The power-code established across society as a whole, in a variety of ways, points to this possibility of making new power combinations possible, and of restraining them, by means of organization. Centralizing the distribution of power bases and engaging power as a catalyst in the formation of organization brings this possibility into play. At the same time it would be unrealistic to view organizational systems merely as an instrumental apparatus, as the lengthened arm of the power-holder. This is again only a replication of the symbolic self-presentation of the power-code, not an empirically satisfactory power theory.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 783