In the following passage, the words form and content will be used in a strictly political economic social context. By form I will be referring to the structures, terms of practice, rules, bylaws, decision making processes of political economic social institutions and relations. By content I will be referring to what political, economic, social relations and institutions do overtime.

No form completely and absolutely determines its content. However, to the degree that a form is developmental, a form will necessarily include itself within its own content. But the form will not necessarily develop overtime by itself alone; a form needs a content and/or additional external dimensions for it to develop overtime in such a way that its own minimal dimensions live within its own content (whether or not that is for better or for worse).

The content of an organization that does anything beyond merely existing overtime as a form is not exhaustively reducible to the form being used. It is possible for a form to build in certain functions that ought to be developmental content into the form itself via bylaws and/or a bill of rights delineating positive and negative liberties, filtering content, and carrying over through content into the future. However, such protections, as good as they can be, are not sufficient protections against decision makers creating a content that overrides the minimal dimensions and rights set up within institutional structures (such an overriding could be for better or for worse according to good ethical criteria). There are additional kinds of theories, propositional knowledge, practical knowledge, cultural features, general education, virtues in persons, etc. that can help people overturn unjust dimensions of formal organizations, create virtuous dimensions of formal organizations, and fill formal organizations with a good content.

Content does not escape the form of an organization entirely even though it is not reducible to it. Formal dimensions of how decisions are made are necessary features to explain the development of any content that rests upon such decisions being made. A form is part of a form’s own content, and content can be part of a form’s form overtime. Additionally both form and content are part of a process. To describe or prescribe political economic content without form is to fetishize content and remove it from its necessary political economic social conditions. Furthermore, within an institutional form, if any content develops overtime that will involve decisions being made, then the content itself will necessarily develop a form for new content. Because such a choice for forms can go so terribly and so well, and because such forms will necessarily occur in any political economic relationship overtime, and because the forms we use should be ethically consistent with and strategically conducive to the forms and content that virtuous persons and virtuous collectives should desire, and because we can know at least to some degree what forms are better than others according to good criteria, the forms we use matter and should be made as liberatory as possible as they help persons and collectives aim towards prudent goals and long term ethical development. Additionally, the absence of hierarchical forms does not necessitate that a power vacuum will be filled with good forms; developing good forms is itself a way to ensure that evil forms do not develop overtime.

Having minimal dimensions of what such form and content ought to entail via formal institutional features can help keep persons, collectives, and content become accountable to such a form, and can help keep the form itself become accountable to reasoning and critique, while making it comprehensible to those using it (both those new and familiar with it). Features of forms are not just about the most minimal features forms ought to have but also specific ways such minimal features can be and ought to be adapted to specific contexts. How to apply general ethics of good forms to specific contexts is extremely important and affects the overall process and content of forms and shapes the forms themselves. Without a good way of applying general organizational features to specific contexts, and without good content, the prefiguration of good forms will not be strategic if it is able to continue at all. Furthermore, formal organizational rules can set up safeguards for when people are going against a good realm of permissibility that can make it so dealing with such violations of the realm of permissibility are treated in a way that is itself as principled as possible, effective, and at least within a good realm of permissibility.

If people have gone over and above such minimal dimensions of what specific forms ought to entail–because such features have been internalized to such a degree– then that is not a logical self contradiction of the specific form that the content is going over, above, and beyond, but development of good content within the form in such a way that safeguarding good dimensions of the form (that themselves will filter content and become a content to the degree that a specifically qualified form develops) becomes less needed which allows more focus on content. But that does not mean the form has disappeared or that it itself has stopped adapting and changing. At that point such minimal dimensions of institutions should still be explicit so they can be held accountable to reason, made comprehensible to those using it, and applied fairly and virtuously as opposed to arbitrarily. Furthermore, even a relatively good society is not perfect. Even in a society that approximates utopia, there will still be some times when people violate good positive and negative freedoms persons and collectives have. In such cases, formal considerations are still important for dealing with conflict in such a way that itself is within a good realm of permissibility– such as transformative justice, restorative justice, self defense, free association, and diffuse social sanctions as opposed to punitive justice, vengeance, and prisons.

