However, if every commodity is exchanged according to its exchange value, then the rise of profit remains a mystery; profit is not the outcome of deceit and fraud; profit comes out of a seemingly fair exchange process. Capitalists, for Marx, are not, in the first instance, individuals who are able to cheat and steal in a clever way.

Where then is the source of extra profit, moreover, since the worker receives his wage for his labour?

For Marx, profit arises during the very process of production, which remains hidden and concealed by the sphere of exchange. The secret of the profit- making lies in the discovery of a specific commodity; which, as if by magic, can produce more value than its own.

This magical commodity is human–labour power itself, which is different from labour in general. Labour–power is the capacity of the worker to use and consume his physical or mental energy and thereby to add new value to the material with which he works (creation of surplus value).

This capacity, as separable from the worker as a whole, becomes exchangeable, and thus the worker sells his labour–power rather than his labour in general, in which case he would be a slave.
So the extra value of the newly produced commodities derives from the expenditure of labour–power during the process of production, and not during their exchange in the market sphere.
Capital then, does not consist in just the raw materials, initial investment and machinery. These by themselves are but sheer commodities. Capital is a specific mode of a social relation, through which the extraction of surplus value is attained. Capital is this social relation which generates and regenerates profit, out of the utilisation of the magical commodity of labour–power.

Wages and Contracts as forms of a disguise of exploitation

However, the source of profit remains hidden, since the worker seems to exchange his labour–power, as any other commodity in the market, in fair terms, with his wage. The wage, however, covers only a part of the values he produced, while the rest remains to the capitalist, as profit. The wage then disguises the process of exploitation, which remains concealed in the sphere of production.

Wages are fixed through contracts.
• Contracts then legitimise exploitation, since they present the worker`s wage as the agreed price for his work, in the context of fair exchange. The labour contract, the basis of capitalist production, seems to incarnate freedom, equality and justice.

• The labour contract crystallises the immanent contradiction of the capitalist mode of production, since it presupposes “free”, equal members of society in order to negotiate it, and at the same time, it justifies exploitation.

It seems then that this specific, historical form of freedom – i.e. the creation of labourers, who are free to sell their living labour power – is the very condition of their exploitation. This paradox permeates through capitalist society and is the source of its movement and dynamism.

The Role of Ideology and deception
Class polarisation and class conflict
The capitalist mode of production leads to social polarisation and the emergence of two main classes: the proletariat – i.e. working class under capitalist social relations, and the capitalist class as owners of the basic means of production.
In the heart of this mode of production there is a sharp contradiction, which potentially can give rise to class conflict.

Class conflict revolves, in the first instance, around all the forms through which capitalists extract surplus – value:
• working hours -48 hour movement
• level of wages – minimum wage
• intensity of work – “speed up”
• conditions of work – Chilean miners

Capital develops mechanisms of
• intensification of work