Luhmann cites Edgar Morin (1980: 44) on ecological dominance, i.e., an ecological relation wherein some systems may be dominant but where none dominates (Luhmann 1987: 109-110; 1990a: 147-8).

Ecological dominance is a contingent emergent relationship between two or more systems rather than a naturally necessary property of a single system. Thus a given functional system can be more or less ecologically dominant, its dominance may vary across different systems in its environment and/or with changing circumstances, and the continuation of any dominance will depend on the development of the ecosystem as a whole.[2] So there is no ‘last instance’ in relations of ecological dominance. But, given that the capitalist economy is structurally coupled to other operationally autonomous systems and to the lifeworld (and these to each other too), we can ask which, if any, of them could become ecologically dominant. There are seven analytically distinct, but empirically interrelated, aspects of the social (as opposed to biological) world that affect a system’s potential in this regard (see Table 1). Considered in these terms, the capitalist economy, with its distinctive, self-valorizing logic, tends to have just those properties that favour ecological dominance.