Political history is often narrated as a sequence of different struggles replacing one another:
class struggle giving way to identity politics, discourse replacing economics, technology eclipsing ideology.

This narrative is misleading.

What appears as a proliferation of struggles is better understood as a single power structure revealing itself through different historical interfaces.

The question is not why new struggles emerge,
but why the same logic of power becomes visible in different forms as societies evolve.

Class struggle, as articulated in Marxist political economy, exposes how power operates through:

• ownership of productive assets,

• extraction of surplus value,

• asymmetrical exposure to risk.

Here, power manifests itself most clearly at the level of material allocation.

Its historical importance lies in revealing that economic outcomes are not neutral or natural.
Its conceptual limitation lies in treating reality itself—the categories of property, labor, and value—as largely given.

In this manifestation, power appears as a struggle over having.

Recognition-based theories shift attention to another interface:

• dignity,

• identity,

• symbolic inclusion or exclusion.

Here, injustice is not only material deprivation but social negation—being misrecognized, rendered invisible, or denied full subjecthood.

Power manifests itself through:

• norms of respectability,

• hierarchies of worth,

• institutionalized humiliation.

Yet recognition struggles still operate within a pre-defined symbolic order.

In this manifestation, power appears as a struggle over being.

Beneath both material distribution and social recognition lies a deeper interface.

This is not a struggle over resources or identities,
but over what counts as reality in the first place.

It concerns the authority to define:

• what is normal or deviant,

• what is rational or extreme,

• what is fact or misinformation,

• what is possible or unthinkable.

This is not merely a discursive contest.
It is an ontological-political struggle over the grammar through which reality itself is constructed and perceived.

Here, power manifests as control over meaning—the conditions under which other struggles can even appear.

It is crucial to avoid a common misunderstanding.

Class struggle, recognition struggle, and the struggle over reality definition are not rival theories competing for explanatory dominance.
Nor are they stages that cancel one another out.

They are different manifestations of the same underlying power structure, appearing at different historical interfaces:

• material,

• social,

• symbolic.

What changes is not power itself,
but the layer at which it becomes most visible and most contested.

Reality-definition power does not replace other forms of power.
It formats them.

Property, labor, productivity, efficiency, and risk are not brute facts.
They are defined categories, stabilized through legal, technical, and economic language.

Once these definitions are naturalized, inequality appears inevitable rather than political.

Who is labeled “the people,” who is framed as “a problem,” who is designated a “threat”—
these are acts of definition that allocate dignity or stigma before moral debate begins.

By defining what is political, reasonable, or discussable,
power does not suppress conflict—it pre-programs its boundaries.

Reality-definition power produces the stage on which all other struggles unfold.

In contemporary societies, reality-definition power increasingly operates through technical systems.

Every technological system encodes:

• optimization goals,

• default assumptions,

• value hierarchies.

These choices are political, even when framed as purely functional.

The claim that technology is neutral serves to:

• disguise structural decisions as natural outcomes,

• convert power into inevitability,

• dissolve accountability into system logic.

Technology is never neutral when its benefits are structurally asymmetrical.
Neutrality is not determined by intent, but by who consistently gains from the structure.

“Neutral technology” is not an empirical condition—it is a legitimizing narrative.

What is often described as a future “struggle for neural sovereignty” is not a new or separate form of conflict.

It is the latest internalization of reality-definition power.

Where power once operated primarily through language and institutions,
it now increasingly operates through:

• attention allocation,

• emotional modulation,

• interface design,

• behavioral prediction.

Reality is no longer merely defined—it is pre-experienced.

Neural sovereignty refers to the degree to which individuals retain control over:

• how they encounter the world,

• how quickly they judge,

• how emotions are shaped prior to reflection.

This is not a distinct struggle,
but the point at which reality-definition power reaches the level of perception itself.

Power no longer tells you only how to interpret the world—
it increasingly shapes how the world first appears to you.

What we call different struggles are best understood as different surfaces on which the same structure becomes visible.

• In material conditions, it appears as class struggle.

• In social valuation, it appears as recognition struggle.

• In symbolic order, it appears as reality-definition struggle.

• In perceptual architecture, it appears as neural governance.

The ultimate political question is therefore not merely who governs institutions or resources,
but whether human beings retain uncolonized cognitive space—
the capacity to perceive, interpret, and imagine beyond pre-structured realities.

When the power to define reality merges with the power to shape perception,
freedom ceases to be only a political problem.

It becomes a cognitive one.

And when enough people recognize that what appears as many struggles is in fact one structure,
the legitimacy of that structure begins to dissolve—
long before it collapses in visible form.