The process of deciding on any specific content is itself a part of the overall content itself. Such a process ought not be arbitrary. Such a process ought to be universal if all sufficiently relevant variables and conditions are equivalent, and furthermore such a process ought to be left-libertarian. Horizontalist and egalitarian standards are better than no standards. A lack of standards can be used to justify extreme ethical relativism with no bounds and unwarranted double standards for the minimal ways people are treated based off of whims and/or favoritism. Libertarian socialist terms of practice–such as direct democracy, non-hierarchy, communal self governance, co-federation, needs based distribution– ought to be defended against arbitrary rule.

Politics and economics can only happen in a horizontal way through institutions and decision making processes. Because institutions and decision making processes can potentially textured with the most and least ethical adjectives, we ought to make sure that such processes are egalitarian and participatory– as well as strategically adapted to sufficiently relevant variables. Good political and economic institutions should put forward complementary responsibilities to their positive and negative freedoms such institutions describe and prescribe within their minimal terms of practice. The only way any means of production can be organized in such a way that allows participation and common ownership is through ways of making decisions together and directly without hierarchical relations– that is through directly democratic processes.

When organizations get to large enough sizes, delegates are necessary or desirable for coordination between decentralized collectives for them to all remain horizontalist and connected to one another in a complementary way. Collectives need to be able to communicate for such decisions to be deliberative. Often the most efficient way to do such a process is through delegates that have no policy making power as delegates. Such delegates should be merely coordinative and administrative. Such delegates should be mandated from the general assembly that delegated them, recallable to such a general assembly, and rotated between members of general assemblies. Communication should go back and forth from general assemblies, to delegates of general assemblies, who then bring back communication from the delegate council to the general assembly. The general assemblies should then retain all policy making power. For egalitarian deliberation and coordination to happen on a scale beyond the local, which it should, collectives must develop horizontalist forms that have delegates and that keep them accountable to their mandate from below.

Prefiguration prescribes that we ought to create the forms that ought to exist in the future in the present. Strategic decisions are able to do specific functions within specific contexts and within specific forms to arrive at specific ends– ends that themselves ought to include the development of horizontalist forms as part of a process to arrive at and filter content. Strategy of libertarian socialist forms can be explained most broadly as including the development of libertarian socialist forms themselves, as well as oppositional politics, reconstructive politics. Oppositional politics (when ethical and strategic) opposes what ought not exist, and reconstructive politics (when ethical and strategic) creates what should exist and meets people’s needs and develops good freedoms with ecological concern. The specific content of oppositional politics and reconstructive politics ought to adapt to sufficiently relevant variables of the specific contexts that they exist within. The overall goals of strategic prefiguration should be prudent development of libertarian socialist, communist, and communalist form and content (and the means constitutive thereof), a realm of permissibility within such bounds, wise content within such a realm of permissibility, ecological flourishing, the flourishing of individual virtues, free and egalitarian culture, as well as other good criteria.

Being within a good realm of permissibility is part of but distinct from good content within such a realm of permissibility. Similar to content fetishism, form fetishism abstracts the development of forms from the content needed for them to develop. Form fetishism as praxis becomes overly concerned with a process and merely maintaining specific forms but loses sight of progress in terms of arriving at specific goals.

In such a case where one form is less liberatory than another form but still produces some good content relative to the other form (which in this example has a relatively intrinsically good form), such content would be better developed through a form that has intrinsically good form and process that then also develops such better content (given that such content is possible without the intrinsically evil form). For within the process of evil forms, there are inherent ethical issues such as but not limited to exploitation, discrimination, arbitrary rule, and alienation of persons from their own activities via hierarchical rule. There is no good content than cannot be developed better without such evil forms.

When faced with some kind of ethical dilemma where one must ostensibly choose between unethical form versus unethical content there may very well be some obvious and less obvious lesser evils–according to virtuous subjectivity evaluating while using the right criteria. But such a dilemma is temporally limited and abstracted from a broader process in which it is possible to develop both good form and good content overtime. The dilemma itself is based on a foundation of “there is no alternative”. Any ethical strategy in the world–when it is forced to make sacrifices because of no other options– will have to make the right sacrifices in the right ways, at the right times, for the right reasons, for the right ends. But this means being as consistent with good principles as possible overtime. Even when not perfectly in accord with what appears to be good ethical standards, we can only evaluate approximations thereof, and pragmatic sacrifices as such, according to some more idealized ethical standards–showing a pragmatic utility for idealized principles even when they are sacrificed according to some real or perceived disaster that supposedly necessitates such a sacrifice.

