-Caveat Lector-
excerpts from:
On The Take - From Petty Crooks to Presidents
William J. Chambliss©1978
Indiana University Press
ISBN 0-253-34244-9
269 pps. – First Edition – In-print
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CHAPTER EIGHT
The Enemy Is Us
IN THE MIDDLE AGES, when Anglo-American criminal law was being formed, there
was no pretense of applying the law uniformly across class lines. When
prostitution, gambling, public intoxication, drug use, and the like were made
criminal, it was not intended nor was it the practice to apply these laws
indiscriminately to all social classes. The upper classes were free to
gamble, engage prostitutes, or take drugs without fear of interference from
the state.
In time the emerging commercial, mercantile, and industry-owning classes
sought to use the state as a means of equalizing their position vis a vis the
heretofore dominant landed aristocracy. The law was one of the means through
which this struggle was resolved. By insisting on the right to a trial by
jury, by establishing an adversary system of justice, by creating a set of
social relations built around contractual obligations, the emerging class of
businessmen and manufacturers was able to bring the landed aristocracy to
heel; at least the two ruling classes were made more or less equal in the
law. The lower classes were of course excluded from this equality. The
necessity of paying an attorney for protection in the courts assured that
neither the aristocracy nor the nouveau riche would have to share state power
with the working classes.
Thus was a solution forged: but so too were the seeds of conflict planted by
that solution. Relying on the moral,,' principle of equality before the law
and depicting the state, .as a value-neutral organ for settling disputes gave
rise to endless criticism from those who observed that "some are more equal
than others."
This process is lived over and over in the history of law: a solution is
forged which attempts to resolve conflicts that' arise out of basic
contradictions in the structure of social relations created by the political
and economic forms of the era. The solution, however, creates social
relations which themselves generate further conflicts reflecting underlying
contradictions which generate further attempts to resolve the contradictions.
The first laws prohibiting gambling, bribery, official corruption, vice,
prostitution, drug use, and usury were each in their turn an attempt to
resolve problems stemming from contradictions. Some were intended to help
control the "teeming masses of urban dwellers who walk the streets. seeking
money by any means fair or foul." Others, such as' anti-opium laws, came as a
consequence of international competition as it developed into a worldwide,
allencompassing economic system.
Laws against usury are illustrative. They helped stabilize, the banking
industry by reducing competition. Laws were enacted that established legal
limits to the amount of interest that could be charged. They solved a problem
of competition among moneylenders, helped stabilize financing for both
industry and banking, made life more predictable and monopolies better able
to form in the banking industry. At the same time, usury laws opened up the
possibility for people to operate illegally. If the banks could not charge
excessively high rates of interest, then they would not loan to people who
were highly risky. Alas, risky people have as much need for money as those
with good credit. Not being able to get credit in a bank does not reduce
one's desire to borrow, but it may increase one's willingness to pay higher
than legally allowable interest. Enter the usurer. For the usurer can charge
excessively high interest and therefore make a profit even from customers who
are a greater risk than banks will accept as borrowers. Result: a
structurally induced illegal business is created as soon as the solution to
competition and "chaos" in the banking industry is solved by establishing
legal limits to interest. All, of course, done with the best of intentions.
Notice, however, that those who engage in usury face a number of
administrative problems not faced by banks. Most important is the fact that
usurers, because they are engaged in illegal acts, cannot turn to the state
and ask that the law be invoked to force debtors to pay back what they have
borrowed. Usurers thus, in order to protect their investments and guarantee
their profits, must establish their own law-enforcement arm. They must employ
a staff of people who are capable of "persuading" those who have borrowed but
failed to pay back their debts that it is better to pay the debts than to
have them hanging over their heads. Usurers utilize many of the same
techniques that the law employs in the service of banks: they confiscate
property, threaten to expose the person to public shame, and if none of these
are effective they resort to corporal or at times even capital punishment.
The latter is of course utilized only as a means of demonstrating to other
wouldbe renegers that it is unwise not to pay your debts. The same principle,
need it be said, underlies the justification for capital punishment when it
is imposed by the state on people who presumably have committed acts that are
"beyond the tolerance limits of the community." The acts vary; the problem
that gives rise to them is identical, namely, that some people are not living
up to the standards others with more power think they should. To keep the
heresy from spreading, a life is taken.
