Big Brother, Brown Brother

Just how enlightening can even an enlightened despot be? That is the underlying question of Richard Lowenthal’s study of Communist policy toward the Third World—and a most welcome study it is. Lowenthal brings insight and erudition to an area in which most of us have little to guide us beyond a most ambiguous conventional wisdom.

For ourselves, we are utterly convinced that a despot can be neither enlightened nor enlightening. He might make the trains run on time but, in Europe or North America, it would no longer matter whether they did. Here, we are sure, personal freedom and human rights are what makes even precise technology worthwhile.

We are far less certain that this is also true of those who fail to match ou...