Critique of political economy is a vital perspective for dissecting capitalist society. Slavoj Žižek, a standard-bearer of contemporary Western Leftist theory, recognized the importance of political economy early in his theoretical construction. In the introduction to The Žižek Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright, he noted: "For my project, the re-centralization of the Marxist critique of political economy is the key." ^[1] In The Parallax View, a work that systematically elucidates his philosophical outlook, Žižek borrows Kojin Karatani’s concept of "parallax" and provides it with a Lacanian interpretation, constructing a new philosophy of "parallax dialectics." This new philosophy is grounded in ontological difference and the foundation of "minimal difference." Refracted through the prism of "parallax dialectics," the systemic antagonisms of the capitalist economy are revealed and reified into the parallax splits between three pairs: "Real" economy and reality economy, the de-politicization of economy and the priority of the political, and material labor and immaterial labor. Critique of political economy under the horizon of parallax differs from the traditional path revealed by Marx in Capital—where capital exploits surplus labor—yet it similarly attests to the inherent internal antagonisms of the contemporary capitalist economic system. It provides us with a new theoretical perspective to focus on the logic of capital and deeply analyze the maladies of the global capitalist system, while simultaneously offering a certain new possibility for the contemporary Left to reshape emancipatory politics.

I. The Basic Connotations of Parallax Dialectics

"Parallax" is a crucial concept proposed by the Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani (hereafter "Karatani") in his representative theoretical work Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (hereafter Transcritique). Its standard definition is: "the apparent displacement of an object (the shift of its position against a background) caused by a change in the observational position that provides a new line of sight." ^[2] However, this perspectivist principle based on the side of the subject is not Karatani's core insight regarding "parallax." In Transcritique, he creatively interprets Kant’s "transcendental turn" regarding the problem of "antinomies," revealing the critical potential of the "parallax view." Building upon Karatani's interpretation of Kantian critical philosophy, Žižek resorts to Lacan's concept of the Real ^[3] to provide a deep theoretical elucidation of "parallax," advancing it from a difference in the subject’s cognitive perspective to an ontological difference in the object, thereby completing the construction of parallax dialectics.

First, Žižek interprets "parallax" through the "transcendental" turn of Kantian philosophy, regarding it as an ontological difference based on the "non-all" nature of reality. In Transcritique, Karatani associates the concept of parallax with Kant’s "antinomies." He argues that parallax means "in the face of a gesture of antinomy in the strict Kantian sense, we should abandon the effort to reduce one aspect to the other, or even to perform a 'dialectical synthesis' of the two opposing sides"; ^[4] we should persist in the irreducibility of the antinomy and "conceive of the radical critical point as the irreducible gap between different positions, as the purely structural lacuna between different positions." ^[5] Based on these insights of Karatani regarding the critical potential of parallax, Žižek provides a further in-depth interpretation of the revolutionary nature of the "transcendental" turn in Kantian philosophy. He believes that Kant's "transcendental" turn, based on the distinction between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenal world, reveals a fundamental limitation of the human condition—"finitude." That is, both our sensible cognition and our rational thinking have limitations; these two modes of thought cannot be reduced to one another because they are rooted in different aspects of human experience. Consequently, in the process of cognizing the world, we can neither rely entirely on sensible experience nor entirely on rational thinking. In Žižek's view, therefore, "the Kantian ‘transcendental’ is far from marking a ‘synthesis’ of the two dimensions; on the contrary, it represents the irreducible gap of the two dimensions ‘as such’"; ^[6] the subsequent Kantian lesson requires us "not to look from one’s own perspective nor from the perspective of the other, but to directly face the ‘Reality’ exposed by the difference (parallax)." ^[7] This means that if we are to grasp the revolutionary philosophical results led by Kantian parallax, we must "take another step from the top of the hundred-foot pole" ^[8] and advance the cognition of parallax from epistemological difference to ontological difference.

