the worker can leave the individual capitalist to whom he hires himself whenever he likes . . . But the worker, whose sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labour, cannot leave the whole class of purchasers, that is the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that bourgeois, but to the bourgeois class. 23
The difference between the value of the worker's labour power and the value created by the labour done was the source of the surplus value. Once the employer had got this surplus value, it could be kept directly as profit, it could be used to pay off interest on any money borrowed to build the factory, or as rent to the owner of the land on which the factory stood. But however surplus value was divided up into profits, interest and rent, its source remained the excess work done by the workers-the exploitation by those who owned the means of production of those who did not. Once the owner had got the profit, he could use it to build new means of production, increasing still further his capacity to blackmail workers into labouring for him on his terms if they were to get a livelihood.
It was this process which made the employer a capitalist. It also gave a special meaning to the word "capital". The word is used by mainstream economists and in everyday life simply to mean longterm investment as opposed to immediate consumption. But it has a deeper significance once the means of production are in the control of one group of society, compelling others who want a livelihood to work for them. It is now a product of past labour which is able to expand through the exploitation of current labour. It is, as Marx put it, not a thing, but a relation:
Value-creating and value-enhancing power belongs not to the worker but to the capitalist . . . All the development of the productive forces of labour is development of the productive forces of capital. By incorporating into itself this power, capital comes alive and begins to work "as if its body were by love possessed". Living labour thus becomes a means whereby objectified labour is preserved and increased <sub>. . .</sub> 24
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Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond