Certainly Marx did not write centrally about how the law of value
operates on the largest scale in conditions where there are great
discrepancies in the level of the means of production. But it should not
be impossible to do so.
Chris Burford
Key to understanding the relationship between the overall goal of
efficiency and the importance of putting people first can be found in
Guevara's approach to the Marxist category of value. It would be value
that would mediate between society and the economy.
Simply put, Guevara believed that the law of value operates as a "blind,
spontaneous force" under capitalism. Socialism, on the other hand, would
allow conscious action upon the law of value in accordance with an
understanding of the greater needs of society. In his Manual of Political
Economy, Guevara spells out the way the socialist state can make use of
the law of value.
"We consider the law of value to be partially operative because remnants
of the commodity society still exist. This is also reflected in the type
of exchange that takes place between the state as supplier and as the
consumer. We believe that particularly in a society such as ours, with a
highly developed foreign trade, the law of value on an international scale
must be recognized as a fact governing commercial transactions, even
within the socialist camp. We recognize the need for this trade to assume
a higher form in countries of the new society, to prevent a widening of
the differences between the developed and the more backward countries as a
result of the exchange. In other words, it is necessary to develop terms
of trade that permit the financing of industrial developments even if it
contravenes the price systems prevailing in the capitalist world market.
This would allow the entire socialist camp to progress more evenly, which
would naturally have the effect of smoothing off the rough edges and of
unifying the spirit of proletarian internationalism.
"We reject the possibility of consciously using the law of value in the
absence of a free market that automatically expresses the contradiction
between producers and consumers. We reject the existence of the commodity
category in relations among state enterprises. We consider all such
establishments to be part of the single large enterprise that is the state
(although in practice this has not yet happened in our country). The law
of value and the plan are two terms linked by a contradiction and its
resolution. We can therefore state that centralized planning is the mode
of existence of socialist society, its defining characteristic, and the
point at which man's consciousness is finally able to synthesize and
direct the economy toward its goal--the full liberation of the human being
in the framework of communist society."
full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm