one of "institutionalization." Domination through physical force was translated into authority, and the status of the mafioso rose from criminal to respected member of the local elite, recognized and legitimated by the representatives of legal power. This required the passage from self-affirmation through violence to the containment and management of conflict within the mafioso's territorial domain, as well as the creation of networks of social and political relations to sustain his position; in this stage of his career the mafioso was seen by the authorities as a "man of order." The mafia thus served as an important channel of social mobility in an otherwise rigid class structure. The traditional mafia boss would be seen in the company of the mayor, the local parliamentary deputy or cabinet minister, the priest, and the carabinieri - he was on intimate terms with the entire local elite and at times even formally a part of it. Emblematic of the traditional mafioso are the careers of Calogero Vizzini and Giuseppe Genco Russo, reputed to be the most powerful mafia bosses of the 1940s and 1950s. Vizzini, of peasant origin and semi-literate, became gabelloto of a large estate as well as a sulphur mine in central Sicily; as a representative of a consortium of sulphur mine operators, he even participated in high-level meetings in Rome and London concerning government subsidies and tariffs. When the Allies landed in Sicily, Vizzini's reputation was such that he was nominated mayor of his hometown, Villalba; in the postwar period, he initially supported the Separatist movement and subsequently joined the Christian Democratic Party. Upon Vizzini's death in 1954, his successor was Giuseppe Genco Russo. Like Vizzini, Genco Russo was of peasant origin and, through a career of violence stretching from the 1920s to the 1940s, established his position as a "man of honor;" during that period he was arrested repeatedly on charges ranging from theft and extortion to membership in a criminal association to murder and, with one exception, regularly acquitted on grounds of insufficient evidence (the mark of the successful mafioso). In 1944 the court granted Genco Russo a decree of rehabilitation for his one conviction, thereby allowing him to recreate a moral and social virginity, acquiring a respectability which will permit him to undertake even political activity. (Antimafia Commission 1972, Vol. 1: 379)This political activity consisted initially inupport for the Separatist and Monarchist causes (he was awarded the honorific title of Cavaliere della Corona d'Italia in 1946), and then for the Christian Democratic Party, of which he became a local leader and town councillor in the 1960s. Genco Russo's description of himself and of his role in the community provide an eloquent illustration of the self-image of the mafioso in the second, "legitimate" stage of his career - the mafioso as a public benefactor rather than as a dangerous criminal: It's in my nature. I have no ulterior motives. If IVizzini and Genco Russo also illustrate another essential characteristic of the mafia--its capacity to adapt to changing economic, social and political circumstances. Although the mafia often employed violence to resist change, it also proved capable of manipulating popular movements or progressive reforms for its own ends. We have already seen evidence of such adaptability in the mafia's reaction to the breakdown of feudalism, Italian unification, and the introduction of democratic institutions. During the socialist movement of the Sicilian Fasci in the 1890s and the peasant land occupations in the aftermaths of the First and Second World Wars, the mafia responded with a dual strategy. On the one hand, as shown above, the mafia served as an instrument of armed repression against leftist movements; on the other, it took over the new organizational forms and turned them from vehicles of class mobilization into means for perpetuating traditional social values and relationships. Both Vizzini and Genco Russo organized peasant cooperatives during both postwar periods, through which they deflected the appeal of the left-wing parties, maintained their hold over the peasants, and guaranteed their own continued access to the land. When land reform was finally enacted in 1950, mafiosi were in a position to perform their traditional role of brokerage between the peasants, the landlords, and the state. They were able to exploit the intense land hunger of the peasants, gain concessions from the landlords in return for limiting the impact of the reform, and make substantial profits from their mediation in land sales. Once again, one sees the fusion of economic gain with functions of social and political control. Raimondo Catanzaro has argued that the essence of the mafia and the explanation for its persistence in the face of dramatic changes in economic, social, and political conditions lies in a process of "social hybridization: mafia groups are not relics of the past, but wereThus, far from falling victim to processes of modernization, as many observers of the traditional mafia predicted, mafiosi emerged instead as protagonists of change, as will become dramatically evident from the mid-1950s on. In conclusion, the traditional mafia should be seen as a system of violent clienteles, an integral part of a chain of patron-client relations linking the Sicilian peasant to the holders of national political power. In return for his vote and for other potentially less savory services the peasant received protection and a variety of small favors from the mafioso, who in turn received protection, legitimation, and access to public resources from more highly placed patrons among the dominant political and economic elites in return for the key social and political functions which he performed. Far from challenging the power or status of the dominant elite, the successful mafioso became part of that elite. Far from substituting itself for the state or constituting an autonomous state within the state, as many analyses of the mafia have suggested, the traditional mafia functioned in a symbiotic relationship with the state, depending on the state insofar as a substantial part of its power was rooted either in the delegation of certain functions from the central government or in privileged access to critical levers of state power and patronage. It was precisely this relationship of mafiosi to the dominant classes and to public authorities which rendered them immune to any state-based action against them. The successful mafioso became an integral part of the power structure, a solid pillar of support for the forces opposing transformation of the existing social order. In the words of the Antimafia Commission of the Italian Parliament, a source which cannot be suspected of political bias One can conclude that the mafia was in its origins not a phenomenon of the subordinate classes, as such excluded from any power agreement, but, on the contrary, a phenomenon of those classes which at the moment of back to syllabus |