Statists always see things in terms of the amount of actual state involvement in production that exists. Its why they were so obsessed with Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution, and its removal, by the epitome of neoliberalism (conservative-social democracy), Tony Blair. But, the role of the state, for capital, and so for social-democracy does not reside in how much the state itself engages in production of goods and services. (Marx and Engels noted that an indication of the growth of large-scale socialised capital, was actually that former state run enterprises were taken over by it).
The role of the state resides in protecting and advancing the interests of capital, by whatever are the most effective means at the time. Sometimes that requires the state to nationalise industries, sometimes to privatise them, sometimes to directly provide services such as healthcare, social care and so on, and at others to simply provide a National Social Insurance Scheme, whilst facilitating non-state companies to provide the actual services. The statist Left, and others have always fetishised the NHS, but, across Europe, social-democracy developed much better, more efficient social health care systems, that do not rely upon the state running hospitals, and so on, with that being undertaken by a range of providers from cooperatives, mutuals, and private companies.
In the post-war period, Fordist production was still the most efficient means of production, based upon large-scale, assembly lines. State provision of healthcare and public education, followed the same format. But, as Aglietta described, many years ago, changes in technology made possible different, more efficient methods of production, and what came to be called Post-Fordism. It creates new conditions of regulation for capital accumulation. The role of the social-democratic state, is to simply provide the best framework, via the planning and regulation of the economy for capital accumulation. It is also, why, at times, that role involves not reducing the size of the state, and provision of welfare, education, healthcare provision and so on, or as with Blair's proposals for 50% of the population to go to university, to increase it. In either case, its done not for the benefit of “society”, but for the interests of capital, given the specific conditions of the time.
However, as stated earlier, it is necessary to distinguish between the state, and the government, but also to distinguish between the immediate interests of real, socialised capital, and fictitious capital. Socialised, industrial capital is, objectively, the collective property of the “associated producers” (workers and managers in the given company), as Marx calls them.. As it is, also, this capital that produces the surplus-value/profits out of which capital accumulation/economic growth arises, as well as out of which is deducted the revenues of the ruling class (rent, interest/dividends, and taxes) so, ultimately, it is the interests of this capital, that must determine the actions of the state.
In the short-term, however, the state is the state of the ruling-class, and the ruling-class is not a class of owners of real industrial capital, but of speculators, owners of fictitious capital. It merely, continues to exercise control over the real industrial capital, via its monopoly ownership of fictitious-capital. Similarly, the highly fungible nature of fictitious-capital, and footloose nature of the ruling-class, today, as a global class, with no necessary tie to any given nation state, means that it can utilise its monopoly ownership of fictitious capital, to control global financial markets, and so the cost of borrowing for states, value of currencies and so on. It is a fact that Syriza discovered in Greece, on the Left, and Truss found, in Britain, on the Right.
Indeed, the examples of Syriza, and of Truss indicate this difference between the government and the state, which also indicates the idiocy of those calls, in the past, by some on the Left, such as “Labour Take The Power”, a version of which, today, is the even more ludicrous calls for a “Workers Government”, by which is only meant for a social-democratic government, to act in the interests of the working-class, as though real power in society ever resides in the government, rather than in the hands of the permanent state, its officials, bodies of armed men, judiciary and other institutions of control, as well as in the power of the ruling-class, in the financial markets.
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