I think my only real retort here is that I agree with you, and how what you're describing is the Base and Superstructure.

Where I disagree however is the idea that we need to somehow "build up" this idea, since it has been a prominent feature of political science for over a century. I think the problem here is that people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to enact authority as to shape the state mechanism, but they do not want to partake in the arduous labour of examining how such a state mechanism works.