Question:

How should we understand a commodity's use-value?

Answer:

Use-value can be understood from the following three perspectives.

1 Definition. Marx says: “The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value. (48)” A commodity's natural properties can satisfy some human need; in this sense, we say it possesses use-value.

2 It applies to more than commodities. Use-value is a natural property of things. Commodities are not the only things with use-value: anything that satisfies human needs has it. Grain you grow to eat yourself, for example, is not a commodity, but still has use-value. Thus, as long as human society exists, products of labor will be needed to meet people's needs, and those products must have use-value. Use-value is a category applicable to every form of human society, whereas value applies only to societies producing commodities.

3 It is not the subject of political economy. In a commodity-producing society, producers do not care about their commodities' use-value. They care only whether they can sell them and for how much—in other words, their exchange-value. Even when they pay attention to use-value, it is merely to make their commodities more competitive in the market. Use-value therefore belongs to disciplines such as commodity science, rather than political economy. Even when political economy examines it, it does so from a social perspective, without actually analyzing physical properties or chemical composition. Marx devotes so much space to commodities' use-value because he wants readers to avoid confusing use-value with value, and to introduce the two categories of exchange-value and value.