Traditional Mafia (original) (raw)

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
direct and violent attack on two fronts: terrorism and the mafia.
By the early 1980s the left-wing terrorism of the Red Brigades
had been isolated and defeated by an increasingly efficient
police operation backed up by a broad coalition of political and
social forces in defense of democratic institutions. In
contrast, the struggle of the Italian state against the mafia
continues to be characterized by a strikingly lower level of
commitment not only in term of men and means but, most
importantly, in terms of political support. How can the very
different behavior of the Italian state in response to these two
quite distinct, but equally deadly, attacks on its
representatives and its institutions be explained? This
monograph will argue that the key to understanding the
distinctive nature of the mafia lies precisely in its
relationship to political power and political institutions. Even
at its height terrorism remained essentially an external enemy,
politically isolated, and after the assassination of Aldo Moro in
1978, increasingly deprived of even the limited social support it
had initially enjoyed among some sectors of intellectuals,
disaffected youth, and the working class and undermined by
growing defections among its own ranks.
The relationship of the mafia to dominant elites and
institutions is quite a different one. The difficulty of the
Italian state in combatting the mafia arises fundamentally from
the fact that the mafia is not, like terrorism, an external enemy
but rather one which has succeeded in penetrating deeply into the
very institutions which are supposed to be fighting it. It is
this presence of the mafia within the very structure of the
Italian state which renders it a much more insidious and
ultimately a much more dangerous threat to democratic
institutions than was the more openly subversive but more
vulnerable and exposed phenomenon of left-wing terrorism.
In order to understand the nature of the threat which the
mafia poses to the contemporary Italian state, it is necessary
first to analyze the nature and functions of the traditional
agrarian mafia and then to examine the transformations that took
place from the mid-1950s on both in the socio-economic functions
of the mafia and in its relationship to political power. This
monograph will base its analysis on the Sicilian mafia as it has
evolved from Italian unification in 1860 to the present.
Although other forms of organized crime in southern Italy (like
the Neapolitan camorra and the Calabrian 'ndrangheta) have
achieved notoriety, their origins are quite distinct. Not only
is the Sicilian mafia much better documented; most importantly,
it presents in a much sharper form those characteristics which
distinguish "mafia" from other forms of criminal behavior--in
particular its organic relationship with the political system.
It is only in recent years, as a process of interpenetration and
homogenization of these three forms of organized crime has taken
place, that it makes sense to think of them as parts of a single
phenomenon.

The Traditional Mafia: The "Man of Honor"

