Unlike most other commentators, Franchetti saw the mafia as an industry, "l'industria della violenza." Although he did not think of it as modern in any conventional sense, he did not simply dismiss it as the product of an unrelenting past, an offshoot of a diehard feudalism or a precapitalist form of production. Rather, in sharp contrast to subsequent interpretations (see, for example, Sereni 1971: 161), he located the mafia squarely among the products of the end of feudalism and the beginning of a democratic society.

XREF: Connects to broader debates about mafia origins, contrasting with Sereni's interpretation of mafia as feudal remnant.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 201