Use value is the ability of an object to satisfy a need. It is determined by its natural conditions. In a system of capitalist production or commodity production, it must be differentiated from exchange value, since the latter is a magnitude determined by the amount of work socially necessary to produce the commodity (this according to the Marxist theory of value-work), the use value is determined by the characteristics of the object and by the specific and concrete use that is given to it according to those characteristics. In this way, two objects with different use value (for example, a motorcycle and a television) can have the same exchange value if this is determined by the laws of the market.[1]​.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to distinguish between use value and exchange value:[2][3]​.

Exchange value, according to the labor theory of value, is a quantitative measure determined by abstract labor time, that is, the socially necessary labor time to produce them. Thus, the standard of measurement by which goods are exchanged is the labor time socially necessary to produce them. If one commodity is worth the same as another, it is because both require the same work time to produce them under the same social working conditions. This value is independent, therefore, of the specific use that these goods have, and, in this way, independent of their use value.

This value is composed, in capitalist production, of the constant capital (means of production) consumed and the variable capital (value of labor power) in the production of merchandise and the surplus value or surplus value produced by the worker and appropriated free of charge by the capitalist.

In capitalism, work, as a human activity, is the use value, that is, the specific use given to the commodity labor power personified in a worker, and this use value, work, has a quality that differentiates it from other use values ​​and is its capacity to create value, that is, exchange values ​​materialized in new commodities.

It is possible to propose a definition for the expression "value and use of cultural heritage." This definition would be characterized by the degree of importance that we attach to certain things, ideas or inherited goods and the usefulness that we give them either in individual or collective development.

On the other hand, the historian Josep Ballart suggests that "the real situations of attribution of value can, therefore, be contemplated within the three reference categories, but for all this to work it will be necessary to foresee an economic context that encompasses them (...) where the different uses of heritage, including the purely contemplative ones, are valued in money."[4]​.