It is ironic that those who are least likely to be able to afford the high
interest of usurers are those most likely to have to turn to them for loans:
the poor as well as the rich are protected from being charged more than the
legal limit on interest by banks and licensed financiers.
It is an ironic manifestation of political economic contradictions that the
laws that keep many illegal activities from being rampant in the "better
neighborhoods" have the effect of concentrating them in precisely those parts
of the city where the people are most likely to be already disillusioned by
"The System," that is, in the slums. Thus a further contradiction: laws which
were not initially intended to be enforced against the rich result in pushing
illegal businesses into areas where the poor and working classes live and are
thereby exposed to the hypocrisy of the law in everyday life.
Other Networks, Other Times
Robert Winter-Berger was for five years a lobbyist in Washington. On one of
his frequent visits to the office of John McCormack, Speaker of the House of
Representatives, the back door to the Speaker's office suddenly burst open
and Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, exploded into the room.
Winter-Berger in Washington. Pay-Off reports:
Johnson disregarded me, but I can never forget the sight of him, crossing the
room in great strides. In a loud, hyster-ical voice he said: "John, that son
of a bitch is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I'm gonna land in
jail." By the time he had finished these words he had reached the chair at
McCormack's desk, sat down, and buried his face in his hands. Then I knew why
he had come here, and I realized how desperate the situation must be.
To the best of my recollection at that shocking moment, McCormack said: "Mr.
President, things may not be that bad." He got up and went to Johnson and
placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Jesus Christ!" Johnson exclaimed. "Things couldn't be worse, and you know
it. We've talked about this shit often enough. Why wasn't it killed, John?"
When Johnson looked up at McCormack, I could see he was crying. He buried his
face again.
"We tried, Lyndon;' McCormack said. "Everybody did."
Johnson said: "I practically raised that motherfucker, and now he's gonna
make me the first President of the United States to spend the last days of
his life behind bars." He was hysterical.
"You won't," McCormack said helplessly.
"How much money does the greedy bastard have to make?" Johnson said. "For a
lousy five thousand bucks, he ruins his life, he ruins my life, and Christ
knows who else's. Five thousand bucks, and the son of a bitch has millions."
"We all make mistakes," McCormack said, glancing at me. "How could he have
known, Mr. President?"
"He should have given him the goddam machines," Johnson said. "He should have
known better. Now we're all up shit creek. We're all gonna rot in jail."
"We'll think of something," McCormack said. He rubbed Johnson's shoulder.
"Please. Calm down. Control yourself."
In a burst, Johnson said: "It's me they're after. It's me they want. Who the
fuck is that shit heel? But they'll get him up there in front of an open
committee and all the crap will come pouring out and it'll be my neck. Jesus
Christ, John, my whole life is at stake!"
"Listen, Lyndon," McCormack said, "remember the sign Harry had on his
desk-THE BUCK STOPS HERE? Maybe we can make this buck stop at Bobby."
"You have to," Johnson cried out. "He's got to take this rap himself. He's
the one that made the goddam stupid mistake. Get to him. Find out how much
more he wants, for crissake. I've got to be kept out of this."
"You will, Lyndon:' said McCormack. "You will."
The President moaned. "Oh, I tell you, John, it takes just one prick to ruin
a man in this town. just one person has to rock the boat, and a man's life
goes down the drain. And I'm getting fucked by two bastards-Bobby and that
Williams son of a bitch. And all he wants is headlines."
"It'll pass, Lyndon," McCormack said. "This will pass
Johnson got angry. "Not if we just sit around on our asses and think we can
watch it pass. You've got to get to Bobby, John. Tell him I expect him to
take the rap for this one on his own. Tell him I'll make it worth his while.
Remind him that I always have."
"All right, Lyndon ."[17]
Johnson had gone through this tirade with scant notice that Winter-Berger was
in the room. When he finally took note of him, he asked McCormack if he was
"all right." Assured that Winter-Berger was all right and a friend of Nat
Voloshen, a major Washington lobbyist, Johnson asked Winter-Berger to take a
message to Voloshen: "Tell Nat that I want him to get in touch with Bobby
Baker as soon as possible-tomorrow, if he can. Tell Nat to tell Bobby that I
will give him a million dollars if he takes this rap. Bobby must not talk.