Ontological difference is the focus of Heidegger’s thought, referring to the difference between beings and Being—that is, the difference between the existence of an entity and the horizon of meaning of that entity. However, Žižek does not intend to provide a systematic exposition of Heidegger's thesis; he intends to link it with Kant's resolution of antinomies to endow "parallax" with a more radical critical connotation. Žižek points out that Kant had already seen the cracks in the ontological "edifice" of reality, but for structural reasons related to the construction of a theoretical system, Kant's final resolution of the antinomies remained within the epistemological horizon. But Žižek believes the key step is to advance "finitude" from the epistemological horizon to Being itself. That is to say, "the limitation of our knowledge (the fact that knowledge cannot grasp the whole of Being, and thus our knowledge is entangled in contradictions and inconsistencies) is simultaneously the limitation of the object of our knowledge itself—that is, the gaps and vacancies in our knowledge of reality are at the same time the gaps and vacancies in the ‘Real’ ontological edifice." ^[9] Thus, the aforementioned Kantian parallax is transformed into an ontological difference, leading to the first implication of ontological difference: "Reality is ‘non-all’ (pas-tout), but there is nothing else outside of it; this Nothingness is Being itself." ^[10] This means that ontological difference is not the difference between the totality of beings and their external appearance; that is, there is no "Totalizing Super-Ground." "It is precisely in this sense that ontological difference is related to ‘finitude’." ^[11] The connection between Heidegger’s ontological difference and Kantian parallax is manifested in this "finitude," meaning that Being itself is finite. Ontological difference "introduces" a crack into the interior of Being, such that the domain of beings itself is not-all. In other words, the facts perceived by the subject based on a transcendental perspective are never complete. So, does this ontological difference refer to the difference between the totality of beings and something transcendent or more fundamental? To this, Žižek responds negatively by stating that ontological difference is the "minimal difference," which constitutes the second implication of our grasp of ontological difference. The so-called minimal difference refers to the constitutive non-coincidence of a thing with itself; that is, the difference or split of a thing is internal to itself. This minimal difference places an internal gap within all beings, thereby making the totalization of beings impossible. Therefore, "the difference between beings and their Being is simultaneously the difference within beings themselves," ^[12] and this minimal difference indicates that "Being" is carved out from the interior of beings—i.e., "the difference between various beings/entities and their openness or horizon of meaning has always already cut into the field of Being itself, making it incomplete/finite." ^[13]

Second, by elucidating the "non-all" nature of the phenom-ontological realm inherent in parallax, Žižek points out that parallax marks the internal split and negativity of reality, pointing toward the dimension of antagonism in the Real. As a core concept of Lacan’s later thought, the "Real" signifies the realm that cannot be fully symbolized—the point where the operation of symbolization fails. It is the hard core that resists symbolization. Žižek borrows Lacan’s concept of the Real and endows parallax with radical connotations, identifying it as "the inherent antagonism that precedes the multiple/failed reflections of the transcendental/impossible Chose (Thing)." ^[14]

Regarding this Real antagonism pointed to by parallax, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s analysis in Structural Anthropology of the spatial layout of the Winnebago tribe in North America provides us with a paradigmatic illustration. This tribe consists of two moieties: one from the "above" and the other from the "below." If a person is selected from each to draw a map of the village they inhabit, we obtain two completely different drawings. ^[15] To this, Žižek argues that we cannot simply conclude with cultural relativism—that the perception of social space depends on the group to which the observer belongs. Here, the parallax split is obvious, pointing to a certain constant, and "this constant is not the objective, ‘actual’ layout of the buildings, but the traumatic kernel, the foundational antagonism that village residents find difficult to symbolize, impossible to explain, unable to ‘internalize,’ and unbearable—the imbalance in social relations that prevents the community from becoming a harmonious whole and remaining stable over the long term." ^[16] The two different perceptions of the village map are precisely the efforts of the people in the two moieties to impose a balanced symbolic structure to heal the traumatic antagonism—that is, "we do not have an ‘actual,’ ‘objective’ layout of the houses first, followed by two different symbolizations." ^[17] Here, we can see how the Real intervenes in reality through the mode of pictorial distortion; as the traumatic kernel of some social antagonism, it causes a distortion in the tribe members' observation of the actual house layout.

