Was the payment of the miners' wages, after WWII, “a deduction from overall surplus value” as Roberts claims? Clearly not. The only basis for such a claim would be if the labour of the miners was not socially necessary labour, i.e. did not produce a use-value, and so was not value-creating labour. Is that really what Roberts wants to claim? Is he saying that the coal produced by those miners, was not demanded by British capital in the steel works, power stations, on the railways, and to heat homes and factories etc.? If, the coal had not been produced, would British capital have simply done without the need for coal?
Only if the capital employed in that production would not otherwise have been employed in such production, if there was no demand for the output, and so it was financed by taxing/siphoning off a part of total surplus value that would have been utilised, more productively, in other ways, can it be argued that this was not itself capital, not, itself, value-creating, and productive of surplus-value/capital. That is true in relation to arms spending, by the state, for example, but it is not generally true of statised capital as a whole, whether it is in relation to coal and energy production, steel, vehicles, transport, or health and social-care, and education. In the late 1980's, and after, the coal industry, in Britain, disappeared, because the demand for coal had been vastly reduced, and the coal required could now be obtained much cheaper by importing it. The same was true of steel, shipbuilding etc.
Is it sometimes true that the state siphons off surplus value, to sustain production in an industry that would, otherwise, not attract capital into it? Yes, of course.
Marx described the situation in relation to forestry, for example. The turnover time for forestry is so prolonged that capital has to be advanced for decades, before a virgin forest is able to produce the trees that can be sold, and, thereby, enable the capital to realise a profit. Its one reason that the rate of profit/profit margin, on such production is so high, in order to return the average annual rate of profit. But, states need the production of trees and timber, so that, even if individual private capitals would not engage in such production, the state must do so, on behalf of capital in general. The same is true with a lot of infrastructure, not to mention, things like the development of atomic energy, space industry and so on. Only when the development of technology in these spheres has reached a stage that the value of fixed capital is massively reduced, does it become possible for non-state capitals to enter these spheres, as, now, with the rapidly growing space industries.
In fact, this is only an extension of the analysis made by Marx and Engels, in relation to the development of socialised capital, in general, in the 19th century. In other words, when production reaches a stage, where the amount of capital required, even as a minimal, let alone optimal size is so huge, private capital, is no longer sufficient. At that point, the monopoly of private capital becomes a fetter on the accumulation of capital itself. It is then supplanted by socialised capital, be it in the form of the cooperative or the joint stock company, able to mobilise the money-capital of the whole of society.
Similarly, after WWII, the British economy needed coal, steel and so on. It could have allowed those industries to disappear, and, instead have imported coal, steel and so on, which is what happened after the 1980's. But, given that, after WWII, Britain already had difficulty funding its import of food, and other basic commodities, which were rationed, it lacked the foreign currency, and the exports to finance such a massive level of imports, let alone the significance of becoming dependent on them for such strategic industries. The latter concern was removed when Britain became a member of the EEC/EU. But, in addition, had it let the coal industry collapse, at a time when it employed around three-quarters of a million workers, with many hundreds of thousands of other jobs dependent on it, in other industries, the state would have had to fund billions of pounds in unemployment benefits, and so on, which would themselves have had to be financed by taxation on surplus-value.
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