PEOPLE MAY FIND it surprising to hear Father Louis Gigante say that there is no Mafia. Gigante, chaplain of the Italian American Civil Rights League, New York City councilman, and a fellow at the Institute of Politics this week, will explain this view at several places around Harvard.

According to recently published Harris poll data, 78 per cent of the American people dispute Father Gigante's position. In 1970 and 1971, Joe Columbo and the Italian American, Civil Rights League picketed the FBI in New York City loudly proclaiming that there is no organized crime syndicate known as the Mafia currently active in the United States. These efforts seem to have had little effect.

What really is at issue is the form organized crime takes in American society. None of the protesters would seriously try to deny the existence of organized crime. What they object to is its characterization. The federal government, newspapers, and most organized crime watchers have viewed "the Mafia" as a formally organized bureaucratic structure with the ability to design and construct rational, highly efficient programs for amassing illicit wealth. Individuals are not really important to the organization's success, in this view. It is the structure, and not people, that give the Mafia its self-perpetuating character.

This view of organized crime has been accepted rather generally. In 1971, however, Francis A.J. Ianni challenged this conception in "A Family Business," a study of an organized crime "family" in New York City's Little Italy. Ianni asserts that criminal syndicates should be viewed as social and kinship organizations, rather than formal ones. He viewed Italian-American criminal syndicates as a form of social organization patterned by tradition and responsive to the Italian-American urban culture. As persisting social systems, Ianni notes, organized crime syndicates must function as integral parts of the surrounding society. Thus Ianni looked at organized crime as an aspect of the Italian way of life in America. Taking a similar view that Daniel Bell, professor of Sociology, articulated some 15 years ago, Ianni sees the development of the organized crime family he studied as linked to the rise of Italians in the urban social structure. Organized criminal activity was a natural response to the Italian immigrants' position in society and provided a means of upward mobility.

Some Italians have concluded that, far from being a bad force, organized crime actually provides services to impoverished communities. As one Italian American Civil Rights League member said to me, "What's wrong with numbers and gambling? If people want to gamble we give them an opportunity. As for loan sharking, many people feel uneasy about going to banks and couldn't get loans even if they wanted to. For every case you hear of a loan shark breaking a guy's arm, there are a thousand cases of loan sharks helping businessmen and poor people out of tight situations."

Father Louis Gigante, a fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics this week, grew up in the area Ianni wrote about. He also disputes the traditional view that organized crime is a tightly disciplined structure dedicated to evil. As an example of the beneficial effects of organized crime, Father Gigante has said that the only way his father could get money to pay for an operation was to go to a loan shark.

THERE IS ONE MAIN problem with the Gigante and Ianni accounts of the role of organized crime in Italian communities. In his book, Ianni never discussed narcotics trafficking. Similarly both Father Gigante and the Italian American Civil Rights League deny that organized crime as they know it is involved with drugs. According to Father Gigante, any drug trafficking that is done by Italians is done separately from the traditional crime "family" structure.

Yet the fact remains that the "boss of bosses" Vito Genovese died in prison while serving a sentence for narcotics trafficking. Right now, Carmine Tramunti, the head of one of New York City's crime families, is on trial for his alleged involvement in financing heroin smuggling. Father Gigante has said that both cases are government frame-ups and are examples of persecution of Italian-Americans.

Whatever the truth is about the role of organized crime in narcotics trafficking, there does seem to be a split between Italians involved in gambling and the numbers and Italians who traffic in narcotics. In East Harlem, the Italian community I know best, there seems to be a rather rigid social division between gamblers and drug dealers. The gamblers, many of whom have been linked to the Genovese family, spend much of their time in a social club in the area and in local bars. They are quite friendly with local residents and with the political leadership. One of the organized crime leaders, a man known as "Buckelow," is a tenant in a building owned by Democratic county leader Frank Rossetti. The Italians involved in drug traffic operate far more surreptitiously in another part of East Harlem. They do not maintain contacts with local residents and stick mostly to themselves. Father Gigante has told me that he refuses to associate with anyone he knows is involved with narcotics trafficking.

However, the one thing that can be safely said about Italians involved with organized crime is that they are mostly dull and stupid people. Movies such as "The Godfather" have glorified the life of criminals. Most criminals follow a dull routine which involves constant risks. Few of them read Sartre and Camus like Joey Gallo was reputed to have done; getting through the Daily News each day is a major accomplishment for most. Because of the code of violence they live under, people involved in organized crime does take and whatever businesses it is involved with, it is not a pleasant way of life.