In summary, parallax is closely related to the antagonism of the Real. The Real, as the kernel of some social impossibility and social antagonism, is both the impossibility of social totalization itself and the obstacle that prevents social totalization. Furthermore, we can call the Real the "parallax Real"—that is, "the Real is purely parallax-like, and thus non-substantial: it has no substantial density in itself; it is merely the gap between two points of perspective, and its existence can only be perceived when shifting from one point of perspective to another." ^[18] This is diametrically opposed to the Lacanian Real that "always returns to its place." ^[19] The parallax Real can explain "why the same underlying Real has such a variety of appearances," ^[20] and thus "it is not an immutable hard core, but the hard core of contention that decomposes identity into multiple appearances." ^[21] In essence, the antagonism of the Real triggers our multiple symbolic constructions of reality, forming a parallax split regarding reality; undoubtedly, the parallax view of the same reality also marks the dimension of antagonism within the Real.

II. The Parallax Debate between "Real" Economy and Reality Economy

Through the prism of parallax dialectics, Žižek first analyzes the concept of "economy" itself. He divides "economy" into the "Real" economy at the authentic level (the "cause" that plays a decisive role in the operation of society) and the reality economy at the symbolic level (as a "sub-system" of social reality—the entities of economic systems, institutions, etc.). Through the parallax debate between these two, Žižek identifies the decisive significance of the "Real" economy in social operation and explains it from three aspects: the "Real" economy as the "quasi-cause" of social functioning, the "Real" economy appearing in the form of displacement and distortion, and the "Real" economy functioning as objet petit a.

First, Žižek distinguishes between the "real" economy, which plays a decisive role in the social field, and the actual economy, which serves as one of the constituent factors in the functioning of the social totality. The former is "the economy as the virtual X, the absolute reference point of the social field"; ^[22] the latter is the "economy in its reality (the economy as one of the factors of the social totality, a 'sub-system')." ^[23] This distinction of Žižek’s is closely related to the parallax Real. In his view, the "real" economy functions as the Lacanian Real—the hard core around which the social system revolves—while the actual economy is the reality of an economy already "mediated" by the Symbolic. It is a symbolic representation of the antagonistic kernel of the "real" economy from a certain perspective. Consequently, in different regions or different developmental stages of the same region, the actual economy presents itself in manifold and diverse forms, appearing before people in an immediate and obvious manner. Meanwhile, the "real" economy, as the hard core of the Real, operates in the form of a social "quasi-cause." Here, "quasi-cause" denotes a virtual, hidden, and indirect form; that is to say, "the determining economy never appears directly as a real causal agent... strictly speaking, it is precisely the absolute non-relational absent cause, something that is never 'in its place.'" ^[24] This implies that the decisive "real" economy does not possess concrete entities and institutions like the economic systems and structures found in the actual economy, nor does it occupy a specific position within the social system. Instead, it shapes and determines the structure of the entire society in an indirect, anonymous way through interaction with other factors. For this reason, within the normal operational system of the actual economy, we cannot find a suitable place for the "real" economy; it is only at the gaps of direct social causality that the "real" economy intervenes as a shadowy cause.

Second, Žižek believes that the manifestation of the "real" economy’s decisive role is not direct, but displayed in a form of displacement and distortion. Through an analysis of the triad of socio-politics, economy, and culture, Žižek shows that the determining role of the economy is embodied in the process of the conversion of political struggle into cultural struggle. In Žižek's view, we cannot conceive of the economy as a "meta-essence" hidden behind politics and culture, and thereby explain its decisive role through a double distance where economy determines politics and politics determines culture. On the contrary, what he truly seeks to reveal is the very form of the transposition of political struggle into cultural struggle; it is precisely within this transposition—which always appears in the form of a dislocation—that the economy is "inscribed." Taking the 1959 televised presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon as an example, Žižek further illustrates how the economy's determining role operates through the transposition of the political into the cultural. In this election, Kennedy represented the progressive liberal middle class, while Nixon represented the right-wing conservative upper class. However, the effect presented by the debate was exactly the opposite: Kennedy displayed an upper-class lifestyle, while Nixon appeared more common ^[25]. Here, "the 'class' meaning encoded in the cultural 'lifestyle' shifts the explicit political meaning." ^[26] In this process of displacing political positions into cultural lifestyles, the paradoxical nature of Kennedy’s ideology and political stance is exposed. "It is here that the determination by the economy intervenes: the economy is the absent cause which accounts for the displacement in the representation, for the asymmetry between the two series (the 'progressive/conservative' political pair and the 'upper/middle' class pair, which here manifests a reversal)." ^[27]

