“Minority Report”

Several members of the Italian Communist Party compiled the minority report. It broke the silence on political compliance with the mafia and openly accused several politicians, administrators and businesspeople of involvement in mafia-related activities. The following extract from the report provides a typically La Torreian classist interpretation of the mafia. It traces a history of the development of the ruling class through different modes of production. It focuses on its relationship to the rule of law and formal power institutions, which belies the fact that the mafia has always sought relationships with these powers. In fact, this relationship to power to some extent defines it. But what the report reminds us is that the relationship is two-sided: Just at the mafia seeks links with democratic institutions, so do formal representatives of the state lean on the mafia to provide territorial control. The report is also important from a purely technical and penal perspective in that it contains the conceptual ingredients that would lead to the passage of Law 416bis, the law that criminalises association with and to the mafia. What is now known as the Rognoni-La Torre law is one of the key milestones in Italian anti-mafia legislation.