In small-scale circulation, capital advances the worker his wages, which he exchanges for products necessary for his own consumption. The money that he receives only has this power because, at the same time, work is being carried out alongside him. It is only because capital has appropriated his labour that it can give him, with the money, control over the labour of others. This exchange of worker’s own labour for that of others does not seem to be determined and conditioned by the simultaneous coexistence of the others’ labour, but by the advance that capital has made to him.