Political power’s differentiation transformed all of society, not just politics.

Evidence

The differentiation of political power by using a power-specific media-code made possible in the course of historical development – the shift from primitive societies to high cultures – has since that time become one of those evolutionary achievements which cannot really be reversed. It completely revolutionized the position of power in society – the visibility of power, its symbolism (including the need for legitimation), the way it functions, its range. Thus it concerns not only a process of specification, narrowing down and restriction to a part of what is available. The formation of political power is relevant not only to politics; it changes society as a whole. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 767

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — the differentiation of political power into a self-referential media-code is precisely the institutional hierarchy Stevens delegates to, reducing personal moral engagement. — connects to: Fordism reorganized society and culture, not just production. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 814