Marx's preferred solution was for the workers to organise their own schools, but he recognised that, at the time, this was not a practical solution.
“The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.
Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.”
(Programme of The First International)
And, in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx emphasises this opposition to state education further, in opposition to the position of the Lassalleans/Fabians.
"Elementary education by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfilment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people.”
In the absence of schools provided by workers themselves, such as those established by the cooperative movement, or the education provided by the National Organisation of Labour Colleges, or Plebs League, Marx favoured the kind of arrangement in parts of America, where schools were funded and run by local communities.
In relation to other aspects of the welfare state, Marx and Engels argued, instead for the workers, again, to organise such provision, based on their existing organisations such as the trades unions, and Friendly Societies. Engels wrote, for example, in relation to the proposals in The Erfurt Programme, to support the measures already introduced by Bismark, and Von Caprivi, for National Insurance,
“These points demand that the following should be taken over by the state: (1) the bar, (2) medical services, (3) pharmaceutics, dentistry, midwifery, nursing, etc., etc., and later the demand is advanced that workers’ insurance become a state concern. Can all this be entrusted to Mr. von Caprivi? And is it compatible with the rejection of all state socialism, as stated above?”
Let us suppose, therefore, that the working-class, had adopted the proposals set out by Marx and Engels, and had created its own social insurance scheme, via its trades unions and friendly societies, so as to provide, for its requirements in old age, unemployment, sickness, as well as its requirements for education. All, of these constitute a necessary part of the value of labour-power, the cost of reproducing the labouring class from one generation to another. That the workers, cover the cost of the provision of these services via the payment of regular insurance premiums, rather than by, each individual paying for the actual services they receive is irrelevant. When workers take out house or car insurance, they do so on the basis that they may or may not, individually, come to claim against that insurance. By pooling the risk, each person taking out the insurance, reduces the amount that, otherwise, they would have to set aside to cover the worst eventuality.
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