ABSTRACT
Far from being a perversion of capitalism, drug trafficking and money laundering may be interpreted as the continuation of the liberal rule of profit maximization at a time of globalization of trade. The Mafia order established at the level of drug production and distribution has all the attributes of an inverted state of law: it exerts a coercive power over a population or territory, with the sole objective of monopolizing the proceeds of one or more activities, and eliminating all competition. Its law is founded on threat and violence; its legitimacy is limited to the economic sphere of profit redistribution. Its power of attraction is proportionate to 'socio-cultural disintegration', as expressed by Pino Arlacchi:1 a high unemployment rate, which targets the less favoured of the population, an absence of government attention, an increased gap between the consumer model, the valorization of economic success and the possibilities of acceding through legal means, all integrate to favour the development of a criminal labour force. These factors are reinforced in the Chinese case with the increase of sociospatial and sectoral disparities, the deterioration of primary education in the villages since the 1980s,2 and the disastrous
examples which are regularly given by a very corrupted pluto-bureaucracy.