Finally, the "real" economy's determining role in society operates according to the logic of the "objet petit a." The objet a is a core concept in Lacanian theoretical construction. As a primary inheritor of the Lacanian tradition, Žižek defines the objet a as a "small piece of the Real"—the surplus that cannot be digested by the symbolic order during the process of symbolization. Regarding the theoretical meaning contained in the objet a, Žižek provided an explanation as early as The Sublime Object of Ideology, noting that "every symbolization of the Real produces a surplus, and it is precisely this surplus that serves as the 'object-cause of desire'." ^[28] At the same time, facing this objet a as a surplus "means acknowledging that there are fatal deadlocks, that there is 'antagonism,' that there is a kernel which resists symbolic integration-dissolution." ^[29] This points us toward the logic of desire and the logic of antagonism inherent in the objet a. But how does the "real" economy’s determination follow the logic of the objet a? We can analyze this from two dimensions.

First, the "real" economy determines social operation via the logic of the objet a, primarily reflected in the political struggle between Left and Right. Combining the aforementioned distinction between the "real" and actual economy with the basic definition of the objet a, we can view the "real" economy as the Real and the actual economy as the symbolic operation upon the "real" economy. Due to differences in class interests and ideologies, any group, in the process of constructing an actual economy, will certainly fail to satisfy the economic demands of all groups. That is to say, within the actual economy, the economic demands of certain groups are necessarily repressed. This repressed economic demand is the surplus excluded by the actual economic system; it corresponds to Lacan’s objet a and, as a symptom of the actual economic system, embodies the internal split and antagonism of the "real" economy. Revolving around this excluded surplus, various political forces within contemporary capitalist countries take turns "on the stage," dedicating themselves to fighting for the economic interests of the groups they represent based on the Left/Right divide. This irreducible surplus and antagonistic hard core within the "real" economy sustain a series of political struggles.

Second, the "real" economy determines people's theoretical cognition of the economy through the logic of the objet a, which is reflected in the diversified theoretical expressions of the economy within pluralistic economism. The internal split between the "real" and actual economy—namely, the surplus that cannot be dissolved during the symbolization of the "real" economy—gives rise to pluralistic interpretations within economics regarding what constitutes the "real" economy. Applying the perspective of parallax dialectics, "we should understand economic pluralism as an incomplete view of reality—a symbolic order imposed upon reality, full of parallax gaps, serving as a series of different perspectives through which the gaps they create reveal the Real as the internal impossibility of symbolization." ^[30] Economic pluralism reveals the impossibility of fully grasping the "real" economy; the views of these schools merely express "truth" through distorted perspectives, and "they are untranslatable between each other." ^[31] That is to say, although each economic theory reveals certain aspects of economic reality, they all possess a degree of subjectivity and limitation; therefore, no single theory can claim to possess a deeper truth than another. Revolving around the core of antagonism and the irreducible surplus (objet a) within the "real" economy, various economic schools have shaped pluralistic economism through their continuous, failing attempts to grasp the "real" economy in its entirety.

Through parallax dialectics, we distinguish between the "real" economy of the dimension of the Real and the actual economy of the dimension of the Symbolic. The gap between the two reveals the internal split of the economy itself. However, it must be noted that this decisive "real" economy is by no means a pure economy stripped of all political dimensions; it is always dialectically linked to politics. Based on this, when faced with mainstream capitalist economics that actively advocates for a purely objective free-market economy, we should use the parallax shift to expose the "priority of the political" dimension hidden behind its economic de-politicization.

III. The Parallax Debate Between Economic De-politicization and the Priority of the Political

In contemporary capitalist society, liberal market economics, which purports to reflect "objective" laws, has become mainstream. This brand of economics opposes all political intervention in the economy, demanding the establishment of an objective, value-neutral, and pure free-market economy. Regarding this economics, Žižek once judged that "the big news" of our era "is the thorough de-politicization of the economic sphere," ^[32] wherein "the way the economy works (the need to cut social welfare, etc.) is widely accepted as a profound insight into the objective state of things." ^[33] Situated within the global capitalist economic system, we find that the economy is always located within a complex system intertwined with politics and culture. Consequently, liberal market economics regarding a "pure economy" is undoubtedly an ideological fantasy. Through parallax shift, Žižek reveals the political dimension hidden behind the "pure economy," powerfully criticizing the de-political operations of the capitalist economic system.

