Essay: "Avon contra Stringer - Part Two"

Last week we discussed Proposition Joe's arrangement with Marlo, where Marlo provided muscle and Joe hooked him up with good drugs.  Now just think, in the context of organized crime, how ridiculous that is.  What would be Joe's recourse if Marlo refused?  A lawsuit?  If you rely on the other guy for the muscle, then you will only have the “connect” as long as he lets you keep it.

Stringer and Proposition Joe thought they were smart businessmen because they seemed smart next to the “chuckleheads”. Organized crime has a business element, but it is not a business. Ultimately, if you are doing something illegal, and can’t count on the courts (criminal and civil) to protect you, then you have to protect yourself. You just can’t run a crime family the way you run a restaurant. You have the advantage of being insulated from legitimate competition (which makes you feel smart). But you have to provide your own security. You neglect that aspect of your organization at your peril.

Rewatching the show, I was struck by how often Stringer’s instincts were very bad. The botched assassination attempt of Brother Mouzone is a good example, but so was his attempt to kill Omar when the latter was taking his grandmother to church. In contrast, despite my memory of Avon as a “hothead”, I was surprised how calm he was, even when he was choosing a very violent path.

I was also struck by another aspect of the show, upon reviewing. The first time I watched, it seemed to me that Avon couldn’t give up the gangster lifestyle, while Stringer was trying to move past it. But upon rewatching, I realized that both Avon and Stringer weren’t ready to stop being gangsters.

Stringer could easily have banked a few million offshore and sat behind the counter of his little print shop. Instead, he wanted to stay involved in the drug trade, presumably for the easy money (Stringer learned the hard way that it isn’t so easy to make money in a “real” business). But if he was going to stay in the game, he needed to stay all the way into the game. He couldn't just stay in the artificially easy "business" part of things.  The reason the business of drugs is easy is that there is no legitimate market-based competition.  Instead, you have to worry about violent men like Marlo.

That was something that Avon understood, but Stringer did not . It is not a coincidence, I don’t think, that Stringer ended up dead, while Avon was only imprisoned for a further four years (and presumably kept his money) and his protégé, Slim Charles, eventually ended up wearing the crown.

But because of Stringer’s flaws, he is ultimately a more interesting, and tragic, figure than Avon. Without the dark and looming presence of Avon, Stringer made an honest attempt to reform the drug trade in Baltimore. He tried to kill less people. He tried to negotiate deals instead of starting wars. He founded the co-op with Proposition Joe.

But in the end he failed, because was that the drug trade was never business, but only a repeating pattern of crimes. There is no room in organized crime for men like Stringer and Proposition Joe. As long as drugs are illegal, the drug trade will be dominated by vicious men like Avon and sociopaths like Marlo. The moment the drug trade becomes legal, it will be taken over by friendly corporations like Phillip Morris. There is no hope for the businessman gangster. There never was.

We should resist the temptation to idolize either Avon or Stringer. They were both murderers. Avon was wise, and stayed within himself.  Stringer was a bit of a fool, but a tragic one: he tried, in the end, to be something more.

Season 3 ends with a (not-very-plausible-by-The-Wire-standards) double betrayal. Stringer’s decision (although motivated by jealousy and other factors) described his decision as nothing more than business; he wants the war to be over. In other words, he doesn’t agree with how the organization should be run.

But interestingly, so is Avon’s. Avon appears to forgive Stringer everything, even, amazingly, the murder of D’Angelo. Avon only betrays Stringer because Brother Mouzone, as a representative of powerful criminals in New York, demands Stringer's head. There was really very little that Avon could have done, other than go to war with New York. Stringer had gone behind Avon’s back to start his little experiment, and it was that poor decision, and not any of the philosophical differences that followed it, that led to Stringer’s death.

In the end, Avon’s betrayal was less personal, and more “business”, than Stringer’s. Because the business of organized crime is no business at all.