Idealism

Lenin rediscovered, WITBD? in context. The book is huge.

One distortion in the stalinist book is the claim that Trotsky was a counterrevolutionary because he insisted on the military overthrow of Stalin and his clique. That's wrong. Trotsky wanted a social(ist) revolution against the bureaucracy. He didn't want a coup d'etat. The book is just repeating the stalinist view on the history of the USSR. You can read it if you want to. I might read it one day myself. But not know; I would rather like to read Marx .

I don't know. In my area and local university new discoveries concerning marxism are rarely to be found in some sort of accessable form (book, article, website). There are however researchers who wrote interesting books revealing much of what was lost of our marxist tradition. Hars T. Lih for example "rediscovered" the truth behind Lenin's (in)famous What is to be done? making it possible for marxists to escape from dead formulas of the past. So I believe this could also work for the stalin era. There's no problem with reading Another view of Stalin; the problem is believing all the crap covered in that book. You must be critical, the same counts for Trotsky (who's idea were sometimes raped by Trotskyism).

The book was written by an infamous Belgian stalinist-maoist. It uses all kinds of distortions to cover up the truth. Recently the Moskovian archives are open and it's time to reveal the nonsense written in that book.
Trotsky also wrote a biografphy of Stalin covering the period of 1879-1917. It's not his best work and he focuses too much on Stalins personality, but at least it is not as biased as that op Martens. However I would rather recommend you Deutscher or another writer than both Trotsky and Ludo Martens.

Trotsky shows us his answer to those who'd claim that the Bolshevik party has abolished the soviet system. According Trotsky the party only subordinated the soviets. When capitalist governments have a majority in parliament (they usually do), and therefore subordinate parliament, is it clever to say that the government has oblished the parliamentary system? Trotsky doens't think so. The party subordinated the soviets because they weren't practical organs of state power. You should try to follow some of the recent discussions on revleft to know more about it.

WW1 was a product of rising tensions between states as they searched for markets and cheap, raw materials. The tendency to produce more than profitable urged labour(power), personalized by workers, to break with the laws of capitalism (social revolution followed). Capitalism is partially a break on the development of technology and humanity since it only seeks profitable outcomes, not the necessarily what we really need. To know why labour or productive forces are a shock factor you should read Marx' preface to his critique of political economy.

I think Trotsky attacks the tendency of elements within the Second International to integrate themselves in the capitalist (state) system. The capitalist superstructure is a huge weight on the shoulders of the workers put there by the bureaucrats of their party. I also think that "great forces of production" can be exchanged for labour. The working class was pressing for reforms which capitalism couldn't really provide, hence many revolutions, while on the other hand labour became less profitable as markets were stuffed before world war one. Labour demanded to be freed from capital.

Forgive me if I do not reply to your question; I have to limit my time here since I am moving house!

If you post your question in 'Learning' someone will help you out.

Or, if you can wait until after I move in July...

Since this work is also known as the AntiKautsky I think the balance of power refers to the renegade Kautsky' political conclusions derived from his analysis of the (pre-)revolutionary period. Kautsky attempted to prove in his polemics against the Bolsheviks that the proletariat internationally, and especially in the Soviet Union, was not ready to take power. any attempt of the proletariat to take power anywhere after World War One would, according to Kautsky, inevitably lead to its downfall as an organized class. It would result in the destruction of its parties and trade unions. The balance of power is one of class power. Which class has the upper-hand? According to Kautsky it was not the proletariat. According to the Bolsheviks the proletariat, although weakened, could still force a victory over capitalism.

Hmm i dont know anything on that but heres a site. http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/Index.html
http://www.mltranslations.org/home.htm

That opinion of Q was partially mine (we chatted). While Trotsky is not anti-democratic, and he never advocated a dictatorship of the party, he tends to forget that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the 'rule' of the people. It doesn't denote special measures taken by a minority party (like terrorism). He fails to stress that. He tries to defend himself by pointing out that even the Commune intended to use terrorism against hte bourgeoisie. But this attempt failed because eventually what people remember most is Marx' instance on the truely democratic rule of the proletariat during that time. That's why I think it's one of his lesser writings. I don't mean to say that it's totally bad or so.