First, based on characteristics such as the "non-all" nature and internal split of the economy itself, Žižek identifies politics as the name for the gap between the economy and itself, thereby further viewing class struggle as the key mediation linking politics and the economy.

On one hand, in Žižek's view, "the reason politics exists is that the economy is a 'non-all'." ^[34] The so-called "non-all" nature of the economy means that the economy is not a single, unified entity, but rather contains various internal contradictions and conflicts. As mentioned above, any actual economic system that attempts to fully grasp the "real" economy is destined to "return in defeat." Thus, the crack between the "real" economy as the Real and the actual economy as the "symbolic order" becomes prominent, revealing the internal antagonistic tension of the economy itself. The economy is not omnipotent; it cannot explain or encompass all aspects of society. Politics, then, is a social-level processing mechanism for these antagonisms and contradictions. Viewed this way, the space of politics "is opened by the gap which separates the 'economy' as absent cause from the economy as one of the elements of social totality existing in its 'opposite determination'." ^[35]

On the other hand, Žižek believes that the economy and politics are not directly linked, but are embedded in each other through the mediation of "class struggle," which becomes the key point of interaction between the two. In his discussion of the complex interactive relationship between economy and politics, Žižek criticizes two different explanatory logics regarding the driving force of Marxist social progress (economic class struggle). One logic views the development of the economy or productive forces as the driving force of social development, while the other views politics as the driving force. However, in Žižek's view, these two logics respectively fall into the traps of "vulgar economism" and "ideological-political idealism," both ignoring the mutual influence and interaction between politics and the economy. To this end, Žižek proposes an inward loop mediated by class struggle to understand the complex interaction between the economy and politics—that is, the core of the economy is inherently imbued with a political essence. At the same time, class struggle, as a political struggle within the economy, embodies the internal contradictions and conflicts within the economic structure. Furthermore, as a unique mediation, class struggle fixes politics within the economy; that is to say, all political struggles are ultimately expressions of the "class struggle" at the economic core. This mediation of class struggle "also represents the irreducible political moment that occurs at the very core of the economy." ^[36] "One can reduce all political, judicial, and cultural content to the economic base—that is, as an expression of the economy—thereby decoding the economy, but class struggle is the exception." ^[37] This demonstrates that economic activities are not merely a matter of market mechanisms; they inherently contain political issues such as power struggles, interest conflicts, and social justice. Class struggle is precisely the manifestation of these political issues within the economic structure. Perhaps we can say that there is no such thing as a pure economy based solely on technology and market logic, because the economy is always-already intervened upon by the political.

Second, based on the complex interaction between economics and politics, Žižek points out that the "depoliticization of the economy" promoted by contemporary capitalism is itself a form of political-ideological operation, designed to ensure the unrestricted flow of capital. Regarding this depoliticization, Žižek argues: "if one insists on the 'objective' economic logic of depoliticization against the 'outdated' forms of ideological passion, this is the predominant form of ideology today, since ideology is always self-referential—that is, it always defines itself through a distance towards an Other dismissed as 'ideological.'" ^[38] Thus, in Žižek’s view, the depoliticized economy is the political-ideological fantasy of the post-political era. Under its influence, no one questions the anonymous logic of global capitalism and marketization anymore; it is increasingly accepted as a natural and neutral logic. Accompanying the depoliticization of the economy is the widespread popularity of multicultural democracy. Paradoxically, however, the issues set or discussed within this democratic framework are confined to cultural topics such as religion, race, and gender differences, while the economy has already been excluded from the political sphere. The depoliticization of the economy brings about two strange political landscapes: "On the one hand, there are 'pure politicians' who no longer treat the economy as a site of struggle and intervention; on the other hand, there are 'economists' who, fascinated by the current functioning of the global economy, exclude any possibility of political intervention." ^[39] These partisans of pure politics enthusiastically advocate for the re-politicization of civil society, yet the flip side of this fervent scene is the immutability of global capitalist market relations. The depoliticization of the economy is itself a political-ideological fantasy of contemporary post-politics, because a purely objective economy does not exist; hence, the fundamental goal of economic depoliticization is to better serve the global expansion of capital.

