able to wield the power delegated to a specific office only when the legitimacy of the office is accepted. Legitimacy is not a property possessed by the office or by the specific occupant of the office. Legitimacy is a property conferred on the office and its personage by all other individuals.
Although many of the commands of a personification are enforced by violent means, the granting of legitimacy is not the result of coercion. If the power of a personification rested on violence alone, the personification would not need to be legitimate to realize its commands. Furthermore, if the physical power of an individual was great enough to enable the individual to enforce commands, the individual would not need to personify estranged social powers. Violence accompanies the power wielded by a personification, but does not make the personification legitimate. The office and its personage become legitimate only when the authority of the office and its occupant is internalized by all other individuals. By accepting the legitimacy of an office to wield a specific social power, individuals abdicate their own power over that part of social life. As soon as individuals abdicate this power, the office to which the power is abdicated becomes an "authority" which has the "right" to wield that power; an individual who does not abdicate the power becomes a "criminal" who has no "right" to wield it; all others are obedient, "good," and "law-abiding citizens" to the extent that they exert no power over that part of social activity. The abdication is not a historical event that took place at a specific time in the past; it is a daily event that takes place every time people submit to authority.
By transforming the productive power of society into an alienable commodity, into labor sold for a wage, capitalism extended the personification of estranged power into all realms of social life. As soon as an individual consents to sell productive energy for a given sum of money, this sum of money becomes the "equivalent" of the productive energy, the money possesses the potency of the productive energy. Money becomes the representative of productive power, instruments of production, and product. As soon as all individuals consent to sell their productive energy, money becomes the universal representative of society's productive power. It is at this point that society's productive forces become Capital, which is only another name for the power of productive forces represented by a given sum of money. And as soon as the productive forces take the form of Capital, possessors of large sums of money are Capitalists, personifications of the productive power represented by their sum of money, personifications of society's productive forces. It is the sale of productive power that makes money the universal historical agent. At this point cities are built and destroyed, environments are transformed, history is made, by the spending of sums of money. At this point individuals or even communities have abdicated their power to build environments which suit them. Only investors,
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