Use Value, the usefulness of an item, its ability to meet various requirements either as an article of personal consumption or as a means of production. Use value is determined by the physical, chemical and other natural properties of an item, as well as by properties imparted to it through man’s purposeful activities. It is created through concrete labour. As science and technology develop, people discover new properties of things in the world around them and put them to use, in this way augmenting the multiformity of use values. Some things directly satisfy people’s personal requirements, serving as articles of personal consumption (food, clothing, etc.), while others serve as means for producing material benefits, i. e., as the means of production (machines, raw and other materials, fuel, etc.). Use value is an inalienable property of any useful thing, regardless of the social form of production. Diverse use values " constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth" (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 44). However, the role of use value changes with the change in the mode of production. For instance, in commodity production use value is the bearer of exchange value that conceals value. The study of use value as such, i. e., the natural properties of things, constitutes the subject-matter of ctommodity research and other applied sciences. Political economy studies use value in the system of the social relations evolving in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption. The use value of a commodity must possess the property of satisfying the requirements of the commodity’s buyer, i. e., it must function as social use value. In capitalist production use value is of interest to the capitalist only as the bearer of value and surplus value, since the immediate aim of capitalist production consists in extracting profit rather than in satisfying 380 human and social requirements. Under socialism use value becomes directly social. The creation of use values in a definite quantity, assortment and quality is directly designed to meet more fully the requirements of all members of society.