Capitalist mode of production

Definition
"The capitalist mode of production cannot ... be considered as a simple effect of one term or element &mdash; it is a relation, or an ensemble of relations"

There must be a meeting between:
 * "owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence"; and
 * "free workers," ie., without property but not property themselves.

The owners of means of production have to havce the power to skim commodities (surplus value) from the workers' production stream &mdash; which they do because obviously they are the powerful ones (they have resources, the labourers have none). So it's not a question of labour hiring capital.