>What's your critique of the position that the USSR was state-capitalist as opposed to being ruled by a coordinator class?
Short version: Because income difference, and nature of power were much closer to that of coordinators than capitalists in other nations.
In terms of income, the USSR had a more egalitarian distribution of income than capitalist nations - even when real income (access to ration coupons, and thus real goods, access to special stores and imports, access to the best of black market goods). Yes they had luxury Dachas and limousines. One way to put it is that the average Guatemalan millionaire (millionaire in dollars) would have sneered at lifestyle of even the top of the Soviet elite. On the other hand a fairly high level coordinator in the U.S. would have recognized the lifestyle of a high level Soviet party boss.
In terms of power, it is not that coordinators as a class had less power than a capitalists class. But is was exercised in a fundamentally different way. The relation of workers to the Soviet elite was much more like the relation of workers to managers in the U.S. than the relation of workers to capitalists.
In short, I think that if you were analyzing the Soviet Union at any point in it's early history - I think considering it a "coordinator state" would have had better analytical and predictive power than considering it a "state capitalism".
A side note: thanks for clipping and quoting only the relevent parts of my argument when replying. I really it appreciate how much easier following the discussion is because you do that.