>So what does define socialism?

As I said, two things, social control and that control being democratic. However the former alone precludes it being capitalism as there's no M-C-M'

>and what does this "society control" look like if not democratically managed worker councils? It sure seems like they meet this standard much better than the USSR does. Wolff never says that these WSDEs should be independent, competition driven orgs. He uses the term in the broadest possible sense.

Complete social monopoly over industry, central planning and the abolition of exchange-relations governing production. Imagine that this is the body of socialism and democratic control is the brain. Even without a market, WSDE's without central planning is undemocratic and not properly socialism.

>Agreed. I think it's pretty obvious that Wolff is not arguing this. As with lots of what you're arguing, I think this is outside the realm of this argument. He's merely pointing out that real-world worker-control over the surplus (not some entrenched political class claiming to be workers) is a necessary condition for socialism. I don't see how this is really controversial. I think it's a logical definition of socialism if the aim is to end the exploitation of workers (aka ending the appropriation of worker surplus) which - no doubt - is only part of the struggle towards a communist society.

My argument is about him defining the USSR as capitalist not whether or not to support WSDE's.

But regardless, the bureaucrats were workers by any reasonable definition. If someone who works at the EPA is a worker why wouldn't someone in the Gosplan offices who receives a salary lower than many factory workers be? I think you're imagining the bureaucracy as this rich and exploitative stratum, but really the vast bulk of them were no different from any other white collar worker.

>He never says surplus appropriation is synonymous with capitalism - he simply says that it's not consistent with socialism. He points out that it existed under Feudalism and Slavery.

But it absolutely is. If I produce more than average and remunerated at a rate less than I produce, I'm having my surplus appropriated! It doesn't matter than I have a say in how it is distributed because my say is equal to that of people who contributed less. And regardless, there will never be a society where every single worker has a say about every single expenditure of surplus unless we all become the Borg or something. The point isn't getting rid of surplus appropriation, but putting it for the use of society and the development of each and all.

>There's a difference between having technical expertise within a society and having an undemocratic technocratic class. It's possible to have the former without the latter.

Absolutely! Hence why the USSR wasn't a healthy workers' state! I completely agree smile emoticon but it still had the apparatus of socialism, subverted in such a way as it began to unravel itself.