"Value criticism (in German Wertkritik) is a branch of postmarxism which is criticizing the capitalistic society. They are following traditions of the Frankfurt School and the critical theory developed under Max Horkheimer. Representatives are Robert Kurz, Roswitha Scholz and Moishe Postone.
Value criticism is taking crucial aspects of Marx critiques of commodity fetishism, commodities and value, while they criticize Marx theory of class struggle and historical materialism. As result the worker class can not necessarily be identified as revolutionary subject. Instead it is pointed out, that labor has to be understood as a historic specific entity and that criticizing capitalism implies not only to criticize the distribution process in capitalism, but also the capitalistic production process and the productive powers. Thus it can be concluded, that real socialism was finally nothing more but state capitalism, where production was still following capitalistic principals. The interpretation against the traditional marxistic point of view is defended in the Manifesto Against Labour."
Taken from:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_criticism
---
Further reading:
http://www.exit-online.org/text1.php?tabelle=transnationales&index=2
http://www.krisis.org/navi/english