The concept of value evolved/moved during time, as the various aspects of this concept were specified: Cost of the Input S, Price on a Gone, Profitability, Profit, Need, Utility and marginal Utility, Value work, Exchange value, etc

The practical value is one of these aspects of the value, historically important, even if the concept lost of its gloss with the development of the other aspects and especially since the Marginalisme. It indicates the utility of a well evaluated according to the particular properties of the good and the Usage which is made by it by the final Consommateur, either like means of subsistence, or like means of production.

This concept is built in opposition to the concept of Exchange value (opposition already released by Aristote): first is characteristic of an individual (or a technical group: a company, for example), the second depends on the others and the practical value (different) which they can grant to the same thing. The opposition between the two concepts is not frontal, but dialectical: there is of exchange only because a utility is granted, therefore a practical value, with the thing obtained; while the use can also imply an exchange, upstream (purchase of flour) or downstream (sale of bread).

The practical value depends on the user and of the circumstances, according to its physical capacities, of its knowledge, its wish present, its future anticipations, its situation, its organization (in the case of a group), etc And the practical value account of the productive uses takes that the user can make: that sets up, according to the processes available, of the chains of practical value (the practical value of the bread determines that of the flour and other factors of production, then that of the mill, etc). From this observation, one can draw two conclusions

- First is that it is the practical value of the finished product which is the essential component, whose the practical value then the exchange value of all the goods used depends to produce it.

- The second, it is that insofar as the production processs are characteristic of the company (technical capabilities, knowledge, state of the resources and the needs, etc), one can imagine that there exists an objective practical value, and that it is possible to determine it scientifically. Even if each individual has, at the beginning, his own value practical value, it would be thus possible to build a collective practical value.

According to Karl Marx

A good becomes goods only because at the same time it is object of utility and carries value (see Karl Marx, the Capital , delivers 1, volume 1). Thus the goods, if it is produced of a concrete labor, are also “value” in the direction where it is produced at the same time of a general work, of an abstract work which measures him in working times. So to the practical value an appreciated work from the point of view of its quality corresponds, to the “value” on the other hand corresponds a work evaluated in quantity, time spent, days, hours etc, to produce the goods in question. It is because the goods are the products of this general work, of this work evaluated as them can be compared between them and exchange themselves. The value that they contain in them makes it possible them to be exchange values and to be measured mutually, to be commensurable. It is not their report/ratio of exchange which determines their value, but well the reverse; it is because they are initially values which they can contact of exchange.

Karl Marx assimilates the two concepts of Utilité and practical value

the utility of a thing makes this thing a practical value. But this utility does not have anything vagueness and undecided. Determined by the properties of the body of the goods, it does not exist without him. This body itself, such as iron, wheat, diamond, etc, is consequently a practical value, and it is not more or less of work that it is necessary for the man to adapt useful qualities which gives him this character. When it is question of practical values, one always implies a determined quantity, like a dozen watches, one meter of fabric, a ton of iron, etc the practical values of the goods provide the funds of a particular knowledge, commercial science and routine.

By utility, it is thus necessary quite simply to include/understand Usage. For example, an apple and a pen do not have the same use. One makes it possible to be nourished whereas the other makes it possible to write.

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