So, if instead of the workers providing their own welfare services the state undertakes those functions, nothing is changed. Instead of workers setting aside a part of their wages as a social fund, pooled in their Friendly and Mutual Societies, to cover these services, they, instead, have a similar amount deducted from their wages by the capitalist state for that purpose. In fact, precisely because the state does this on a much larger scale, so that the actuarial calculations of risk, are more accurate, in relation to things such as the risk of ill-health, unemployment, and so on, and because the state, utilising Fordist, mass production techniques, can reduce the actual cost of provision of education, healthcare and so on, it reduces the amount that each individual worker, and so the working-class, in aggregate, must set aside for such provision. It, thereby, reduces the value of labour-power, and, contrary to Roberts' assertion, it, thereby, increases the rate of surplus value, relative profits, and the rate and mass of profit. It is why all developed capitalist economies have sought to introduce such welfare states.
Does this mean that the state-capitalist does not advance capital that turns out not to be capital, i.e. that it overproduces commodities/services, such that the capital advanced was wasted, and the labour expended, was not value creating? Of course not, any less than any other capital can sometimes overproduce commodities that cannot be sold at their value. But, the state, in providing things like health and social care, and education, not to mention the provision of benefits, pensions and so on, has far more control over that than does even a private insurance company, let alone if workers provided for their own welfare collectively.
If you take out house insurance cover, and you come to claim on it, the insurance company, is bound by law to honour its commitments. Not so the capitalist state. When you pay National Insurance contributions, it is a contract to be able to obtain the given level of service required, be it unemployment or sickness benefit, pension, or health and social care. But, at its own whim and discretion, the capitalist state can renege on those contracts. It willy-nilly reduces benefits and pensions, in real terms, postpones the point at which they are paid, reduces the level and quality of health and social care provision, education and so on. All of that it does, simply in the immediate interests of capital.
Contrary, to Roberts' claim that things like state education, health and social care are funded out of surplus value, therefore, the reality is that they are funded out of the aggregate variable-capital, or wage fund. If there was no state education, or healthcare, that would not change the fact that workers require those labour-services for the reproduction of their labour-power, and capital requires the reproduction of labour-power, because without the ability to purchase labour-power, it cannot set to work its use-value, its ability to perform labour, and so produce new value, and, thereby surplus value. Indeed, in the past, when capital required workers to be, at least minimally educated, in the 19th century, it either had to set aside funds for that provision, directly, with firms employing teachers to educate their young workers, or else the workers, themselves, set aside a part of their wages to cover the cost of educating themselves and their children, for example in the cooperative schools, often run above cooperative stores, and so on.
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