This one has my attention a little bit, Ima try to go a little more in depth to explain my thinking....


I read Machiavelli, I used to read it a LOT. ITS ALL ABOUT POWER.
Now, in this book, he talks about the different kinds of " principalities". Basically you have one where the Prince is the ABSOLUTE RULER, Like a tyrant.
This would be like the Profaci family, what Maranzano was TRYING to do, maybe the Chicago family under Capone, Toto Riina in Sicily, mafia Tyrants right?

Then you have the other, where the Prince is a figurehead, and he rules over powerful nobles who have their own armies, and or resources at their disposal,and pledge fealty to the prince, usually out of self interest. This is like the 50-60s genovese, the Bonnanos when Sonny Red was rebelling, consider him a powerful " noble" with his own army and resources. Basically families with lots of powerful capos, who have their own followings, and operate off the power of their own strength and abilities.

Now, as long as Carlo Gambino was ALIVE, Bruno was an absolute ruler. As SOON as Carlo died, he bacame a figurehead prince trying to reconcile the various factions that popped up. The factions, lead by " nobles" , ( guys like Scarfo, Caponigro, Narducci, Testa, Riccobene...)pledged fealty to whomever it was in their best interest, if they calculated it wasn't Bruno, they plotted to betray him. Riccobene is a good example of a " Noble" in this quasi feudal setup.

Remember in Leonettis book, when the family was in turmoil, he said Bruno came to see them. And basically tried to BUYthier loyalty. Contrast this to Scarfos crew, he could tell them to go shoot a biker in the stomach, and he had guys that would do it without hesitation, with total loyalty to HIM. Now one of the chief tenants of The Prince is a man with his own loyal army is ALWAYS POWERFUL, ALWAYS DANGEROUS. He also says basically if you have to pay your troops, if their loyalty is based of that ( remember Michaels convo with Tom Hagen ) they aren't ever going to be reliable. That's why I put Scarfo up there in the power department, NOT MONEY. It's also why Gotti was becoming so paranoid of Gravano, Sammy was building his own " army" within the family ( remember Gotti read Machavelli as well..), at the same time Gottis personal army was under siege, ( the Bergin indictments, Chin and Gas gunning for him), and he couldn't depend on the loyalty of the other " nobles" in the family to show absolute loyalty to him at that point.

Take the Genovese in the 60s; they were a bunch of rich "nobles" , with their own interest in various rackets.A lot of them were pretty autonomous. Chin changed all that, he became the Absolute ruler of that family, irregardless of ANY CAPOS RELATIVE POWER OR WEALTH. He let them have the money, but you better believe they better follow orders, or none of that money was going to save them. It's no coincidence he was close to and backed Scarfo, he had the SAME philosophy as far as power being more important than money, at least before he became boss.


I'll post a little, I need a typing break lol, any thoughts fellas?