318 deep freedom
inequalities now could in principle be justifi ed by their speculative con-
tribution to the improvement of the conditions of the most disadvan-
taged at a much later time. Such is, in a sense, the justifi cation of class
society in Karl Marx’s historical materialism: coercive surplus extrac-
tion, made possible by class hierarchy and class oppression, creates the
material conditions that permit the overcoming of scarcity long aft er
the victims of class oppression are dead.
An egalitarianism justifying departures from equality of outcome or
of circumstance only by their benefi cial eff ect on the situation of cer-
tain groups such as the most disadvantaged can, for this reason, be only
shallow equality. Shallow equality is in fact the province of the contem-
porary egalitarian theories of justice. Th eir implicit institutional con-
servatism cuts their theoretical egalitarianism down to size: they must
achieve what ever they can hope to accomplish by a form of corrective
redistribution and regulation leaving the structure of the market and
of democracy untouched. Deep egalitarianism can allow for no such
qualifi cation.
Deep equality is what, for example, the Spartans had among them-
selves, although not with the helots. It is what Proudhon, William Mor-
ris, and many other socialists of the past have desired. It can be secured
only by imposing radical restraints on the sale of property and the ac-
cumulation of capital. Th ere are two major historical instances of such
a project.
One example was the eff ort to achieve equalization conducted, nota-
bly through agrarian reform and to the detriment of landowning gran-
dees, in many of the ancient imperial states. When it succeeded, it
produced a relatively greater equality in these still largely agricultural
societies. However, it was not the ideal of deep equality that moved the
reformers who sat in the seats of imperial power. Th eir motive was to
assure the state of a source of tax revenues and military recruitment
not subject to the control of the landowning magnates and warlords.
Restraints on the power of an oligarchy of landowners and warlords to
subjugate a smallholding class succeeded, when they did succeed,
within a larger social and historical order that remained starkly hierar-
chical. Such an order resisted the infl uence of the attempt— shared by
the visionary found ers of the higher religions— to deny the reality or
the authority of the divisions within humanity.