I'll see to it that he gets a million-dollar settlement. Then have Nat get
back to John here, or to Eddie Adams later tomorrow, so I can know what Bobby
says.
Bobby Baker, the "motherfucker" Johnson had "practically raised," began his
Washington career at age fourteen as a page for the Senate. By 1955 he had
been hired by Johnson, then Senate majority leader, as his secretary. His
salary was nine thousand dollars a year, and his net worth, he stated, was
eleven thousand dollars. By 1963, only eight years later, his personal
fortune had grown to over two million dollars. Presumably another million was
added when he "took the rap" and did not implicate the President. Baker's
rise to fortune came by selling favors and influence and information and by
investing in businesses owned and managed by racketeers: among them the
vending machine business, which was in the end his downfall. Among the
racketeers Bobby Baker was closest to was his and Lyndon Johnson's neighbor,
Sam Levinson, one of Meyer Lansky's closest associates and a partner with
Lansky in Las Vegas holdings. Levinson contributed $250,000 to Hubert
Humphrey's 1968 Presidential campaign against Nixon.
The crimes for which Lyndon Johnson thought he might be the first President
to end his term of office in prisonthe crimes he was willing to pay Bobby
Baker one million dollars to conceal-were never disclosed. Abe Fortas, one of
Johnson's appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, was less fortunate, and, when
his links with a notorious financial wheeler-dealer in Florida were revealed,
Fortas had to resign from the Supreme Court. It is even possible that had
Baker revealed even part of what he knew about Johnson's involvement in
criminal acts, they would have paled what is publicly known now about Richard
Nixon's involvements.
Richard Nixon continued the Johnson tradition of selling favors and
protecting investments for those who supported him politically. The textile
industry contributed over $400,000 to Nixon's reelection campaign and the oil
industry over five million just one day before the law went into effect
requiring public disclosure of campaign contributions. For their contribution
the textile industry won a tariff on the importation of textiles from Japan
which assured them of a high stable price for their products for years to
come. According to columnist, Jack Anderson, in 1972 the president of
McDonald's hamburger chain contributed $250,000 to Nixon's election and won
in return an exemption of high school employees from the minimum wage law-an
exemption personally written in by President Nixon and one which exempted
most of McDonald's employees in the race to cover America with hamburgers.
(In 1968 he contributed only $1000.)
The milk industry contributed a million dollars to Nixon's campaign and was
rewarded with a boost in milk prices during a period when prices on
everything were frozen to curb inflation. ITT promised to contribute $400,000
to underwrite the expenses of the Republican National Convention. The
Department of justice subsequently dropped an antitrust suit against ITT.
As Richard Kleindienst said: "I am not a prophylactic sack with respect to
the White House."[18} Meanwhile, as assistant attorney general, Kleindienst,
it will be remembered, was one of the principal people in the Justice
Department giving the green light for the U. S. attorney in the state of
Washington to investigate and expose the organization of illegal businesses
there. He was not, however, quite so concerned about such phenomena
elsewhere. During his confirmation for U.S. attorney general, when John
Mitchell resigned to take over the management of Nixon's reelection campaign,
it was revealed that Kleindienst had cleared a U. S. attorney, Harry Steward,
who had been charged with obstructing investigations into corruption in San
Diego: Nixon territory. [19]
Nixon, Johnson, Kleindienst, Mitchell: these men are not aberrations in an
otherwise well-working machine. They are merely acting out roles that emerge
time and time again. Lincoln Steffens was not writing about 1900, and I am
not writing about 1970. The story is told over and over.
George Washington started us off by unashamedly using the office of the
Presidency to enhance his personal fortune. During the administration of
Ulysses Grant the Union Pacific Railway directors were caught pocketing money
from government bonds, and Grant's vice-president was implicated in the plot.
During Grant's second term of office, frauds totaling some seventy-five
million dollars were unveiled, and Grant's secretary of war (who was forced
to resign) as well as his personal secretary were involved.
In the 1840s Martin Van Buren was reported to be so corrupt that there were
songs written eulogizing his willingness to sell anything he controlled.
Warren Harding was perhaps less fortunate than his predecessor or those to
follow, since his administration's scandal ("Teapot Dome") has become a
pseudonym for political corruption (perhaps soon to be replaced by
"Watergate"). The Teapot Dome Scandal was only one of many rumored during
Harding's administration, and he was spared much of the torture of the
scandal by his well-timed death. The scandal involved the leasing of
government land at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to the oil magnate H. D. Sinclair.
In the end, the secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall, was proven to have
personally benefited substantially from this and other land leases. Fall was
eventually tried, convicted, and sentenced to jail (one year) for having
accepted a bribe.
President Roosevelt's administration was relatively free from scandal,
although this is probably more a result of the crises (Depression and World
War 11) during that administration acting as a smokescreen than the purity of
the politicians.
Harry Truman's administration saw a White House military general, Harry H.
Vaughn, accepting a deep freeze in return for using his influence. Donald
Dawson, a close Truman aide, was implicated in a scandal involving the misuse
of public funds and influence by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The
Internal Revenue Service was involved in yet another Truman-era scandal which
culminated in a conspiracy trial against Truman's former appointments
secretary.
Sherman Adams, one of Eisenhower's closest associates, was found to have
accepted numerous gifts (among them a vicuna coat) from Bernard Goldfine, who
was at the time trying to influence the Federal Trade Commission. Sher-man
Adams ultimately resigned as Eisenhower's special assistant.
On the state and local levels corruption of police and politicians is
revealed with a regularity that is as certain as physical laws. On August 3,
1974, the Knapp Commission, which had been investigating rumors of corruption
in the New York City Police Department, reported:
We found corruption to be widespread. It took various forms depending upon
the activity involved, appearing at its most sophisticated among
plainclothesmen assigned to enforce gambling laws.... Plainclothesmen,
participating in what is known in police parlance as a "pad," collected
regular biweekly or monthly payment's amounting to as much as $3,500 from
each of the gambling establishments in the area under his Jurisdiction, and di
vided the take in equal shares. The monthly share per man (called the "nut")
ranged from $300 and $400 in midtown Manhattan to $1,500 in Harlem. When
supervisors were involved they received a share and a half...
The Commission found evidence that payoffs were widespread (though not always
so well organized) in the other divisions of the New York Police Department
as well. Frank Tannenbaum wrote in Crime and the Community:
It is clear from the evidence at hand-that a considerable measure of the
crime in the community is made possible and perhaps inevitable by the
peculiar connection that exists between the political organizations of our
large cities and the criminal activities of various gangs that are permitted
and even encouraged to operate.[20]
Just as criminal liaisons between law, economics, and politics are a mainstay
of buying and selling public favors, so are they also a mainstay of regular
business practices. The Far East and African sales manager for a leading
European business-machine manufacturer explained to me how he sells his
company's products by bribing government officials. In some countries the
bribes are exorbitant; in some they are "a reasonable five or ten percent,"
but everywhere, whether selling to government, large corporations, or retail
outlets, the principle is the same: the people who give you large orders
expect and receive a bribe.
An example of a particularly exorbitant (but not unusual) transaction
consummated by the above-mentioned sales manager was the sale of one million
dollars worth of business machines to the Congolese government. To secure the
sale it was first necessary for him to meet and wine and dine the fifteen top
government officials who would have to approve the order. Once the order was
placed, the company kicked back $250,000 to the fifteen people, including the
minister of finance, the purchasing agent, and so forth. To mark the final
irony, the machines were unusable as delivered since the order did not
include requisition of an auxiliary machine necessary for the base machine to
be operative. No one complained; the company was delighted not just by the
size of the order ($750,000 after kickback) but also because the corrupt
nature of the purchase enabled the company to double its usual price and thus
vastly increase its profits. And of course the sales manager received credit
for making a very impressive sale. Only the farmers and workers whose taxes
supplied the funds were harmed by the transaction.
