Use-value - Definition and Overview

In Marxian political economy, any commodity, i.e., any product that's sold on the market, has a use value, along with exchange value and value.

The concept is akin to, but not the same as, the neoclassical concept of utility. Marx assumed that all commodities sold in the market had use-value to the buyer, without making any effort to quantify it. The neoclassicals, on the other hand, typically see utility as quantitative (though not comparable between people). Thus, they often talk about the marginal utility provided by some product, i.e., how the utility increases with the product's consumption.

• See labor theory of value.