In practical terms this means that an individual's rights cannot be taken away by the simple vote of a majority. This is what the civil rights battle was all about. If, for example, one hundred Americans in a given community vote to prohibit one person's expression of religion or speech, the individual can appeal to the First Amendment to protect his rights against the will of the majority. In pure statism the rights of individuals are swallowed up by the state. Law does not rule.
Rulers rule and rule autonomously.
The second critical idea of statism is that the state supplants the church as the chief instrument of redemption. That Marx consciously developed such a view is well documented. For him the eschatological agent of redemption was the state. As I am writing this article, the city of Los Angeles is burning. Sociologists, historians, and psychologists are musing on the causes for this mob violence.