On the Godfather, I have often thought that it is misinterpreted as an Italian stereotype of deviant primitive capital formation. Au contraire, it portrays the typical form for all "ethnic" group primitive bourgeois formation, new money, nouveau riche: gangsterism. Look at Russia today as it tries to form a capitalism. Perhaps we should do an addendum to Lenin's " On the Socalled Market Question" , on the typical primitive formation of capitalist enterprise.
The slave traders were stone gangsters, in the socalled original accumulation of capital. There is a line in one of the Godfather movies that is something like no power has been built without crimes. GM is more of a criminal enterprise than the Mafia.
On a contradictory note, the rebellion of the U.S. working class has often in history been expressed in the hero worship of bank robbers such as Jesse James and the gangs of the 1930's ( reflected in James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson movies) . Today's gangster rappers are in an authentic American tradition.
Charles
>>> Louis Proyect :
To the best of my knowledge, Sinatra came in contact with mob figures during his rise to stardom in the 1940s. The interesting political angle on this, of course, was Sinatra's ties to both Sam Giancana and JFK. Sinatra served as go-between when JFK was lining up a mafia hit-squad to use against Castro. Meanwhile, these very same gangsters were tied to Jimmy Hoffa and Howard Hughes. The epicenter for all this was Las Vegas, where the netherworld of showbusiness, politics and the trade union bureaucracy came together. This would make for an interesting movie, don't you think? With Johnnie Depp as Sinatra?