what do you think Marx and Engels mean when they argue that wage labor creates capital?

Question

"that kind of property which exploits wage-labor"

Answer 1

Materials and energies are changed into goods and services by the work or labor of human beings. The added value comes from the work performed and this added value is called "capital" and it would not exist w/o the labor of human beings.

side comment: Advances in the sciences and technology also add value and generate capital but those advances too are the result of human labors of the mental and physical kind. I'm not sure Marx&Engles dealt with this aspect since they were focused on *dialectal materialism and the mental element is secondary to the physical element. Anyway it gets fuzzy trying to reduce all added value to the physical labor of humans. Valuing the time element was also problematic given the variations in individual efficiencies with time.

Answer 2

Put simply.

You are paid less than the value of what you produce. The surplus value of your labor (profit) is returned to the capitalist (the person who owns the means of production). This surplus value is then used by the capitalist to increase his/her business holdings (business capital) or becomes personal wealth used by banks, investment houses, etc. as the means for other capitalists to increase their holdings.

Hence the surplus value of your labor becomes the vehicle for those who own the means of production to own more and more of the means of production (capital).

Answer 3

Capital to me means money to spend. We buy 'things' and need more laborers to make more products in order to make more 'things' to spend our capital on. Or am I being way too simplistic. !