Capital

According to Marx, capital is a relationship, not a thing. It is found in a system of relations where productive property is privately owned. Not all assets are capital. Only wealth that is used in combination with labor power to produce more wealth is rightly considered capital. An ordinary savings account, for example, is not a form of capital for the account holder, even though the deposits earn interest. The holder of the savings account does not purchase the labor power of workers in order to produce greater wealth. (For the bank, however, the sum of the deposits is capital, because the wealth is combined with labor power to increase to produce more wealth. The bank pays interest to account holders in order to entice deposits, so that the accumulated wealth can be used as capital.)