UPSETTING THE BALANCE

This is in response to Kevin Phillips’ review of Michael Parenti’s “The Sword and the Dollar” (Book Review, May 21). “Upsetting the Balance” was the title of Phillips’ review: Upsetting the balance indeed! Where was the balance in Phillips’ review? Phillips criticizes Parenti’s citations, but fails to note that Parenti uses as sources such dangerous radicals as American Presidents and generals, Catholic bishops, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, World Policy Journal, Winston Churchill and others.

Although Phillips’ contention that Parenti is “not going to make a very effective case to the average American reader” is undoubtedly correct, just what does that mean? That American foreign policy is biased toward capitalism is not obvious to most Americans and that it is biased toward using anti-democratic tactics in support of regimes and exploitation that aid primarily the very richest here and abroad is hardly obvious to Americans. How many Americans understand that direct investment in the Third World by American banks is in truth a subsidy to Third World countries only in the sense that local elites are bought off, that primarily the rich are allowed to buy expensive American products, and the money is invested into infrastructural elements that support the expropriation and exploitation of natural resources such that (as Parenti cites) while the GNP of Brazil tripled during the “economic miracle” period, the standard of living of all but the top 20% went down by one-half!

Phillips’ review aimed, it seems to us, only to squelch U.S. self-criticism by suggesting that any such criticism must be sort of a Commie plot. Come on, Phillips, do your homework and dare to shed your establishmentarian blinders. There are criticisms of America that can and must be made, and Parenti has made some of them.

LAWRENCE E. SNEDEN II and

J. WAYNE PLASEK

Professors of Sociology

California State University

NORTHRIDGE