Kickbacks, bribes, collusion, and corruption are as much a part of corporate
business as they are a part of crime networks everywhere. So too are public
lies and disclaimers of businessmen and politicians caught in the act. In
1967 and 1968 the top executives and accountants of Lockheed Aircraft, with
the complicity of high-ranking officers of the Air Force, falsified public
reports of the cost of overruns on the C-5A airplane. Complicity of the
Pentagon was purchased by the favors Lockheed does for the high-ranking
officers, including, perhaps most significantly, the prospect of high-paying
jobs in the aircraft industry upon retirement from the service.
Investigative agencies such as the FBI and the IRS are co-opted in similar if
not identical ways. Retired FBI agents become "special investigators" or are
employed by banks, corporations, or state governments at high-paying jobs.
Meat inspectors for the U.S. Department of Agriculture are systematically
bribed by the meat industry through extra pay for overtime, free meat, and a
variety of smaller "courtesies."[21] Those who do not accept the bribes or
who push too hard to enforce meat-processing requirements are isolated,
fired, or in some cases even criminally charged for malfeasance of office.
We could of course go on indefinitely with such examples but the point would
be the same: there is an inherent tendency of business, law enforcement, and
politics to engage systematically in criminal behavior. This is so not
because there are too many laws but rather because criminal behavior is good
business, it makes sense, it is by far the best, most efficient, most
profitable way to organize the activities and operations of political
offices, businesses, law enforcement agencies, and trade unions in a
capitalist democracy.
It should not surprise us, then, that crime networks in the larger cities of
the nation are ubiquitous. City after city has been exposed and particular
network members purged, usually the least powerful ones: the owners of the
taverns, gambling halls, whorehouses, and businesses that produce illegal
goods and services. Occasionally the cleanup includes some political and
law-enforcement people, normally lower-level, relatively powerless ones in
the political economy of the city, state, or nation. Occasionally higherlevel
people are implicated, even at times the President of the United States.
At the turn of the century the cities were New York, Philadelphia,
Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago. In the last ten years
scandals have broken in New York, Seattle, Portland, Newark, Philadelphia,
Chicago, Detroit, and Miami, to name but a few. Like the persistent
"white-collar crime," nothing changes as a result. Networks come and go but
the process by which they are produced goes on and the consequences remain
the same. Whether it is Meyer Lansky or Santo Trafficante, Lyndon Johnson or
Richard Nixon, the network remains in control of large segments of America's
political economy.
By now it should be clear that the logic of capitalism is a logic within
which the emergence of crime networks is inevitable. Capitalism is based on
the private ownership of property. Property is acquired by selling products,
providing services, or selling one's labor. By law most of the products and
services which can be exchanged for money at a profit are legal-that is, the
state has decreed that it is permissible for people to buy, sell, and
exchange these goods and services. At one time in American history most of
the products and services which support the crime industry were legal:
gambling, high-interest loans, even prostitution and heroin. Thomas Jefferson
himself established a brothel near the University of Virginia for Virginia's
young intelligentsia to have a readily available outlet for their sexual
urges.
In time some commodities and services came to be defined as illegal. But the
demand for these things did not disappear with their transference from
legality to illegality, nor did the profits to be had. Indeed, in some cases
the profits increased as a consequence of their newly established illegality.
Marketing procedures had to be adapted to the fact that these things were now
illegal-new methods of collecting debts for example-but the process remained
the same. Businessmen and politicians and entrepreneurs invested in,
coordinated, and managed these (now) illegal industries in the same way they
had managed them when they were legal.
Capitalism provides the basic conditions, but it is the organization of
politics in the U.S. that joins the capitalist mode of production to make the
ground fertile for crime networks. The key feature of American political
organization that combines with markets and profits in illegal goods and
services to create networks is the peculiar necessity for American
politicians to spend vast sums of money in order to get elected to office.
Only recently has it been necessary for politicians to declare the size and
sources of their campaign contributions. The results of their declarations
are staggering. Richard Nixon admits to spending over sixty million dollars
on his 1972 Presidential campaign. Disclosures of unreported campaign
contributions suggest that even this figure may be a gross underestimate of
the actual amount spent.
Nelson Rockefeller is reported to have spent over sixty million dollars in
his campaign for the Presidential nomination and the governorship of New York.
