SOURCE: "The Way of Communism in America," in The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 1958, p. 9.

Beichman is an American educator, political scientist, and critic. In the following excerpt, he presents a mixed assessment of The American Communist Party, praising the style of the book's language but questioning the depth of Howe's scholarship.

The [Communist Party] in America from its creation four decades ago has been many things—a congeries of heterogeneous radicals talking to nobody but themselves; then militant shock brigadiers awaiting an American revolution a la Russe; then would-be creators of a mass party via the "united front"; then cadremen in American labor and intellectual circles; then isolationists during the Hitler-Stalin pact; then "rightist" interventionists following the Nazi invasion of the U.S.S.R.; then "leftist" creators of the Progressive Party, and on and on until today, when they are apparently without domestic strategy or program.

The...