by B. » Fri Jan 07, 2022 1:52 am
CabriniGreen wrote: ↑Fri Jan 07, 2022 1:21 am
That post by Scaguinni was very telling. About the early mafia leader being a landowner. It was also telling that the mafiosi that didnt control land, were most likely engaging in Blackhand type extortions, hustling, probably in the more populated areas, as you dont have the land to link you to politicians and big business. It seems like it's harder to get close to politicians the bigger the city.
I'm a firm believer that the landowners always had a vested interest in paying a few Gabelloti, vs paying fair worker wages, and worker conditions ect.....
Respectfully, it's why I couldnt get with the idea that the mafia isnt criminal. The wealthy have always used the criminal element to fuck the peasant workers. This dynamic kinda IS the mafia. They need each other, it really cant work with JUST one side of it. They have a vested interest in that criminal element. Otherwise, a Salvatore Guiliano would have won, there would have probably been significant progress made on workers rights, Unions, all that..... and that doesnt benefits landowner, right?
Great point about the landowners. It likely wasn't as simple as gabelloti exploiting non-mafia landowners but a collaboration between all classes of men with mafia membership. In the 1896 Castellammare del Golfo murder case, the leaders of the CDG Family owned a big rural estate and it was used as the Family's base for exploiting the neighboring landowners which is how they ended up killing the guard of a neighboring estate who challenged them.
- The mafia exploited non-mafia landowners in the same way the mafia exploits non-mafia businesses, but there were mafia landowners just like there are mafia businessmen. The mafia insiders from different backgrounds always work together against outsiders -- they fight amongst themselves too but there is more collaboration than conflict even though we do see "peasants vs. aristocrats" in Sicilian mafia wars and "gangsters vs. businessmen" like Sammy Gravano and Phil Leonetti talked about. That tension is always there but they are excellent at keeping the balance most of the time.
- In the same way the Gambino Family had guys like Paul Castellano and Patsy Conte who were born into families with businesses and resources alongside guys like John Gotti who pulled themselves up on the street, there is reason to believe the early Sicilian mafia had members of all types who each brought his own set of assets and resources to the organization.
- Many Sicilian mafia members were already part of the owning class when they came to the US, bringing money, businesses, professions, and property with them. It wasn't only the bosses either. Members were often from multi-generation mafia families in Sicily too so they inherited assets and resources. Not that they were all as well off as Joe Bonanno and Joe Profaci but they were from the middle class (or whatever the equivalent was then -- our idea of the middle class today is much different and a middle class lifestyle was a luxury then).
- Some of the young guys (many probably not made yet) are listed as laborers or tradesmen when they arrived but some of that may have been their age and it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. Within a short amount of time we see many of them owning stores and property without much time to have acquired significant criminal wealth. Some guys were actual peasants and escaping poverty but the myth of the mafia forming in the US because immigrants were escaping poverty wasn't the norm for the Sicilian mafia. Tommaso Buscetta was more like a John Gotti (in many different ways actually) than he was Paul Castellano even though they were both from Palermo. Buscetta was quite a bit different from some of his peers.
- Early Sicilian US mafia members often lived below their means especially in large cities. CC has explained how Italians and especially Sicilians loathe the idea of paying rent and it's entirely foreign to them in Sicily. They feel the same way about taxes (again the mafia is conservative in nature). LE discovered Giuseppe Morello was sharing a bed in a tenement apartment with his brother when he was capo dei capi. Not a total rule but we do see this type of thing.
- With guys like Giuliano, notice how they inducted the leader(s) of the bandits but not the guys who worked for Giuliano. Giuliano was from a mafia clan in Montelepre and his relatives were part of the mafia leadership. It plays into the idea of mafia members not being "foot soldiers" but leaders in their own right -- they inducted the bandit leader, not necessarily the average bandit. Giuliano's top man (who along with Buscetta ID'd Giuliano as "amico nostra") was also the son of a mafia member so you have Giuliano and his top lieutenant from mafia lineage and they had more status than other bandits.
I agree with your take on criminality actually. I think where some of the confusion in that debate comes from is we all agree the mafia is corrupt and breaks the law as it sees fit, but it's not necessarily defined by street crime. I've spent absurd # of hours talking to CC about this, so when he started his thread about that I know where he's coming from -- he's saying the mafia isn't inherently based on street crime activity and members traditionally don't have to go that route. Some of them do, but it's not the entirety of the org. Where I think we all agree is that the entire mafia is designed to tolerate and encourage corruption and crime so long as it serves the org. It doesn't require it, though... it only requires that they enable it because all of this makes up the dynamic whole of the mafia.
Good points man. One of my favorite topics these days haha.