An American politician must obtain an incredible amount of money if he or she
is to be successful. Sources of funds are or course limited. Individual
donors giving ten and twenty dollars cannot begin to provide the necessary
funds. Especially desperate are those politicians who would run on a platform
that does not appeal to the interests and ideology of the wealthiest people
in their area. Thus a great irony results: it may even be that the
politicians most likely to be vulnerable to the influence of crime networks
are those who espouse the more egalitarian, working-class, or populist
economic and political principles.
So far as election to public office in the U.S. is concerned, money is
everything. In 1974, out of thirty successful candidates for the Senate,
twenty-eight of them spent more money than their opponents.
Crime networks with access to billions of dollars in untaxed, unreported, and
unaccountable funds are a valuable source of money to oil capitalism's
political machinery. In the natural course of events some politicians will
come to cooperate more fully than others, some will come to compete for a
larger share of network profits, and some will come to reap the profits for
their personal as well as their political use. Still others will grow
dependent on the money to finance campaigns and occasionally to meet
"personal emergencies." Through it all the crime network becomes an
institutionalized, fixed, and permanent link in the chain of a nation's
political economy. That is what has happened in America. That is why crime
networks persist year after year with only the faces and methods of operation
changing.
Nor have other capitalist countries escaped the plague. In 1969-70 1
researched the relationship between illegal and legal businesses in Nigeria
and found essentially the same sorts of interrelations between politics,
business, and systematic violation of the law that one finds in America.
What is perhaps more surprising, given our biases, is to discover that crime
networks are also pervasive throughout Europe and Scandinavia. In 1975-76, a
team of sociologists- lawyers from Sweden and I researched illegal businesses
there. Despite the constant claims by the Swedish National Police to the
contrary, we discovered an immense and highly organized consortium of
businessmen with international connections and local penetration of politics
that was firmly entrenched in the illegal enterprises of drug trafficking,
gambling, usury, and even the ancient shakedown of "legitimate" business for
"protection."
This is not to deny that there are differences. For some purposes the
differences may be more important than the similarities: the extent to which
the police are corrupt from the top to the bottom may vary from place to
place. The variations, however important they may be, should not obscure the
fact that the systematic organization of illegal activities for profit is as
characteristic of capitalism as bureaucracy is characteristic of the modern
state.
Is this to say that capitalism alone creates the networks? Hardly. I did not
research systematically in Eastern Europe, but I was not on land ten minutes
in Poland before I was offered the opportunity to exchange U.S. dollars on
the black market for ten times the official rate. Stories of high-level
payoffs and corruption abound. A large percentage of people in Poland report
that they have to pay bribes to obtain official favors. Whether these
isolated facts add up to a crime network and the systematic penetration of
the political economy by the organization of illegal activities for profit is
only guesswork, but it is suggestive of that possibility.
Does this weaken the argument that it is the structural characteristics of
capitalist democracies (especially the contradictions that inhere in these
political economies) that create and sustain crime networks? Not at all.
Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer but other things cause lung cancer as
well. The kind of "socialism" that is extant in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe shares with Western capitalism many essential features: a rigid class
system, the use of money for exchange, and the alienation of workers from the
product of their labor, to mention only a few. It may be that these essential
characteristics are fundamental. Unfortunately we lack the systematic comparis
ons with other countries to be very confident about such speculations.
What can be done? The answer depends on the question implied. To stop
gambling, drug taking, prostitution, and usury would require a change in the
political economy possible only through revolution. At the moment, that
possibility seems rather remote. We must then lower our sights substantially
and recognize that, as Murray Morgan said with respect to prostitution in
Seattle in the early days of that city's checkered history, "where demand was
so sustained and so obvious somebody was certain to try to hustle up an
adequate supply." As long as providing things that are heavily in demand is
illegal, then, given the political economy of capitalist democracies, crime
networks of one sort or another are inevitable. Thus, to eliminate or at
least reduce the magnitude and change the character of crime networks
requires first and foremost the decriminalization of these things.
There are already some clear lessons to be learned from other countries.
