a) The Concept of Content and Form

p Content is a category of materialist dialectics denoting a totality ot all interactions and resultant changes occurring in a phenomenon. The content of a society, for instance, includes all interactions between the people who make it up, particularly the interactions that appear in the process of producing, distributing and consuming material goods, the interaction between political parties, the state and its citizens.

p The content of a phenomenon includes both internal and external interactions, i.e. the interactions between the elements of a phenomenon and the phenomenon’s interactions with other phenomena surrounding it. The content of a living organism, for instance, includes, besides the processes that take place inside it, all the organism’s actions that are its responses to the actions of the corresponding factors in its environment.

The interactions and changes of a phenomenon are not haphazard-they take place within certain limits that lend them a certain stability and a qualitative definiteness, and have a certain relatively stable system of connections, a certain structure. The relatively stable system ot connections ot the content’s aspects and its structure make up the form ot a phenomenon. The form of a living organism, for instance, is its morphology, the structure of its body; the form of a mode of production is the relatively stable system of social relations among people established during the production and distribution of material goods.

b) A Critique of Idealist and Metaphysical Views
of Content and Form

p Being the structure of content, form is intrinsically connected with it and cannot exist without it. There have been attempts in the history of philosophy, however, to prove that form exists outside and independently of content. Aristotle, for example, believed that content and form could exist separately and that they merged into one thing only under strictly definite conditions. Many modern bourgeois philosophers and natural scientists believe that form exists independently of matter. Thus, Erwin Schrodinger, a prominent physicist, declares “elementary” particles to be pure forms devoid of any material content. “.. .When you come to the ultimate particles constituting matter,” he writes, “there seems to be no point in thinking of them again as consisting of 225 material. They are, as it were, pure shape, nothing but shape. . ..”  [225•1 

p If, however, “elementary” particles were nothing that would constitute matter, if they were nothing but forms constructed by people according to known mathematical and geometrical laws, while virtually everything in objective reality consisted of “elementary” particles, matter would disappear as objective reality and only the pure, ideal form-i.e. consciousness-would remain.

The idealist nature of this reasoning is evident. In reality, however, there is and can be no pure form devoid of matter. Any form is the structure of a particular material entity. As regards the ideal forms created by people in the course of extending of social knowledge, they are not pure forms either, but have a content reflecting the aspects and connections of the outside world.

c) The Interconnection Between Content and Form

p Content and form are intrinsically interconnected and constitute a dialectical unity, but they play different parts in this unity. Content is decisive, while form appears under its direct influence.

p Emerging under the direct impact of content, form is not passive-it also exerts an influence on content. This influence is twofold: form either facilitates the development of content or hampers it, depending on whether it corresponds to the latter or not. When it does, it is conducive to the 226 content’s development, when it does not, it hinders its development.

p Why does form correspond to content in some cases, while in others it does not? The fact is that form is, by its very nature, stable, whereas content is fluid, open to change, being the totality of the processes occurring in a phenomenon. Initially, form corresponds to the content that gave rise to it and provides great scope for the content’s development. As time passes, the content reaches a level at which the confines of the given system of connections become too narrow. The form begins to hamper the development of the content, which results in their incompatibility. This incompatibility grows ever stronger and, sooner or later, results in the destruction of the old form-a relatively stable system of connections-and the shaping of a new system of connections, a new form that at first corresponds to the content that has given rise to it, but later becomes obsolete, too, and is replaced by a new form, and so on ad infinitum.

p The destruction of the old form and the emergence of a new form is a process of fundamental qualitative change of the content. Some interactions or processes are destroyed, others emerge and yet others undergo changes.

p For example, during the transition from one economic pattern of mode of production to another as a result of the resolution of the contradiction between advanced productive forces (content) and obsolete relations of production (form), not only the form, but also the content undergo changes. Thus, during the transition from 227 artisan, handicraft production to capitalist manufacture, the transformation of the relations of production occurred together with a drastic change in the productive forces, which resulted in the emergence of a new productive force connected with a new distribution of people in the process of production and with a new organisation of labour. The productive forces also change during the transformation of capitalist into socialist production relations-they are substantially reconstructed. Owing to the fact that under socialism production is aimed at the fullest possible satisfaction of people’s requirements, not at securing the maximum profit, the orientation of a great number of enterprises inevitably changes, a new relationship is established between separate industries, and quite new industries are set up.

