In his previous appearance on Firing Line (#S174), Mr. Reid had stoutly defended

his membership in the Communist Party. Two and a half years later he had left the Party, and Mr. Buckley begins by asking "Whether he was moved finally to leave the Communist Party after reflecting on the cogency of the arguments I posed on this program." JR: "No, not quite, not quite.... I think basically what drove me to the conclusion that the Communist Party ... wasn't relevant was this: that the structures of the Communist Parties are based on pre-revolutionary Russian experience." Speaking of Euro communism, he adds: "They can change programmatically all they want, but if they have plans for a democratic socialist society, they will have to become democratic socialist parties. And once they do that, they cease to be Communist Parties." Before we get back to the crisis of British trade unions, we have dealt with Hitler and Frederick the Great, Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King Jr., and what Jesus meant when he chased the moneychangers from the Temple.