Use-value

Use-value is the capacity of a good or service to satisfy a human want. It depends on the good’s useful properties and the purposes people have for it.

Utility: Utility is the satisfaction or benefit a person derives from consuming a good or service. Use-value concerns a good’s capacity to satisfy wants; utility describes the satisfaction associated with that capacity.
Karl Marx: Karl Marx was a German philosopher, political economist, and socialist theorist. Marx made the distinction between use-value and exchange-value central to his critique of capitalism.
Use-value and exchange-value in Marx's critique of political economy: Marx’s analysis of how commodities combine usefulness with a social form of exchange. This is the framework in which use-value becomes a distinct category of economic analysis.
Use-value and price: The relationship between a good’s usefulness and the monetary amount for which it sells. A useful good may have a low price, while scarce or socially valued goods may be costly.
Usefulness: Usefulness is the quality of serving a purpose or meeting a need. A good’s useful properties are the basis of its capacity to satisfy wants.
Marginal utility: Marginal utility is the additional satisfaction obtained from consuming one more unit of a good or service. Marginal utility explains choices through incremental satisfaction, unlike Marx’s account of use-value as a property of useful goods.
Commodity fetishism: Commodity fetishism is the appearance of social relations among producers as relations among commodities. It shows how commodity exchange can obscure the useful labor and social relations behind goods.
Paradox of value: The paradox of value is the puzzle that necessities can be cheap while less useful goods are expensive. It exposes the difference between a good’s total usefulness and its market exchange conditions.
Exchange-value: Exchange-value is the proportion in which one good exchanges for another, or its value expressed in exchange. Use-value concerns satisfaction, whereas exchange-value concerns what a good can command in trade.
Labor theory of value: The labor theory of value explains the value of commodities by the labor required to produce them. Marx distinguishes labor-based value from a commodity’s usefulness to its user.

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