Years ago Great Britain placed the problem of opiate addiction (heroin,
morphine, etc.) squarely in the hands of the medical profession. While the
results of this move have not been to abolish completely traffic in opiates
in Great Britain, the extent to which the enterprise is profitable, the
degree to which the market has been controlled, and the general effectiveness
of the program have kept crime networks from forming around the illicit
traffic in opiates in Britain in anything like the same way they have formed
around opiates in the United States, France, Sweden, and The Netherlands-to
mention but a few countries.
The proposal that heroin use should be decriminalized and medical doctors
permitted to prescribe heroin for addicts has been made time after time.
After an extensive inquiry into the subject, the American Medical Association
and the American Bar Association proposed that this policy be "seriously
considered" over twenty years ago. Opposition by the federal agencies
responsible for enforcing the laws (whose agents benefit directly and
indirectly from the existence of crime networks) has meant certain defeat for
such proposals.
We may, however, be in a somewhat better position with respect to the
possibility of legalizing gambling. As the economic recession—inflation we
are presently witnessing puts pressure on state and federal governments to
increase tax revenues, gambling is more and more attractive as a source of
untapped revenue. In other words, there are some powerful interests (the
state itself) capable of legalizing gambling in order to increase their own
revenues. When this happens we would be naive to suppose that the networks
that have previously profited from the gambling would suddenly be replaced by
legitimate businessmen. The networks, it must be remembered, are already
populated by legitimate businessmen. The management would not change but
legalized gambling would provide taxes, a reduction of associated illegal
actions dictated by the illegal nature of crime networks, and a somewhat
greater ability to oversee network activities. In short, we could expect to
have the government and its bureaucracies relate to the organizations which
supply gambling in much the same way they relate to other businesses. Is it
better to have ITT buy my congressman and lobby for its own peculiar
selfinterests, or is it better to have Meyer Lansky and Company doing it?
Perhaps it makes no difference in the long run. I suspect that at least
having a small amount of tax benefit that goes into welfare or education or
roads is better than the present situation.
It seems quite certain that if drugs and gambling were decriminalized, crime
networks as we have known them since the turn of the century would disappear.
The fortunes made in these illegal enterprises could then become respectable
in the same way that the fortunes of the robber barons-the Mellons,
Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Kennedys—have become respectable. It would
then be possible for us to see, in another generation or two, those who
inherit the wealth of Meyer Lansky, David Beck, and Jimmy Hoffa running
against a Dupont, a Rockefeller, a Mellon, a Heinz, or a Kennedy for President
of the United States. That may not be progress, but it is consistent with
historical precedent.
Whatever changes might be forthcoming, one fundamental truth must be grasped:
It is not the goodness or badness of the people that matters. The people who
ran (or run) the crime network in Seattle were (and are) not amoral men and
women. On the contrary, they are for the most part moral, committed,
hard-working, God-fearing politicians and businessmen. It seems paradoxical
perhaps that someone could kill, threaten, and coerce people to protect
himself and still adhere to a set of moral principles to which "all of us"
adhere. But from his point of view he may be protecting far more important
things than merely his own skin. He may be protecting an ideology for which
he stands. He may be protecting the community from being taken over by people
whose ideas are, from his viewpoint, bound to lead the community and the
nation down the road to ruin. "The Fourth of July oration is the front for
graft," Lincoln Steffens wrote. It is often the sincere belief of the
grafters that they are also performing a public service and living up to the
principles of the Fourth of July oration.
The people in the crime network in Seattle and those who cooperated with it
were simply acting within both the logic and the values of America's
political economy. They were operating to maximize profits, to protect their
investments from competition, to expand markets, and to provide services and
goods demanded by "the people." These are all the logical implications of a
capitalist economy. These-or closely related-ideas also become values. Profit
is a value: something intrinsically worth striving for. Being shrewd,
pragmatic people, they know that whatever value one chooses to stress
inevitably involves a compromise with some other values. Profit may
necessitate compromising strict adherence to the law, but then so does mere
survival in the realities of political life. You use whatever resources you
can to maximize profits and increase capital. Whenever possible, you also
operate to help your friends and business associates. These are values which
all persons in crime networks share with many if not most other contemporary
Americans. The members of crime networks fought for the protection of these
values; some even died for them. Not surprisingly, they were willing to
violate many laws—"mere technicalities"—to live up to the logic and values of
their world.
pps. 169-188
-----
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Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
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