To sum up, the transformation of the old form, which does not correspond to the developed content, into a new one is also a process by which the content is drastically changed. Lenin said on this score: ”. . .the struggle of content with form and conversely. The throwing off of the form, the transformation of the content.”  [227•1 

d) Part and Whole, Element and Structure

p When we consider a phenomenon from the point of view of its content it appears as a whole, as a totality of all the elements and aspects that make it up and of all their interactions. It is through this totality that content relates to form. The 228 summary characteristic of content, however, becomes inadequate as the object is further cognised and a need arises for a closer study of the content’s separate aspects, elements, processes, and relations. The content is broken up into its component parts, analysis of which necessitates the discovery of regularities in their interaction with each other and with the whole. Regularities governing the interaction of separate parts with the whole are reflected in the categories “whole” and “part”, while those governing the interaction of the component parts of the whole are reflected in the categories “element” and “structure”.

p An object (process, phenomenon, relation) that makes up another object (process, phenomenon, relation) and represents an aspect of its content, constituting the part. An object (process, phenomenon, relation) including other integrally interconnected objects (phenomena, processes, relations) as its component parts and possessing such other properties that are not the properties of its component parts, constitutes the whole.

p Each object is a whole made up of definite parts. A molecule of water, for instance, makes a whole consisting of one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen. Each atom that is part of a molecule of water constitutes part of a whole. It is not dissolved in the whole, it does not merge with its quality, but rather retains its qualitative distinction and possesses a certain degree of independence enabling it to occupy a strictly definite place in the whole and play a strictly definite role. The molecule thus represents a discrete whole 229 including parts that have their own specific content. Their content, however, is conditioned not only by their specific nature, but also by the general nature of the whole. For this reason they play their specific roles not by themselves but as parts of the whole. On the other hand, the general nature of the whole (the molecule in our example) depends on the specific nature of the parts that make it up, particularly the atoms.

p The interconnection of the whole and part, expressed in the dependence of the quality of the whole on the specific nature of its component parts, on the one hand, and the qualities of the parts on the specific nature of the whole, on the other, results from the interconnection between the parts within the whole, this interconnection constituting the structure of the whole. It is the interconnection of the elements that underlies the inception of the whole and the transformation of the elements into component parts of the whole. There is no whole without structure, which is the main condition for the existence of the whole.

p The concept structure represents the manner of the combination and interconnection of the whole’s elements. The concept elements signifies the components of a whole, which are interconnected and interdependent in one way or another.

p “Element" and “part” are not identical concepts. Elements reveal their specific content through their correlation with structure, with the system of connections established between them. Being independent and qualitatively isolated, elements differ essentially from the connection 230 established between them. The specific content of parts, on the other hand, is revealed through their correlation with the whole, rather than through the correlation with the connections established between them. For this reason they cannot be opposed to the connections making up the structure of the whole, inasmuch as these connections are themselves parts of the whole. Hence the concept of part is broader than that of element. Parts of the whole are not only interconnected elements, but also the interconnections between the elements, i.e. the structure.

p By noting that structure is the manner of the connection of elements in an integral system, we in fact equate the concepts of structure and form. This is, however, inevitable and natural because the former emerged on the basis of the latter and constitutes its concrete expression. Moreover, the concept of structure expresses, when it comes together with that of content, not only the regularities governing the interconnection of content and form, but also those governing the interconnection of the content’s elements, when it comes together with the concept of element. The latter interconnection is characterised in particular by the fact that each element, while being qualitatively isolated and relatively independent within the whole, depends greatly on the other elements making up the given whole and upon the nature of its connection with them. These connections largely determine its place, role and significance in the whole, together with its qualitative and quantitative characteristics. On the other hand, 231 the connection between the elements itself depends on their nature and on their qualitative and quantitative characteristics.

p For example, relations established between a husband and wife, and between parents and children in a family, depend greatly on the qualitative characteristics of the people involved. On the other hand, the qualitative features of these people depend to a large extent on the relations existing in the family.

To sum up, the properties of the elements depend on the structure of the whole they make up, whereas the structure of this whole depends on its constituent elements, their nature and quantity. In other words, the elements of an object and the structure of this object (the manner of connection of the elements) are necessarily interdependent and constitute a dialectical unity.