Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

It's a crime

Which well-known public figure in the US, in an interview with 
Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr for Liberty magazine, said: 
"Bolshevisim is knocking at our gates. We can't afford to let it 
in."

Can't guess? Here's some more, from the same interview: "We have 
got to organise ourselves against it and put our shoulders 
together and hold fast. We must keep America safe, whole and 
unspoiled."

Still no luck? Here's one more sentence then: "We must keep the 
worker away from Red literature and Red ruses and we must see 
that his mind remains healthy."

Well, I'll stop teasing you; it was that stalwart exponent of the 
free enterprise system, Al Capone. Yep, none other than Big Al 
himself.

But why, I hear you ask, would a notorious and very wealthy 
gangster be concerned about keeping the Red menace away from the 
American worker?

Capone was a mobster, a killer, a vice lord and white slaver, an 
extortionist, a corrupter of police and public officials, and 
much more. But among the most profitable of the many rackets he 
was involved in was labour racketeering.

Organised crime quickly woke up to the profits to be made from 
the protection racket, creaming a cut off the top of the income 
of a shop, cafi or theatre in return for not sending some thugs 
around to smash the place up.

The income from that racket, however, was insignificant compared 
to the income a mob could cream if they got control of a union 
(generally through bribery, violence and ballot rigging).

There were members' dues, to begin with. By breaking a few slow 
payers' legs, all workers on the job quickly joined and
paid up — or left the industry.

Then there was a variant of the protection racket: getting 
employers to pay for industrial peace. Employers paid up big for 
this one, for once they had paid, the gangsters forced the 
workers to accept whatever conditions the employer imposed.

There were union pension funds to be misused, wholesale pilfering 
to be organised and enforced, union labour to be used for 
"private" orders, and more.

In these conditions it is understandable that Al Capone would 
want workers kept away from "Red literature and Red ruses", for 
the Reds had the regrettable habit of identifying the mobsters as 
the workers' enemy. They would organise workers in union 
elections to reject the Mob's candidates, and they had the 
courage and organisation to stand up to the hoodlums.

In other words, Capone was protecting his class interests. His 
businesses may have been illegal, but they were (and indeed still 
are) an integral part of the capitalist system.

After all, where did Capone's profits go? They were invested in 
"legitimate" businesses, of course.

Like laundered drugs money today, they provided a splendid source 
of capital for takeovers, expansion, political donations (a legal 
form of bribery), and the like.

With the defeat of Fascism in WW2, and the subsequent 
revolutionary upsurge in Eastern Europe and Asia, to be shortly 
followed throughout the colonial world, came a reactionary 
upsurge in the struggle against the "Red Menace".

The power of the Mafia on the New York waterfront had been more 
or less legitimised during the War, "in the interests of keeping 
the ships moving". Then the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) had 
obtained the help of the New York Mafia to secure the co-
operation of its Sicilian counterpart during the US invasion of 
Sicily.

The Mafia's main contribution appears to have been the ambushing 
and massacre of the Communist-led Sicilian partisans, part of the 
process of clearing the way for the US-backed reactionary 
Catholic party the Christian Democrats.

Back in the US however, not just workers but professionals and 
business people who had been involved in the war against Hitler 
and Fascism were more than a little miffed to find the phenomenon 
alive and well — even flourishing — in their own backyard.

The Ku Klux Klan waged racist terrorism to rival Hitler's 
Stormtroopers. Besides Blacks and Jews, they also targeted union 
organisers and Communists.

Gangsters arrogantly bossed whole sectors of the country's 
economy — the East Coast waterfront (the West Coast was 
protected by a Communist-led union under Australian Harry 
Bridges), roadfreight, warehousing, meat-packing and many others.

Attempts by non-mobster business interests and legislators (like 
the anti-Mob Senator Kefauver) to deal with the gangster menace 
tended to shed unwelcome light on the extent of the problem but 
proved ineffective in putting a stop to it.

As a book reviewer with the initials SJB put it in The Sydney 
Morning Herald in May 1952, "Little short of a social 
revolution in America will check the cancerous growth of crime 
and corruption which is gnawing at her vitals". [If any reader 
knows the identity of SJB, please drop us a note.]

In December of 1952, the British Daily Worker reported 
that evidence had been given before the New York State Crime 
Commission showing that "major stevedoring companies on the New 
York Waterfront are using paroled criminals to fight progressive 
members of the dockers' union".

In Elia Kazan's greatly overpraised film On The 
Waterfront, the dock workers defy the mobsters only because 
Marlon Brando stands up after being bashed. In reality, the 
mobsters were defeated on the New York waterfront as elsewhere 
(to the extent that they were defeated) by a sustained campaign 
within the union itself.

Today, however, with organised crime co-operating with covert 
government agencies in the exploitation of the massive profits 
from the drug trade, the nexus between crime and capitalism seems 
to be stronger than ever.

Which is only to be expected, of course.