Sorry if this has been asked before. Can you call a political and economic system socialist when workers councils and therefore local democracy is dismantled? (I am talking about the post-revolution period after 1920)
I do not.
If workers are not really in power (i.e. do not govern themselves) and just follow the orders of central committee and 5 years development plan is this still socialism? In what ways is this state-capitalist economic system different from other state capitalist systems such as US state-capitalism?
Well for one, I think such state capitalist systems as the Soviet system are better than capitalist capitalist systems. The precise structure of the formally planned system in the USSR (and thus the basic model for nearly all extant socialist countries) is sub-optimal for planned economies, but it's functional. More importantly, its goal is far more noble than that in capitalist economies, free-market or heavily planned. The goal, though presently unrealized, is to manage an economy where things that are needed are produced, instead of things that can potentially be sold for private profit. The goals and needs of society come before the goals and needs of the individual producers. They are obviously not irrelevant, but the greater utility of products is decided by practicality and applicability, not merely the ability to pawn off on an unsuspecting consumer. Further, a planned economy has a
goal. They have the capacity to undertake enormous projects and think in the long-term. Capitalist countries cannot do this, because of the volatility of markets, and because it is private capitalists who decide what gets built and what does not get built. Society's progress under capitalism is nearly wholly dependent upon the whims of the capitalist planners, who are only motivated by what returns a profit to them, and not what society needs or humanity requires. I don't trust that system to do what's right, or what's necessary, and I don't think it's right that a few private individuals should get to decide the path and progress of humanity, most of all those who are only concerned with what
they can get out doing it. So I would take a planned state capitalist economy any day of the week over a free market.
This is not to say that the Soviet system was perfect. Galbraith noted in The New Industrial State the comparison between the functioning [and the atrophy] of the Soviet planned economy with "old-school" capitalist enterprises like the Ford Motor Company before Henry Ford died. In both systems, the sole decision-maker was at the top, directing from above the myriad functions of the organization, and through whom all such decisions were made. But the problem is, once an organization gets so big, and contains so many moving parts and so many new technical things such that one person cannot possibly have the required expertise in all of the relevant things, this decision-making model becomes cumbersome and the organization actually suffers because of it. Since Ford, later in life, insisted on maintaining personal control in spite of this growing necessity for more experts than himself weighing in on things, his company heavily suffered because of it. Competitor companies were putting far more trust in their low and mid-level managers, who operated in committee-driven teams of experts in different fields, making decisions about production democratically. This greatly increased both efficiency and efficacy.
Likewise, GosPlan was like Henry Ford; unable to be an expert in every field that required expert-level input in production, and too far from the production process itself to be of practical use. It became cumbersome and unwieldy, and production and quality suffered because of it. The Soviet planned economy could have worked a lot better if these state-owned enterprises put more power into the hands of the workers and managers themselves, allowing them to control production and inform GosPlan about its needs, and not the other way around. That, I think, was their path forward to true socialism, and I do not understand why they did not take it. I think, perhaps, it might have been a fear of departing from Stalin's programme after he died, but I really cannot prove that right now.
So the plan is 'let's wing it'?
