The categorizing of selection as action must therefore be evaluated as a mechanism which releases systems from the imposition of equality and which makes differentiations possible. As this cannot happen on an unlimited scale, action has, as it were, again to be made captive and domesticated. The primary function of the social construction of the possibility of acting, and the specialization of control mechanisms related to this, lies in the emergence of an indirect avenue leading to the production of increased social complexity.

DEFINE: Defines 'selection as action' — a mechanism releasing systems from imposed equality and enabling differentiation.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 616