Political theories are forms determined by social content, not freely chosen options.

Evidence

But this means somehow skirting the vast continent of political philosophy as such, itself a kind of ideological “market” in its own right, in which, as in some gigantic combinational system, all possible variants and combinations of political “values,” options, and “solutions” are available, on condition you think you are free to choose among them. … The theory of ideology excludes this optionality of political theories, not merely because “values” as such have deeper class and unconscious sources than those of the conscious mind but also because theory is itself a kind of form determined by social content, and it reflects social reality in more complicated ways than a solution “reflects” its problem. What can be observed at work here is the fundamental dialectical law of the determination of a form by its content — something not active in theories or disciplines in which there is no differentiation between a level of “appearance” and a level of “essence,” and in which phenomena like ethics or sheer political aopinion as such are modifiable by conscious decision or rational persuasion. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 580

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the dialectical law of determination of form by content — the core mechanism of the book’s thesis that aesthetic form is the economy’s way of appearing.
• XREF: Directly instantiates the reader’s stated key idea that style is periodizable because form is determined by social content. — connects to: Ideological choices are decided beforehand by power blocs, not by individuals. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 163; Ideas, not vested interests, ultimately shape political possibility. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 136; Political power takes its shape from a distinct rationality, not from social structures — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 92 (+2 more)