Political history is often narrated as a sequence of different struggles replacing one another:
class struggle giving way to identity politics, discourse replacing economics, technology eclipsing ideology.

This narrative is misleading.

What appears as a proliferation of struggles is better understood as a single power structure revealing itself through different historical interfaces.

The question is not why new struggles emerge,
but why the same logic of power becomes visible in different forms as societies evolve.

Class struggle, as articulated in Marxist political economy, exposes how power operates through:

• ownership of productive assets,

• extraction of surplus value,

• asymmetrical exposure to risk.

Here, power manifests itself most clearly at the level of material allocation.

Its historical importance lies in revealing that economic outcomes are not neutral or natural.
Its conceptual limitation lies in treating reality itself—the categories of property, labor, and value—as largely given.

In this manifestation, power appears as a struggle over having.

Recognition-based theories shift attention to another interface:

• dignity,

• identity,

• symbolic inclusion or exclusion.

Here, injustice is not only material deprivation but social negation—being misrecognized, rendered invisible, or denied full subjecthood.

Power manifests itself through:

• norms of respectability,

• hierarchies of worth,

• institutionalized humiliation.

Yet recognition struggles still operate within a pre-defined symbolic order.

In this manifestation, power appears as a struggle over being.

Beneath both material distribution and social recognition lies a deeper interface.

This is not a struggle over resources or identities,
but over what counts as reality in the first place.

It concerns the authority to define:

• what is normal or deviant,

• what is rational or extreme,

• what is fact or misinformation,

• what is possible or unthinkable.

This is not merely a discursive contest.
It is an ontological-political struggle over the grammar through which reality itself is constructed and perceived.

Here, power manifests as control over meaning—the conditions under which other struggles can even appear.

It is crucial to avoid a common misunderstanding.

Class struggle, recognition struggle, and the struggle over reality definition are not rival theories competing for explanatory dominance.
Nor are they stages that cancel one another out.

They are different manifestations of the same underlying power structure, appearing at different historical interfaces:

• material,

• social,

• symbolic.

What changes is not power itself,
but the layer at which it becomes most visible and most contested.

Reality-definition power does not replace other forms of power.
It formats them.

Property, labor, productivity, efficiency, and risk are not brute facts.
They are defined categories, stabilized through legal, technical, and economic language.

Once these definitions are naturalized, inequality appears inevitable rather than political.

Who is labeled “the people,” who is framed as “a problem,” who is designated a “threat”—
these are acts of definition that allocate dignity or stigma before moral debate begins.

By defining what is political, reasonable, or discussable,
power does not suppress conflict—it pre-programs its boundaries.

Reality-definition power produces the stage on which all other struggles unfold.

In contemporary societies, reality-definition power increasingly operates through technical systems.

Every technological system encodes:

• optimization goals,

• default assumptions,

• value hierarchies.

These choices are political, even when framed as purely functional.

The claim that technology is neutral serves to:

• disguise structural decisions as natural outcomes,

• convert power into inevitability,

• dissolve accountability into system logic.

Technology is never neutral when its benefits are structurally asymmetrical.
Neutrality is not determined by intent, but by who consistently gains from the structure.

“Neutral technology” is not an empirical condition—it is a legitimizing narrative.

What is often described as a future “struggle for neural sovereignty” is not a new or separate form of conflict.

It is the latest internalization of reality-definition power.

Where power once operated primarily through language and institutions,
it now increasingly operates through:

• attention allocation,

• emotional modulation,

• interface design,

• behavioral prediction.

Reality is no longer merely defined—it is pre-experienced.

Neural sovereignty refers to the degree to which individuals retain control over:

• how they encounter the world,

• how quickly they judge,

• how emotions are shaped prior to reflection.

This is not a distinct struggle,
but the point at which reality-definition power reaches the level of perception itself.

Power no longer tells you only how to interpret the world—
it increasingly shapes how the world first appears to you.

What we call different struggles are best understood as different surfaces on which the same structure becomes visible.

• In material conditions, it appears as class struggle.

• In social valuation, it appears as recognition struggle.

• In symbolic order, it appears as reality-definition struggle.

• In perceptual architecture, it appears as neural governance.

The ultimate political question is therefore not merely who governs institutions or resources,
but whether human beings retain uncolonized cognitive space—
the capacity to perceive, interpret, and imagine beyond pre-structured realities.

When the power to define reality merges with the power to shape perception,
freedom ceases to be only a political problem.

It becomes a cognitive one.

And when enough people recognize that what appears as many struggles is in fact one structure,
the legitimacy of that structure begins to dissolve—
long before it collapses in visible form.