In addition to the kind of content forms will produce if they are developmental– the necessary features of the forms themselves including the freedoms and responsibilities they delineate– different forms are more and less likely to produce different kinds of content. What is needed to reproduce and develop specific forms requires specific kinds of content. Non-hierarchical and directly democratic forms can only be developed and reproduced by a content rooted in mutual aid, cooperation, long term sustainability, etc. Hierarchical forms can only be developed and reproduced by a content of competition, accumulation of centralized power, arbitrary rule, increasing the power of the ruling class to use military force against their own populace and others, etc. Non-hierarchical and directly democratic forms incentivize people towards cooperation by harmonizing self interest with social interest and ecological concern while giving everyone affected by decisions a stake in them and a way to participate on an equal footing with others. Such a process is rooted in deliberation and allows people to hear alternative proposals, concerns, dissent, questions, critiques, amendments etc. Co-federal forms allow such cooperative incentives that harmonize self interest and social interest and ecological concern to exist on a variety of scales from local to regional. Everyone has to live in the decisions that they make, which makes it so if people are informed and if people want the good for others and themselves, then they will make decisions (through dialogue, critical thinking and good terms of practice) that are simultaneously good for them and those they are in relation to. Furthermore, as stated above, developing a form overtime will take certain decisions off the table and necessarily put certain content on the table to the degree such a form is developmental. Collective and individual decisions should not be subjective without any bounds but instead qualified by good webs of minimal freedoms and responsibilities.

Anti-Formal tendencies within left communism and anarchism will sometimes speak about content against a conception of form. For anti-formal tendencies, forms become the enemies to revolt against rather than a necessary feature of ethical development. But it is only possible to talk about content as part of a process– a process in which form is a necessary and significant feature of the content. An evaluation of content abstracted from evaluation of forms can avoid the question of what the forms of freedom are or should be. This is a question that many schools of anarchism and marxism have avoided. This has led some anarchists and some marxists towards abandoning any formal socialist prescriptions. Such an approach that avoids the question of form and prescribes mere content is not developmental, not process based, nor is it dialectical: such an approach is content fetishism. A prescription of content without forms is one-sided and unable to actuate itself without addressing the question of “What forms ought to be used to arrive at specific content?”. At least some forms are necessary for some content and at least some forms are inconsistent with some content. It is important to at least get a general conception of what such good forms could be in part so we can deal with the question of how we could and should develop good content. Content fetishism inhibits an understanding of necessary organizational processes that make events happen, that make direct action projects happen, that make mutual aid projects happen, etc. The decisions made, the process thereof, the volunteering that goes into such work and action, the relationships built together, the reproductive labor that goes into processes, etc. are important parts that make various liberatory developments possible. Better knowledge of processes that are necessary or desirable for good functions and good content allows a reproducibility of such functions and content–and of the forms needed for or desirable to such functions and content.

Socialism is necessarily at least a formal political economic prescription for common ownership of the means of production. Such a process requires direct collective decision making processes and direct democracy without rulers. Socialism is a necessary feature of social anarchism and of communism: for social anarchism is at least an anti-state form of revolutionary socialism, and communism distributes according to needs. The only way to distribute means of production according to needs is through socialized, more specifically communalized, distribution of means of production and political economic functions. When anarchists and communization theorists focus on content against or at the expense of forms, they are missing out on all of these analytical distinctions that make communism and social anarchism necessarily socialist and make socialism necessarily prescribing certain forms of organizing together in common. Such an approach is needed to make sense of anarchist history, socialist history, and communist history in regards to ideological and practical developments. Such an approach shows that socialism is necessarily non-statist– in the specific sense that to the degree political economic power is held in common that power cannot be centralized in the state. Furthermore, such an approach shows that socialism is not necessarily communist– an important reminder of the insufficiency of socialism and socialist forms and the importance of developing liberatory content including communist content.

Forms are part of the content of political economic social processes. So when evaluating such a content of a political economic social process, one will either be in part evaluating the forms that develop or fetishizing content from form. There is no way to evaluate the most significant variables of existential content of political economic social processes without an evaluation of forms because the forms (or lack thereof) are at the very least a significant part of the process being evaluated. This goes not just for evaluations of processes that do happen, but for prescriptions of processes that should happen.