Commie mostly held in regard, looking back (10)
I believe the answer is:
retrospect
'looking back' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'commie mostly held in regard' is the wordplay.
'commie' becomes 'trot' (short for Trotskyite).
'mostly' means to remove the last letter (most but not all of the word).
'held in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'regard' becomes 'respect' (synonyms).
'trot' with its last letter taken away is 'tro'.
'tro' placed into 'respect' is 'RETROSPECT'.
(Other definitions for retrospect that I've seen before include "Look at history" , "Look(ing) back" , "A backward view" , "Survey of past events" , "review" .)