It refers to the tangible features of a commodity (a tradeable object) which can satisfy some human requirement, want or need, or which serves a useful purpose.
[1] Marx acknowledges that commodities being traded also have a general utility, implied by the fact that people want them, but he argues that this by itself says nothing about the specific character of the economy in which they are produced and sold.
"[2] With the expansion of market economy, however, the focus of economists has increasingly been on prices and price-relations, the social process of exchange as such being assumed to occur as a naturally given fact.
[citation needed] Marx first defines use-value precisely in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) where he explains: To begin with, a commodity, in the language of the English economists, is 'any thing necessary, useful or pleasant in life,' an object of human wants, a means of existence in the widest sense of the term.
[4]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".
He remained a sharp critic of what was to the Marxian view a destructive philosophy: The utility of a thing makes it a use value.
When treating of use value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron.
[7] However Marx generally holds that only human labour expended can create value compared with Nature, through instrumentation known as modus operandi, or the method of working.
[citation needed] Thus, the objective characteristics of use-values are very important for understanding (1) the development and expansion of market trade, and (2) necessary technical relationships between different economic activities (e.g. supply chains).
[citation needed] The category of use-value is also important in distinguishing different economic sectors according to their specific type of output.
[9] In modern national accounts more subtle distinctions are made, for example between primary, secondary and tertiary production, semi-durable and durable goods, and so on.
In a draft included in the Grundrisse manuscripts, which inspired the starting point of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Das Kapital, Marx states: The commodity itself appears as unity of two aspects.
However, as Marx did not live to finish Das Kapital, he did not theorise how commercial relations would reshape the sphere of personal consumption in accordance with the requirements of capital accumulation.
[citation needed] Minor issues remained from these neoclassical theories, such as the question of the proper empirical definition of capital and labour in the laws of factor substitution.
Other empirical issues include the so-called Solow Residual in which the heterogenous nature of labour is thoroughly explored for its qualitative elements beyond differentiation, and the concept of total factor productivity, prompting some to consider such things as technology, human capital, and stock of knowledge.
Later scholars, such as Walter Benjamin, Fernand Braudel, Ben Fine, Manuel Castells and Michel Aglietta attempted to fill the gap in Marx's unfinished work.
Marx's main argument is that if we focus only on the general utility of a commodity, we abstract from and ignore precisely the specific social relations of production which created it.
[citation needed] Some academics such as Professor Robert Albritton, a Canadian political scientist, have claimed that according to Marx, capitalists are basically "indifferent" to the use-value of the goods and services in which they trade, since what matters to capitalists is just the money they make; whatever the buyer does with the goods and services produced is, so it seems, of no real concern.
[15] Marx thought that capitalists can never be totally "indifferent" to use-values, because inputs of sufficient quality (labour, materials, equipment) must be bought and managed to produce outputs that: 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.
[citation needed] Often, Marx assumed in Das Kapital for argument's sake that supply and demand will balance, and that products do sell.