jools posted:

imo read a decent narrative history of the late mafia like excellent cadavers before something like gambetta

i just finished this book and here's what i wrote about it on goodreads:

I really liked reading this book, it was a lot of fun to follow all of the drama etc. But more than that it did an interesting job describing the mafia as a social formation that exhibited crises of reproduction, the resolution of which being contingent on the social environment. Basically it describes, from the perspective of the local law enforcement, the rise of a faction that was about to rise to power by stepping up the level of violence that it exhibited, but in a way that drew attention to its competitors. This dynamic accelerated the cycles of extreme violence, public backlash, and political dispersion of the backlash, never quite leaving the whole back where it started.

The political dimension is the most interesting. It is the thing that the mafia witnesses are the least willing to talk about, generally feeling that the upheaval that would result from revelations about the political class would sink any organized approach to the problems that the development of the mafia poses. This is borne out a number of times, twice within the narrative and then at the close of the book as the Berlusconi regime begins to rev up. The political dimension is clearly a source of stability for the mafia groups, and the impression that I got while reading it is that the political dimension is crucial for the reproduction of the mafia itself, the mafia forming part of the mediation between sectors of the political class and the public they represent, enforcers of those who will assent to their enforcement.

The difficulty that this political dimension poses is made clear in almost every instance when Falcone decides to collaborate with groups with known mafia interests or even personal interests that are agnostic of the mafia. He is sidetracked and led down blind alleys. In reaction to this he proceeds by totally ignoring the political dimension to the best of his ability, believing that being able to continue working is the most important thing. Ironically, this appears to succeed only when he moves away from Sicily entirely and moves to consolidate and centralize the anti-mafia effort in Rome.

Another interesting point presented, presumably not on purpose since the author appears to be some kind of smug liberal, is the larger scale of the political dimension. The author directly states that the war on the mafia was positively aided by the fall of communism, with the disempowerment of the PCI ending the left wing "threat" that the mafia were supposedly the lesser evil of. What this implies is that fighting the mafia only became politically acceptable when it became a problem for the bourgeoisie. The majority of the prosecutions before the 90s appeared to center around drug offenses, with the effective theft from public funds being totally unapproachable. Once the 90s rolled around and public assets began to be privatized all of a sudden there was political impetus to do something about it. To take this a step further, it could be inferred that the siphoning off of money from public services was actually in the interest of the bourgeoisie. This then makes the "paradox" of Andreotti, presented as the powerhouse behind postwar Italian politics, personally engaging with powerful mafia figures make much more sense. It also resituates the mafia from being some sort of font of political power to an agent that plays a political role, reclaiming proceeds of the social-democratic welfare state for the bourgeoisie. I don't know if I've thought this through totally but I might even go so far as to say that it could represent a sort of illicit labor aristocracy. Of course this is barely touched on in the book, instead the author has a bunch of quotes from neofascists.

clanzy posted:

joyce is fucking trash who should have been shot in the streets, his writing is awful

hmm.. wrong.

Gibbonstrength posted:

What is the best Stalin biography

stephen kotkin has a huge one that looks pretty good. only the first volume is out now (covers from the creation of the universe until 1928). kotkin hates trotskyists from a somewhat conservative perspective so i think it will be sort of like bourgeois histories of napoleon or something, great man political history sort of thing, although actually well-researched and well-written. he wrote "magnetic mountain", which has odd conclusions but some amazing material.

Edited by getfiscal (Dec. 23, 2015 17:11:19)

getfiscal posted:

stephen kotkin has a huge one that looks pretty good. only the first volume is out now (covers from the creation of the universe until 1928). kotkin hates trotskyists from a somewhat conservative perspective so i think it will be sort of like bourgeois histories of napoleon or something, great man political history sort of thing, although actually well-researched and well-written. he wrote "magnetic mountain", which has odd conclusions but some amazing material.

is this the "stalinism as theocracy" guy?

c_man posted:

is this the "stalinism as theocracy" guy?

yes.

aerdil posted:

are there any russian biographies of stalin translated into english? or are we always doomed to read british and american dudes' thoughts on the ussr

there's an indian film about him, in which he is the one and the only one.

tpaine posted:

currently reading All the Small Things: the Unauthorized Story of Blink 182 by Tom Delonge

Tom DeLonge writes YA fiction now
http://www.amazon.com/Poet-Anderson-Nightmares-Tom-DeLonge/dp/194327200X

Edited by KilledInADuel (Dec. 24, 2015 02:45:09)