As a point of departure it is essential to define what is
intended by the term "mafia" and to make clear those features
which distinguish "mafia" from other forms of criminal activity.
First, the term "mafia" as used in this article does not refer to
a secret and unified criminal society, with rites of initiation,
statutes, and a hierarchical chain of command linking each level
of the pyramid to the one below it. The issue of the
organizational structure of the mafia has long constituted an
important point of debate among scholars and publicists. Popular
literature has tended to present a picture of the mafia as a
tightly organized criminal association. Scholars, on the other
hand, have argued that such a conception of the Mafia (with a
capital "M") represents a distortion of reality; studies of the
traditional agrarian mafia have used the term "mafia" to refer
not to a formal criminal association, but rather to the sum of
the activities of individuals and groups whose mode of behavior
rather than their membership in a secret criminal society is what
defines them as mafioso The obvious parallels among the
activities of various mafiosi are seen as reflecting not the
existence of a central headquarters coordinating the activities
of a far-flung criminal empire, but instead a fundamental
identity in the values, in the goals pursued, and in the social
functions performed by each mafia boss and his subordinates in
each local setting. Although the single mafia family or cosca is
strongly centralized, this takes the form of a series of diadic
relationships between the capo-mafia and each of the individual
members. The mafia as a whole is thus seen as a complex of
social networks, held together by traditional bonds of honor,
kinship and "instrumental friendship." Typically the activities
of the cosca are limited to a well-defined territory, over which
it enjoys a monopoly of protection and control. To the extent
that a structure going beyond the cosca exists, it is a loose
"federal" structure in which each cosca, autonomous in its own
territorial or sectoral sphere of influence, enters into
alliances or coalitions with its neighbors in the pursuit of
larger-scale economic interests.
However, the judicial investigations preceding the opening
of the major mafia trial in Palermo in 1986 reopened the debate
over the organizational structure of the mafia. In their
preparatory documents, the Palermo magistrates argued that, as a
result of the large-scale entrance of the mafia into the
international drug trade, the organizational structure of the
mafia has been revolutionized. Traditional "family" and
territorial structures, no longer adequate for the scale of the
economic transactions involved, have been replaced by a tightly
centralized, unitary organization, corresponding quite closely to
popular images of a secret criminal society. Individual families
have become non-autonomous units in a large bureaucratic whole,
with all major decisions being made by a single ruling "Cupola"
or "Commission" (Stajano 38-63). A closer look at the evidence,
however, suggests that such a conclusion may represent an
oversimplification. The Palermo trial evidence itself documents
alternate phases of the constitution and breakdown of the
Commission, of coordination and of conflict, the latter
exemplified most recently by the unprecedented violence of a
bloody intra-mafia war for supremacy during the early 1980s
(although this pattern of alternation between a relatively stable
pax mafiosa and violent competition among and within families
recurs throughout the history of the mafia). Because of the
highly personalistic nature of mafia power, founded on the fear
and respect inspired by the single capo-mafia, there is never a
stable passage to forms of peaceful competition; violence remains
the ultimate source of power, with new contenders constantly
emerging to challenge the institutionalization of the status quo
imposed by the dominant groups. This suggests that a more
accurate image of the contemporary mafia might be that of a
confederation of competing sovereign states which have entered
into a mutual security arrangement in order to pursue affairs in
their reciprocal self-interest.
What we see, then, is not a unified organization, but rather a system of shifting alliances based on changes in the relative balance of power among the various families or coalitions. While there is an interest in
maintaining a higher body in order to regulate competition and
limit destructive conflicts, the intense rivalry among the
component groups, given the magnitude of the interests at stake,
periodically becomes so intense as to break down the
organizational arrangements intended to confine it, leading to
unrestrained warfare like that which wracked metropolitan areas
like Palermo and Naples in the first half of the 1980s. It
could also be argued that, despite tremendous changes in the
nature and scope of mafia activities, the territorial base of
mafia families remains an important element in their success,
creating a foundation of social support in areas where a dominant
"criminal subculture" has come to predominate, providing
protection for certain illegal activities (e.g., contraband,
extortion, drug refining), and constituting the basis for solid
linkages to the institutions of local government.
A second analytical problem is that of distinguishing
"mafia" from other forms of criminal behavior. Very briefly, the
following traits have historically demarcated the mafia from mere
corruption on the one hand and from other forms of delinquency on
the other: (1) the use of violence or the threat of violence to
acquire illicit gains and to build up and maintain a position as
a "man of honor;" (2) the existence of a broad base of social
support and legitimation--within the local community the mafioso
is not branded as a criminal, but is rather regarded as a leader,
admired and respected as well as feared; (3) organic linkages
with the political system--the development of a network of
political ties that allow the mafioso and the interests he
represents to penetrate deeply into legitimate institutions and
that guarantee him immunity from prosecution. These traits
apply most fully to the traditional mafia as it developed in
central and western Sicily in the period between 1860 and the
mid-1950s. The mafia of the 1980s differs in some important
respects from the model set out above. These changes can be
traced to the breakdown from the mid-1950s on of the traditional
agrarian mafia and of the cultural and socio-economic context
which sustained it. The profound transformations in the nature
and role of the mafia from the 1950s to the present will be
discussed in the second part of this monograph.
A central focus of much of the literature on the mafia, both
scholarly and popular, has been the existence of a set of
traditional subcultural norms which have, as noted above, created
a basis of social support for the mafia which distinguish it from
other forms of criminal activity. In a classic inquiry into the
social, economic, and political conditions of Sicily carried out
for the Italian Parliament in 1875, Leopoldo Franchetti and
Sidney Sonnino emphasized that the power of the mafia was based
not so much on fear as on moral authority, rooted in the mafia's
congruence with the dominant cultural norms of Sicilian society
(Franchetti and Sonnino 127-128). These norms revolved about the
pursuit of honor and the legitimacy of individual violence as a
means for attaining it. In this sense, many observers have seen
"mafia" as a set of positive attributes deeply rooted in popular
culture, as illustrated in the following definition by the
eminent Sicilian ethnographer, Giuseppe Pitre, at the end of the
19th century:

Mafia is the consciousness of one's own worth, the
exaggerated concept of individual force as the sole
arbiter of every conflict, of every clash of interests
or ideas (Pitre 289; cited in Hess 16-17).

