Communism and Camorra in Naples

The town of Marano borders Naples' city boundaries to the north. With a population of nearly 60,000, it has its own local administrative structure, although in many ways it is part of the ``greater Naples' conurbation of close to three million people. One striking peculiarity of Marano is that it is the only town council in southern Italy administered by the far left party Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation, or RC). This peculiarity is compounded when one considers that Marano has one of the highest concentrations of organised criminal activity (which in Naples takes the name of Camorra rather than Mafia) in the Naples urban area, historically led by the four Nuvoletta brothers – and a far left council administering a highly criminal locality is a highly unusual occurrencein Italy. This article first presents the town of Marano and its history of Camorra activity, before analysing the national politics of RC and the activity of its members in Marano, principally as administrators of the town council. It then concludes with a brief critique of the weaknesses associated with a strategy of traditional Keynesian public sector policies being enacted on a local scale, both in terms of the corruption of local and national government, and the dominance of national and international economic trends which ultimately determine many of the major social and economic characteristics of towns such as Marano.