Finally, the depoliticization of the economy has led to the semi-monopolistic power of private enterprises. While posing a threat to the basic networks of social existence, it has also reshaped the space of political activity and brought new challenges to social equity and justice. Adhering to Marx’s spirit of the critique of justice, we must never abandon the critique of the unfair and unreasonable old global economic order, nor can we stop examining the logic of capital in its pursuit of surplus profits. ^[40] In this regard, we need only observe the pervasive penetration of new media into daily life and the claims of patent rights over genes by emerging genetic engineering projects to catch a glimpse of the "irrational" future caused by economic depoliticization. Internet giants represented by Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook control the basic structures of communication and exchange in people's daily lives. They not only control people's connections with the outside world but also increasingly influence people’s perceptions and experiences of life. Meanwhile, these new media have reshaped the ways of participating in political activities, "fundamentally shortening the distance between voters and candidates, realizing media interaction in the true sense, and breaking the unidirectional transmission model of traditional media." ^[41] During US elections, interacting and debating on social media became a widespread form of political participation, through which these internet giants gained a certain power that transcends government. Furthermore, another absurd situation of the semi-monopolistic power of capital resulting from economic depoliticization is that some biotechnology companies claim patent rights over genes. This means that the secrets deep within our bodies are already owned by a corporation without our knowledge. The gene patents of large biotech companies are obtained precisely through the state apparatus; their market competitive advantage established via intellectual property rights is already stamped with the traces of political maneuvering. The rapid development of genetic engineering also risks breaking the natural equality of human beings and bringing about issues such as medical injustice, which will inevitably become the focus of political controversy along with their public attributes.

From the above discussion, we can see that the "pure" economy of depoliticization clearly does not conform to the characteristics of economic reality. This view of the economy is a political-ideological fantasy constructed through the intervention of the state apparatus and political decision-making. Behind economic depoliticization lies the bourgeoisie’s comprehensive use of policy tools, based on "the priority of politics," to "unleash" capital, enabling it to achieve total penetration and rapid advancement across various substantive domains. This phenomenon also prompts us to consider a deeper issue: the antagonistic relationship contained within the concept of "possessing scientific knowledge." Due to the neutral nature of knowledge dissemination, knowledge is not exhausted by wide distribution and use. However, capital’s control of knowledge through patent rights and market relations contradicts the essence of knowledge. Therefore, knowledge, as a typical form of immaterial labor, its relationship with material labor, and whether it can be mastered by the masses to become a new tool of liberation, becomes another key issue for our analysis of the contemporary capitalist economic system.

IV. The Parallax Debate Between Material and Immaterial Labor

"Immaterial labor" is a concept opposed to "material labor," the latter being the transformation of nature and the creation and production of various physical products. It primarily refers to mental labor such as cognitive activity and knowledge creation. The emergence of this concept is closely related to the "General Intellect" discussed by Marx in the "Fragment on Machines." Immaterial labor manifests as intellectual labor, an objectified power of knowledge. At the same time, Marx predicted the significant role that immaterial labor might play in the development of future productive forces. Among contemporary Leftist scholars, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt have extensively explored "immaterial labor," viewing it as a cognitive power generated through communication and collaboration and identifying it as the dominant force in contemporary capitalist production. Simultaneously, they view "capital" as a decaying, parasitic force; based on "immaterial labor," they propose "exodus" as a strategy of "liberation" to break free from capital. Žižek critically inherits Negri and Hardt’s view of immaterial labor. While acknowledging its "common" attributes, he uses "parallax" to refract the dual split of labor entities and labor spaces within the global capitalist system, thereby identifying the powerful integrative role of capital. Consequently, he believes that "exodus" cannot bring true liberation; rather, the liberation of the "multitude" is only possible through the realization of collective ownership of the "common."

