The core problem is power that resists politicization

Evidence

So the problem regarding the structure of society does not in any way lie simply in occasionally overcoming the ruling upper echelons of the political system – societies have usually survived that well, because social power, as a threat to the political system, must of course change itself into political power. The problem lies elsewhere – in not being able to eliminate power from non-political interactions, in limiting the functional specification of other areas of society to purely personal love, rational production and pure exchange, and purely educational work. Hence, the self-assertion of the political system is not the only long-term political problem in relation to sources of power which exist throughout wider society. There is also the problem of keeping the functional specification of different systems as being different. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 769

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that ‘the problem lies elsewhere’ than overthrowing political elites is a genuinely paradigm-shifting reorientation—Stevens’s tragedy is not about which lord rules but about a power structurally immune to political correction.
• XREF: Directly bears on the reader’s thesis: because Lord Darlington’s household power cannot be politically neutralized, Stevens’s faceless commitment to it is doubly unredeemable.

Related

• Structural social problems arise from non-politicized power, not overthrow of rulers (similarity 0.86)
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy (similarity 0.83)
• Communicating about power cannot replace communicating through power. (similarity 0.79)
• Political power’s differentiation transformed all of society, not just politics. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Discoursing on power differs fundamentally from being silenced by it #expands (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 249
• Institutionalizing a critical field can strip it of political meaning #corroborates (0.70)
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #corroborates (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 743
• An ultimate power to decide generates its own norms and cannot be trusted #corroborates (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 222
• Treating communication problems as technical faults masks a political choice favoring dominant elites #corroborates (0.55)