Capital exists in two fundamental aspects:
(1) Physical capital
(2) Finance capital

The capitalist cannot acquire wealth beyond the physical capital the capitalist begins
with, unless productive labor is added to the physical capital, producing the surplus
value the capitalist extracts and keeps, some of which the capitalist invests, and some
of which the capitalist uses for personal consumption.  

Unless the capitalist invests finance capital in a company with physical capital, employing
the productive labor of others, the capitalist's finance capital will not serve to multiply the
capitalist's private wealth in money.

The important ingredient is always labor. You can only get wealthy, in capitalism, on the
back of labor. Labor is a form of physical capital, but the ideology of capitalism tends to
value human labor less than the machine, and less than money, as value-creating assets.
Capitalism will not, and cannot, acknowledge labor as the principal and exclusive
producer of value. It is fetishism that attributes productive agency to machines and to
money.

To a proprietor of physical and/or finance capital, human capital, as wage-employees,
are people other than the employer.  Capitalist employers are not subsumed in the
category/class of human capital.

Capital goods are the products of past labor.  Money is an abstract expression of value
created by past labor.

The labor theory of value is wrong only if you believe that value can be created without
human labor. Labor precedes capital.  Labor produces capital. Capital value would
not exist without labor creating that value.  Whatever value capital creates, it is labor
that puts capital to work in the creation of value.  The only capital that produces value
is human capital -- i.e., human labor.

Capital is an artificial means of production, because capital is created by human labor.

Land is not an artificial means of production.  Land is not created by human labor.

Developed land is land changed by human labor.  Land is a factor of production, as are
labor and capital. Developed land, although it embodies labor, and although it can be
combined with labor to produce value, is not called "capital" in most of the economic
literature.

As I understand the vocabulary of economics, the three factors of production are land,
labor, and capital. For the purposes of scientific-economic analysis, these three factors
are set apart and kept apart.





"The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless."
-- Thomas Woodrow Wilson