"Before becoming a so-called natural given of economics, the existence of labor power rests on the relationship of domination, a constraint whose actual nature the legal form of the contract eludes by exploiting the confusion that is key to its operation. In fact, if the worker were not forced, not only would he not offer his labor power for hire to the capitalist, but he would not possess this very force, which is a fiction completely fabricated by the regime of wage labor, a potential reality assumed to exist separately from the conditions of its realization... If the worker were truly free, not only would he have the possibility of exploiting his labor power for his own benefit, but he would not have labor power divided along the lines of potentially and actuality, the division being the condition of the capitalist entrepreneur's profit. This is the thesis that Marx formulates with clarity in his "Notes on Wagner" from 1880: "The capitalist is not confined to removing or stealing, but exhorts the production of a surplus, that is to say he contributes first to creating what he will remove."
- Pierre Macherey