Fables from Aptheker

THE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, AND REVOLUTION, by Herbert Aptheker. New York: International Publishers. 128 pp. $1.25.

Every once in a while I seek a bit of comic relief from the burdens of our Kafkaesque world. One unfailing source has been, not the gyrations of so-called Communist parties and governments (which have provided moments of sorrow and anger), but the intellectual acrobatics of Communist “theoreticians.” Over the years, to be sure, the contemplation of such...