[quote=CabriniGreen post_id=216948 time=1641543682 user_id=5378]
That post by Scaguinni was very telling. About the early mafia leader being a landowner. It was also telling that the mafiosi that didnt control land, were most likely engaging in Blackhand type extortions, hustling, probably in the more populated areas, as you dont have the land to link you to politicians and big business. It seems like it's harder to get close to politicians the bigger the city.
I'm a firm believer that the landowners always had a vested interest in paying a few Gabelloti, vs paying fair worker wages, and worker conditions ect.....
Respectfully, it's why I couldnt get with the idea that the mafia isnt criminal. The wealthy have always used the criminal element to fuck the peasant workers. This dynamic kinda IS the mafia. They need each other, it really cant work with JUST one side of it. They have a vested interest in that criminal element. Otherwise, a Salvatore Guiliano would have won, there would have probably been significant progress made on workers rights, Unions, all that..... and that doesnt benefits landowner, right?
[/quote]
Great point about the landowners. It likely wasn't as simple as gabelloti exploiting non-mafia landowners but a collaboration between all classes of men with mafia membership. In the 1896 Castellammare del Golfo murder case, the leaders of the CDG Family owned a big rural estate and it was used as the Family's base for exploiting the neighboring landowners which is how they ended up killing the guard of a neighboring estate who challenged them.
- The mafia exploited non-mafia landowners in the same way the mafia exploits non-mafia businesses, but there were mafia landowners just like there are mafia businessmen. The mafia insiders from different backgrounds always work together against outsiders -- they fight amongst themselves too but there is more collaboration than conflict even though we do see "peasants vs. aristocrats" in Sicilian mafia wars and "gangsters vs. businessmen" like Sammy Gravano and Phil Leonetti talked about. That tension is always there but they are excellent at keeping the balance most of the time.
- In the same way the Gambino Family had guys like Paul Castellano and Patsy Conte who were born into families with businesses and resources alongside guys like John Gotti who pulled themselves up on the street, there is reason to believe the early Sicilian mafia had members of all types who each brought his own set of assets and resources to the organization.
- Many Sicilian mafia members were already part of the owning class when they came to the US, bringing money, businesses, professions, and property with them. It wasn't only the bosses either. Members were often from multi-generation mafia families in Sicily too so they inherited assets and resources. Not that they were all as well off as Joe Bonanno and Joe Profaci but they were from the middle class (or whatever the equivalent was then -- our idea of the middle class today is much different and a middle class lifestyle was a luxury then).
- Some of the young guys (many probably not made yet) are listed as laborers or tradesmen when they arrived but some of that may have been their age and it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. Within a short amount of time we see many of them owning stores and property without much time to have acquired significant criminal wealth. Some guys were actual peasants and escaping poverty but the myth of the mafia forming in the US because immigrants were escaping poverty wasn't the norm for the Sicilian mafia. Tommaso Buscetta was more like a John Gotti (in many different ways actually) than he was Paul Castellano even though they were both from Palermo. Buscetta was quite a bit different from some of his peers.
- Early Sicilian US mafia members often lived below their means especially in large cities. CC has explained how Italians and especially Sicilians loathe the idea of paying rent and it's entirely foreign to them in Sicily. They feel the same way about taxes (again the mafia is conservative in nature). LE discovered Giuseppe Morello was sharing a bed in a tenement apartment with his brother when he was capo dei capi. Not a total rule but we do see this type of thing.
- With guys like Giuliano, notice how they inducted the leader(s) of the bandits but not the guys who worked for Giuliano. Giuliano was from a mafia clan in Montelepre and his relatives were part of the mafia leadership. It plays into the idea of mafia members not being "foot soldiers" but leaders in their own right -- they inducted the bandit leader, not necessarily the average bandit. Giuliano's top man (who along with Buscetta ID'd Giuliano as "amico nostra") was also the son of a mafia member so you have Giuliano and his top lieutenant from mafia lineage and they had more status than other bandits.
I agree with your take on criminality actually. I think where some of the confusion in that debate comes from is we all agree the mafia is corrupt and breaks the law as it sees fit, but it's not necessarily defined by street crime. I've spent absurd # of hours talking to CC about this, so when he started his thread about that I know where he's coming from -- he's saying the mafia isn't inherently based on street crime activity and members traditionally don't have to go that route. Some of them do, but it's not the entirety of the org. Where I think we all agree is that the entire mafia is designed to tolerate and encourage corruption and crime so long as it serves the org. It doesn't require it, though... it only requires that they enable it because all of this makes up the dynamic whole of the mafia.
Good points man. One of my favorite topics these days haha.