Comments on: Mafiyosi

By: Markku Nordstrom

Markku Nordstrom — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 02:09:34 +0000

Henry: the clustering of specific trades in a city is not unique to Italian cities. New York has a Diamond District, a Meat-Packing District, the Fulton Fishmarket (traditionally Mafia controlled!), the Chelsea West Side galleries (used to be in Soho), Wall Street Financial District, Madison Avenue advertising industry agencies, 7th Avenue garment district, etc. etc. Perhaps the most interesting was the transfer of the art galleries to the West Side: they were forced out of Soho because their presence in Soho made the area chic, driving up the rents. That has some interesting socio-economic implications…

By: Zizka

Zizka — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 03:47:39 +0000

The definitive European-language edition by de Rachewiltz just came out from Reidel. A mere $214 US (1400 pages—probably text/translation/notes/commentary). Onon’s Oxford (Cambridge?) version is good, but out of print. Cleaves’ Harvard version is scholarly but completely unreadable. Kahn’s poetic edition might be OK in some ways, but he misrepresents the nature of the book. There are probably OK editions in German or French. Lots of good stuff in Russian and Hungarian. The Secret History is a real gold mine but requires a very critical reading (I believe that it was a pasteup from various mostly-oral sources long after the fact, and it gets chronology far wrong in places and also suppresses embarassing information).

By: Neel Krishnaswami

Neel Krishnaswami — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 19:09:58 +0000

zizka: that’s really cool. Is the Secret History collected into a single volume anywhere?

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 08:05:27 +0000

And if you recall that the USSR was not exactly a bastion of the rule of law, the stat-big business-organized crime symbiosis becomes even clearer. With a man from the KGB - for much of the USSR’s history, the mafiyest of all the mafiyas – in the Kremlin for a long time to come, that is a useful lens to use in looking at Russia.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 17:58:18 +0000

Try this URL.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 17:52:02 +0000

I’m working on an interpretation of the Mongols and other barbarians in terms of Tilly. (Steensgard’s “Asian Trade Revolution of the XVI C.” and Fredrick Lane’s “Venice and History” also talk about this). The Mongols were proetection-providers without a real economy. Essentially they drove the other Eurasian military elites out of business and replaced them—sort of like Walmart. The Mongols dominated the materialistic means of destruction while controlling only the skimpiest productive capacity. (Engels in “Anti-Duhring” overstated his case.) They needed to conquer more productive sedentary regions in order to survive. Genghis Khan’s 2006 ulus which united the steppe could not have survived without expanding. Lane actually analyzes “protection” as a commodity to be provided for a price. Besides “negative protection” against bandits, etc., he also describes “positive protection”, which means destroying competitors or forcing trade with reluctant suppliers. Essentially “protection” just means violence. This fits with Hobbes and the “King of the Vultures” theory of the state described by Mill. I have a prototype version at my URL —it needs major revision, and (for whatever reason) the typeface shrank on me.