deep freedom 319
A second historical instance of commitment to deep equality is the
state socialism of the twentieth century in those periods (such as Stalin’s
rural collectivization drive or Mao’s Cultural Revolution) when egali-
tarianism gained the upper hand. Th e collectivization as well as the na-
tionalization of the means of production, the outlawing of any private
accumulation of capital, the widespread restraint on the alienation or
the acquisition of signifi cant property, and the insistence on suppressing
private wage labor all formed part of these experiences. In the absence
of the invention of new, disaggregated forms of property, even the Yugo-
slav self- management system could not render its enterprise regime
stable without resorting to broad restraints on alienation and expansion.
In this twentieth- century state socialism, radical in e qual ity nevertheless
continued to exist, if not in economic circumstance, then with regard to
power and education. Th e po liti cal and cultural inequalities almost al-
ways had direct or indirect economic consequences.
Who wants deep equality? Not the hundreds of millions who have
fl ed from countryside to city, even when in the city no work awaits
them. Not the multitudes who sit transfi xed before their screens watch-
ing the fantastical narratives of empowerment and escape of pop u lar
romantic culture. Not searchers aft er more consumption, more excite-
ment, more diversion, or more capability. No one wants it who could
have, with a mea sure of abundance, anything else. And when they want
it, if indeed they understand it, they want it only as a consolation, in the
absence of such more appealing goods. Austerity, drudgery, and mo-
notony, a narrowing of alternatives of action, can seem an acceptable
form of existence only if they appear to be the sole alternative to stark
oppression. Ancient Sparta has few takers.
Deep equality cannot be the core of the program of the progressives.
It fails to capture the concerns and aspirations that have historically
driven them. Th e common notion that the Left is distinguished by the
priority that it gives to equality over freedom remains plausible only so
long as we limit ourselves to comparing shallow freedom to shallow
equality: only when the horizon of programmatic argument has nar-
rowed to the point of balancing economic fl exibility and social protec-
tion against each other, within an institutional system that the po liti cal
forces have no impulse to reconstruct. Th e abdication of such institu-
tional reshaping, however, amounts to the belittlement of the progressive