By arguing for the dominant position of "immaterial labor" in contemporary capitalist production, Negri and Hardt identify capital as a decaying parasitic force and propose "exodus" as a liberating strategy to escape capitalist enslavement. The immaterial labor referred to by Negri and Hardt signifies a society-wide relationship of collaboration based on communication, cooperation, and synergy; they name the products of this collaborative relationship "the common." On this basis, they point out that the class to which today’s cognitive workers belong possesses a productive freedom—that is, human intelligence becomes fixed capital in production, and the cognitive class thus holds the means of production in its own hands. Here, it is not difficult to see these two scholars' celebration of mental labor and the expectations of freedom they vest in it. As Negri puts it: "The subordinate classes are already those who possess more fixed capital than the employers... a spiritual wealth more important than what others boast of. This is an absolute weapon: knowledge is the most fundamental thing for the reproduction of the world." ^[42] From this, Negri further points out that immaterial labor has already occupied a dominant position in contemporary capitalist production, which means that "when immaterial and cognitive labor present themselves directly as productive attributes, the intellectual labor force frees itself from its relations of subordination, and the productive subject appropriates for itself those tools of labor that previously constituted capital." ^[43] In other words, due to the hegemonic dominance of immaterial labor, capital has lost its role in organizing socialized production, because through the self-organization of the multitude, the production and life of society can be continuously organized. In this situation, capital becomes a purely parasitic entity, and it is thus entirely possible for us to break free from it.

If this is so, how does capital continue to exploit workers when immaterial labor predominates? Negri and Hardt provide an answer in Commonwealth, the final volume of their "Empire" trilogy, stating: "In fact, capital does not so much provide collaboration as it expropriates collaboration." ^[44] Negri explains this expropriation further, arguing that with the development of network information technology, the primary mode of profit creation is no longer the exploitation of labor but the capture of network information. This production model makes it possible for labor to be liberated from capitalist production. Against the backdrop of the rise of global interactive media, creative invention no longer belongs to the individual; it exists as a "common." Negri points out that the most absurd aspect of contemporary capitalism is the privatization of the "common" produced by the General Intellect through so-called copyright protection. To this, Negri proposes a strategy: "it is necessary to make capital aware of the common interest, and if it does not want to understand, it must be forced to understand." ^[45] In Negri’s view, "immaterial labor" is the product of worker collaboration, and capital merely uses force to expropriate the results of this production. Thus, to reclaim this control, the withdrawal of the laborers is required—that is, "biopolitical labor power must withdraw from the relations it forms with capital, and must also discover and construct new social relations and new forms of life in which their productive capacities can be realized." ^[46] The strategy of "exodus" must be collective, for a single individual cannot escape the control of capital; only through such collective action is it possible to truly break free from the control of contemporary capitalism.

For Žižek, however, Hardt and Negri’s strategy of "exodus" seems overly optimistic. He argues they overlook the fact that material labor still plays an indispensable and vital role in the contemporary capitalist production system. Using parallax dialectics to conduct an in-depth analysis of capital’s global operations, Žižek points out the differences in labor entities and the geographical segregation of labor spaces under the contemporary capitalist system, revealing that capital still plays a powerful organizing and aggregating role in globalization. He refutes Negri and Hardt’s assertion that capital is purely parasitic, pointing out that capital plays an increasingly important role today. Žižek argues that in contemporary capitalist society, we face a binary split: on one side is the realm of freedom in the field of cognitive work, and on the other is the realm of necessity in the field of material production. Due to the intervention of capital, the two are physically separated. Negri’s prophecy that immaterial labor would directly become social productive forces has not been realized; on the contrary, the implementation of knowledge-based labor still requires capital’s organization of material means of production. Consequently, a unique spectacle facing humanity today is the more thorough separation of mental and intellectual labor—a separation that is not only ontological but also increasingly blocked by space. This leads to global outsourcing becoming a rule of contemporary capitalist economic distribution: on one side are the typical "postmodern" companies in the Negrian sense, which primarily manifest as free communities of the creative, knowledge-based multitude; on the other side are material production processes where automation is far from realized, still organizing "sweatshops" according to traditional Fordist assembly lines and seeking profit by extracting the direct labor of workers. Ironically, both sides view the other as the representative of capital. "For the masses in the sweatshops, capital is the power that represents 'cognitive work,' forcing them to concretely manifest the results of 'cognitive work'; for the 'cognitive workers,' capital is the power that employs them to turn their results into blueprints for material production." ^[47] Here, we do not see the success of the "exodus" strategy; what occurs in reality is the deep integration of capital and knowledge. Capital has not become purely parasitic and thus sidelined as Negri claimed; instead, it plays a more critical aggregating role in the global division of labor system, thereby gaining an even more crucial dominant position.

