Power shifts blame from subordinate to power-holder by suppressing the subordinate’s own motives

Evidence

In the case of an action motivated by power, the selection, although carried out by both parties, tends to be attributed to the power-holder alone, because the power-subject does not appear to have motives which can be recognized as his own. Admittedly this does not have to be the case. For example, not every exercise of power frees the power-subject from criminal responsibility. A power-code, however, must take account of this tendency to shift attribution and can legalize and formalize it by giving the power-subject, for example, the possibility of being ‘officially’ compelled and thereby relieving himself of responsibility. In extremely power-specific codes, such as the military, this even occurs without the assistance of the subordinate; the officer takes responsibility for an unclear order. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 686

Categorization

• XREF: Directly analogizes Stevens’s deference in Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day — the butler ‘officially compelled’ by duty to Lord Darlington, relieved of personal responsibility, and the military code parallel echoes the ‘faceless commitment’ to institutional hierarchy Giddens describes. — connects to: Treating power as relational redistributes agency toward the subordinated.; das Man drains personal responsibility by taking over decisions that should be our own — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 264
• DEFINE: Operationalizes what ‘attribution’ means in Luhmann’s power code — a mechanism the reader can apply directly to Stevens.