A 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 to
the extreme, intolerance for every form of arrogance
and intimidation, generosity that confronts the strong
but indulges the weak, loyalty to friendships; if for
mafia one intends these sentiments and attitudes, then
in this sense they are individual manifestations of the
Sicilian soul, and I declare myself mafioso and am
proud to do so (cited in Antimafia Commission 1972,
Vol. 1: 267).

Franchetti 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 the
sentiment of the law as being above all and equal for
all....The personal bond is the only one they
understand....Thus, in Sicilian society, all
relationships are based on the concept of individual
interests...to the exclusion of any social or public
interest (Franchetti and Sonnino 36).

The 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 through
violence became accessible to a larger number of
people, and the ruffians, who before had been in the
employ of the barons, became independent; thus, to
obtain their services, they now had to be dealt with as
equals....
the industry of violence [thus] came to have an
independent existence and organization....[In Sicily]
the criminal class is in a special situation, one that
bears no resemblance to that of delinquents in other
countries, no matter how numerous, intelligent, and
well organized. One could almost say that it has
become a social institution. In addition to serving
the interests of pre-existing social forces [i.e., the
absentee landowners], it has become, as a result of the
special conditions brought about by the new order, a
class with its own interests and industry, a social
force in and of itself (Franchetti and Sonnino 72, 90-91).

The 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 the
inhabitants of the outskirts of Palermo, who are not
poor, but instead often property-owning peasants
successfully cultivating their orchards of oranges. In
the Conca d'Oro agriculture prospers; large-scale
property does not exist; the peasant is well off,
mafioso, and commits a large number of crimes (Villari
55-56).

It 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 violence
is above all in the hands of members of the middle
class. In general this class is considered an element
of order and security, especially where it is numerous,
as is the case in Palermo....But this is only an
apparent contradiction. In fact, where the middle
class does not have the size and influence to insure
the dominance of the law over private power, it no
longer views the rule of law as a means to conserve its
property and status....Thus when, due to social
conditions on the one hand and the impotence of the
authorities on the other, the risk of using violence is
not greater than that of not using it, any reason for
the members of the middle class to sustain law and
order ceases (Franchetti and Sonnino 97).

This 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 a
category of people who straighten things out when
situations get complicated. Usually they are
functionaries of the state. Where the state is not
present, or where it does not have sufficient force,
this is done by private individuals" (Corriere della
Sera, October 30, 1949).

In 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 I
can do a man a favour, no matter who he is, I will;
because that's how I'm made....I can't say `no' to
anyone. The trouble I'm put to is not so great that
I have to refuse people in need....Very often warm-
heartedness will win a man gratitude and friendship,
and then the time comes to ask for one thing or another
in....Folks come and ask how they should vote
because they feel the need for advice. They want to
show that they are grateful to those who have
worked for their good; they want to thank them for what
they've done by voting for them; but they are
ignorant, and want to be told how to do it (Dolci 121-122).

Vizzini 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 were
formed as a result of a specific combination of ancient
and modern, a mixture of private violence and the
legitimate violence of the state, of competition for
economic resources in the market and the absence of
regulatory standards for economic activities other than
violence....[O]ne of the fundamental models of
behaviour for the mafia consists in resistance to
social changes but, when these changes appear
inevitable, to exploit them for its own ends....One of
the consequences of this model of behaviour is that new
institutions come to be utilized for the fulfillment of
traditional values. A double process thus occurs: on
one side, the modern institutions are modified and
employed for ends other than those for which they were
originally intended. On the other, the traditional
values do not disappear; they are not replaced by new
values, but are adapted to make traditional use of new
institutions (Catanzaro 1985: 34, 45-46).

Thus, 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
Unification already dominated (and continued to dominate) the
political and economic life of the island--the feudal nobility
and the great landowners" (Antimafia Commission 1976: 112).

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