In this regard, Žižek argues that while Negri’s interpretation recognizes the increasing role of general intellect in the production of value, it fails to achieve a complete and accurate understanding of Marx. Regarding the understanding of general intellect, Negri posits a direct fusion—namely, that the social relations directly produced by cognitive labor are both the final object of production and the direct productive forces. Marx, however, posits an irreducible cleavage: the development of general intellect leads to the complete exclusion of the worker from the production process, a process that results in fully automated production. This automated production process differs fundamentally from traditional production processes: “Labor no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate to the production process itself as a supervisor and regulator.” ^[48] Based on this analysis, Žižek argues that in the automated production process, the worker becomes an intellectual operator who supervises and regulates the production process from a safe distance. He further notes that Marx’s use of the singular “human being” and “worker” in this passage “clearly points out why ‘general intellect’ is not intersubjective, but ‘monological.’ Therefore, this is why, for Marx, the object of the production process is precisely not social relations themselves: this separates the ‘administration of things’ (the control and domination of nature) from the relations between people, constituting a realm of the ‘administration of things’ that no longer depends on the domination over people.” ^[49] This means that within the capitalist system, the “administration of things” is separated and exhibits an increasingly automated tendency, while relations between people are simultaneously marginalized. Consequently, in Žižek’s view, immaterial labor is often unidirectional and self-centered, not necessarily involving intersubjective interaction or collaboration. From this, we can derive a revolutionary conclusion: for workers to achieve true freedom, they must seize control over the administration of things, which can only rely on a fundamental transformation of private property and the realization of true control over capital through the implementation of collective ownership by the workers.

Negri and Hardt optimistically predicted the emancipatory effects brought about by “immaterial labor,” as represented by cognitive labor. On this basis, they asserted the parasitic and decadent nature of capital and attempted a strategy of “exodus” to seek escape from the enslavement of capital. However, from the “Real” of the organization of the global capitalist production system, Žižek reveals to us the deep parallax between “immaterial labor” and “material labor”: they are split in substance, appearing as a global-scale cleavage between mental and manual laborers; they are also partitioned in space, appearing as a regional separation between high-end research and design centers represented by developed countries and regions, and “world processing centers” represented by the Third World. Hidden behind this irreducible parallax split between these two types of labor is the omnipresent specter of capital. It is precisely in this context that Žižek believes only by collectivizing the “commons” can we break the “spell” of global capitalism and secure a possibility for human liberation.

V. Conclusion

Žižek’s parallax dialectics, as a philosophical methodology of immanent negativity, provides a unique theoretical perspective for our deep dissection and critique of the contemporary capitalist economic system. By returning to the tradition of the Marxian critique of political economy, Žižek identifies the symptoms of the internal antagonisms within the contemporary capitalist economic system, thereby offering a new path for the contemporary Left’s return to the critique of political economy. However, we must also note that Žižek’s theoretical reflection, characterized by the deduction of philosophical concepts, is actually a mode of thought that appears “Marxist” but is not truly so, deviating from Marx’s historical materialist interpretation of capitalist economic development. Compared to Marx’s scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production—which took the most universal and common element, the “commodity,” as the cell of capitalism—Žižek’s understanding of capitalism easily becomes detached from the historical and realistic contexts of economic development, thereby falling into the mire of idealistic speculation. Taken together, we should both draw lessons from Žižek’s critique of political economy using parallax dialectics as a methodology, recognizing its importance for the in-depth analysis of contemporary capitalist society, and simultaneously uphold the Marxist historical materialist interpretation of capitalist economic development to avoid falling into the ideological traps hidden within capitalist academic discourse.