[page 32]
Official And Confidential: Thi
Secret Life Of J Edgar
Hoover
By Anthony Summers Published by Gollancz, 1993,
£18.99 Reviewed by Andy Walker
'AR TOO many biographies
F are full of sycophantic praise
of their subject. So it was a refreshing change to read Anthony Summers's account of the life of J Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972.
In over 400 pages Summers describes the activities of a man who became one of the most powerful individuals in modern history. As head of the FBI, Hoover discredited politicians,
often attended orgies dressed as a woman. Notorious for his hounding of gays ('sex-deviates' he called them) this revelation exposed Hoover as a hypocrite.
Summers also alleges that the Bureau did little to combat the activities of organised crime because the Mafia had compromising photographs of Hoover. Whatever the reason, Hoover was certainly happy in the company of leading Mafia figures like Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. He often attended horse races the results of which had been fixed by the Mafia. Hoover would get a 'tip' and sometimes make over $100,000 in this way. No wonder he left the Mafia alone!
PROTEST
ALdEN
ENOCIDI
SAETIGESTATES
The Cold War strengthened Hoover's position.
smeared organisations and tated to presidents.
Before he was 30. Hoover had become the director of the FBI. Ostensibly the Bureau was the organisation which led America's fight against crime, in reality it was the instrument through which the US state kept tabs on its political opponents.
The release of Summers's book was accompanied by a blaze of publicity, largely because it reveals that Hoover was gay and
31 • Reviews
With no checks or accountability, such bribery and corruption is inevitable at all government levels. Many of Hoover's colleagues knew about the bribes but did nothing. And why should they? Such corruption is part of the capitalist system.
Despite his claim that he was 'not political' Hoover was a lifelong Republican supporter and a virulent anti-communist. "Bolshevism", he said "threatens the happiness of the community, the
safety of every
would destroy
community".
At the end of world war one,
the US state was horrified by
the growth of Communism in
Europe following the suocessful
workers' revolution in Russia. In
recessionary times the US bosses
were afraid such ideas might
gain support.
In 1919 there were 3,000 strikes
as workers fought for better con-
ditions. Hoover's job was to gather
evidence on revolutionary and
ultra radical groups. The great
Red Scare had begun.
He compiled a massive card
index on left-wingers with half
a million names. He assigned
agents to train the thugs he
used against trade
union activists. On 2
January, 1920, Bureau
agents arrested 10,000
people in 23 cities
across America. Most
of those seized were
innocent and had to
be released.
This was of no con-
sequence to Hoover. He
made a career out of
imprisoning and perse-
cuting the innocent.
Given absolute power
by successive govern.
ments there was no
control over what he
could or couldn't do.
But Hoover didn't oper-
ate in a vacuum. His
reign spanned a time when the US was predominant on the world stage. These were the halcyon days of US capitalism when both in terms of economy and ideology the free market ruled.
Anthony Summers's book overconcentrates on Hoover the individual, without putting his life in the context of the times in which he lived. Despite this, the book is very readable and for an expose of corruption at the highest levels, it's invaluable. O
individual.
the peace
.. they of the
[page 33]
Anatomy of Love - A natural history of adultery, monogamy
and divorce
By Helen Fisher
Published by Simon and
Schuster, 1993, £16-99 Reviewed by Eleanor Donne
NTO THE DEBATE raging
amongst 'opinion formers' of
capitalist society on the decline of the nuclear family and the dire social consequences which (so the argument goes) have resulted, Helen Fisher throws her book Anatomy of Love.
The book is a best seller in the US, reflecting a widespread desire by people to make sense of their lives and their relationships which seem to conflict so strongly with the little house on the prairie marriage for life ideal pushed by the media, the church and the politicians.
Helen Fisher's field is ethology, the study of animal behaviour, and as such the main thrust of her book is to look at genetic/biological contributions to human sexual behaviour from "primitive times; what she calls the "innate aspects of sex and love and marriage". '. She gives only a cursory nod towards the influence of social, economic and cultural factors.
Through the study of divorce data, of existing hunter gather societies and of the anthropological evidence available, Fisher has come up with two interlinked theories which have been described as 'controversial' and 'provocative' (at least in her publicity material!).
One is that life long monogamy (marriage to one partner) is not a natural state for humankind. Where it is allowed to, humankind indulges in serial monogamy, ie several relationships one after the other. This, Fisher asserts, is part of our biological heritage.
The other theory is that despite many cultural differences, the pattern of separation and divorce in 62 different societies over four decades reveals 'a four year itch' The majority of relationships that end in divorce do so around the fourth year of marriage. This is irrespective of the divorce rate.
Through her studies of higher primates and very early humans, Fisher concludes that monogamy or the pair-bond is "the hall-mark of the human animal". But these pair-bonds lasted only for as long as it took to raise a dependant child through infancy, ie four years. Although other factors affected the length of pair-bonds, those who remained together until the child was weaned, survived disproportionately. Thus a process of natural selection led to serial monogamy.
The
pattern of separation als 'a four
itch'.
year
The idea of the pair-bond is not new. Engels in Origin of the Family argues that in the earliest form of the family, group marriage, where no restrictions were placed on sexual intercourse, temporary pair bonds formed a majority of relationships.
Could genetic selection, however, have led to the built-in obsolescence of the pair-bond the four year itch? With a set of fairly general statistics it is probably possible to identify any
number of trends and come up with reasons for them. In my view Fisher greatly underestimates the influence of conditioning and culture on human behaviour and greatly overestimates the role of our genes and biology.
Her assertion that short relationships, single parents, stepfathers and families with children from various relationships are not unnatural, is an antidote to more reactionary messages. The fact that, despite her own recognition of the direct link between rates of divorce and the levels of economic independence of women, she sees this change in the family as a reversion to a natural state compatible with our 'ancient human spirit, shows a certain lack of understanding.
Fisher is not only a Darwinist ethologist but a business consultant. This could explain her curious predictions for the future. These are a mixture of biological determinism, attributing to substances like testosterone and serotin major responsibility for the dominance of some men over women, and other men, and slick middle management platitudes about the vital role of women's "networking and negotiating skills" in international business life.
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