State formation cannot fully monopolize power, which persists in family, church, economy, and education.

Evidence

With the formation of specialist political systems able to base themselves on permanently superior physical force, a certain systemization and specification of purpose – and thus also a more complex dependence on decision-making for the application of power – can be achieved, but not a complete monopolization of power in the hands of the ‘state’. This does not just mean that one must reckon with power being exercised against politically legitimized decisions which are put under social pressure, if not quite threatened with violence, because of attempts to influence decisions over power. A further and perhaps greater problem concerns the volume of societal power which arises and remains outside any connection with the political system – primarily and especially power within the family (‘despotism’ in the strict sense) and the power of the priests, then power in the economy (mainly the recently much discussed power of property-owners) and also, not least, nowadays, power exercised in the education system which is used as a means of allocating status. All these phenomena raise the question of the limits to which power can be politicized. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 767

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s thesis: Stevens’s devotion is powered not by state coercion but by the informal authority of household hierarchy and social status allocation — the familial/educational power Luhmann says escapes politicization.