"Economy" as global, generative matrix

Marx interpreted historical developments in terms of dialectical materialism, and argued that the key to understanding political events is inquiry into the conflict of economic interests; this means that the allegedly apolitical character of the economic sphere is an illusion. If this is so, then the locus in the struggle for human emancipation is not simply the realm of politics, but also relations within the system of production. Far from indicating a naive "economism", this is an insight that remains valid today. It was further elaborated in the early twentieth century by Georg Lukacs and theorists of the Frankfurt School of Western Marxism, and more recently by the contemporary Western Marxists Fredric Jameson, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek. As Žižek puts it, the economy functions as a formal structuring principle; it is a global, generative matrix (something like a Kantian transcendental condition of possibility), and is the point of reference of political struggles.