Nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If it be useless, the labor contained in it is useless, cannot be reckoned as labor, and cannot therefore create value.

Marx makes this point in his analysis of the commodity at the opening of *Capital*, where he distinguishes between use-value (utility) and exchange-value (value as expressed in market exchange). Writing in the context of mid-19th-century industrial capitalism, Marx is arguing against treating “value” as a purely subjective or moral notion. Instead, he insists that commodities must first satisfy some human want (be useful) to count as commodities at all. Only then can the labor socially expended in producing them be recognized as value-creating labor within a system of exchange.

The quote states a necessary condition for value in Marx’s theory: usefulness. A thing that has no use-value cannot function as a commodity, so the labor spent making it does not register socially as value-creating labor. This does not mean Marx reduces value to utility; rather, utility is the prerequisite that allows labor to take the social form of value in exchange. The passage helps clarify Marx’s dual framework: use-value concerns qualitative usefulness, while value/exchange-value concerns the quantitative social relation mediated by labor and expressed through exchange.