Use value

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price.

Use value was supposed to give some measure of usefulness, later refined as marginal benefit while exchange value was the measure of how much one good was in terms of another, namely what is now called relative price.

The concept is also introduced at the beginning of Das Kapital, where Marx writes, but in the extract below he holds it up as a critique of Hegel's liberal "Philosophy of Right".

The logical architecture of Das Kapital is derived in part from the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, including the fundamental distinction between use value and exchange value, the syllogisms (C-M-C' and M-C-M') for simple commodity circulation and the circulation of value as capital.

The transformation of a use-value into a social use-value and into a commodity (the process of commodification) is not automatic or spontaneous, but has technical, social and political preconditions.

How quantities of use-values are allocated in a market economy depends mainly on their exchange value, and this allocation is mediated by the "cash nexus".

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price.

However, some objects attain "use value" to persons in this world, when they are found to be "necessary, useful or pleasant in life," "Use value" makes an object "an object of human wants," or is "a means of subsistence in the widest sense".

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price.

He did not however live to finish Das Kapital, and did not theorise how commercial relations would reshape the sphere of personal consumption in accordance with the requirements of capital accumulation.

A socialist economy would not base production on the accumulation of capital, instead basing production on the criteria of satisfying human needs and directly producing use-values.

Even so, Marx carefully defines the production process both as a labour process creating use-values, and a valorisation process creating new value.

In summary, different concepts of use value lead to different interpretations and explanations of trade, commerce and capitalism.

Following Adam Smith, Marx distinguished the use value of commodities from their exchange value in the market.

In that case, it could be argued not just labour power but the whole person is a use-value (see further Richard Sennett's books such as The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale (2006).

:"By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description."

For this purpose, the inputs in production must moreover be used in an economical way, and care must be taken not to waste resources to the extent that this would mean additional costs for an enterprise, or reduce productivity.

The hiring of labor power only results in the production of goods or services ("use-values") when organized and regulated (often by the "management").

He asserts only that "capital in general" as an abstract social power, or as a property claim to surplus value, is indifferent to particular use-values—what matters in this financial relation is only whether more value can be appropriated through the exchanges that occur.

When that process is complete, the whole of production has become simultaneously a labor process creating use-values and a valorisation process creating new value, and more specifically a surplus-value appropriated as net income (see also capital accumulation).

Even so, Marx carefully defines the production process both as a labour process creating use-values, and a valorisation process creating new value.

The capitalist production process, Marx argues, is both a labour process creating use-values and a value-creation process through which additional new value is created.

That is also why Marx regarded the individual commodity, which simultaneously represents value and use-value as the "cell" (or the "cell-form") in the "body" of capitalism.

The commodity has at the same time, both a subjective material use value and an objective exchange value or social value.

Here, Marx was distinguishing between exchange value (the subject of the LTV) and use value.

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price.

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price.

From Aristotle to Adam Smith and David Ricardo, their meanings have evolved.

From Aristotle to Adam Smith and David Ricardo, their meanings have evolved.

From Aristotle to Adam Smith and David Ricardo, their meanings have evolved.

In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx emphasizes that the use-value of a labour-product is practical and objectively determined; that is, it inheres in the intrinsic characteristics of a product that enable it to satisfy a human need or want.

The use-value of a commodity is specifically a social use-value, meaning that it has a generally accepted use-value for others in society, and not just for the producer.

This was a direct reference by Marx to Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right §63 as Marx adds:

The transformation of a use-value into a social use-value and into a commodity (the process of commodification) is not automatic or spontaneous, but has technical, social and political preconditions.

In the case of information or communication as use-values, transforming them into commodities may be a complex and problem-fraught process.