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deep freedom 317


When we demand more than an attempt to humanize the supposedly
inevitable, we turn away from shallow freedom and shallow equality to
deep equality and deep freedom. Deep equality, however, is opposed to
the ideals and to the interests that have been central to socialism, liber-
alism, and democracy. Th e fi rst to reject it should be those who remain
faithful to the largest and most enduring aims of the Left. In the religion
of the future they will fi nd further reason to cast it aside.
Deep equality is the priority granted to some form of equality of
circumstance or outcome, achieved through what ever reshaping of in-
stitutions may be required to reach this goal. Equality of respect and
equality of opportunity are intrinsic to freedom and to the conception
of a free society: not just to the radical conception earlier proposed but
also to any conception that remains in close connection with the ideals
supported by the profane or sacred versions of the struggle with the
world. Shallow and deep equality converge in the primacy that they ac-
cord to equality of circumstance. Th is egalitarian commitment may
be formulated outright as a prohibition of extreme inequalities of liv-
ing standards, income, or wealth. Alternatively, it may be qualifi ed by
a willingness to countenance what ever inequalities can be justifi ed
by their contribution to the circumstances of the worst off , so long as
the fundamental principles of equality of respect and of opportunity
remain inviolate.
Deep equality is distinguished from shallow equality by its refusal to
take the established institutional arrangements, including those that
shape the market economy, for granted. Its characteristic device is not,
as with shallow equality, compensatory redistribution by tax and trans-
fer. It is a change in the institutional arrangements, especially those
that or ga nize production and exchange, the better to infl uence the pri-
mary distribution of wealth and income.
Once the basic institutions are rendered susceptible to rethinking
and reform, the qualifi ed forms of egalitarianism— those that justify
departures from equality of circumstance by their contribution to the
improvement of the circumstances of a particularly appealing group,
such as the worst off — cease to be well- formed ideas. Compensatory
redistribution produces its eff ects immediately, in the form of resource
transfer. Institutional change produces such eff ects in historical time.
Unless the relevant time span is arbitrarily restricted, the most extreme

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