324 deep freedomTh e principle of higher cooperation
Th e priority of deep freedom over equality of circumstance has as its
complement a change in character of our cooperative practices.
An idea of cooperation forms part of the conception of a free society.
Other things being equal, the more we are able to or ga nize our activi-
ties through a division of labor, untainted by subjugation and depen-
dence, the freer we become. Insofar as we achieve this goal, we can do
more and we can become more, individually as well as collectively. We
soft en the confl ict between the enabling conditions of self- assertion:
the imperative of connection and the imperative of in de pen dent agency.
We diminish the price, in loss of autonomy, that we must pay for con-
nection. We do so, moreover, outside the realm of the intimate personal
relations in which love off ers the consummate form of such a reconcili-
ation. Cooperation substitutes for love in life among strangers.
Th e capacity to cooperate is, at the same time, the most powerful
and pervasive infl uence on the development of our practical capabilities.
Together with the enlistment of science and technology in production, it
is the overriding factor in the material progress of society. Although this
capacity is shaped by institutional arrangements, it acquires a life of its
own, sustained by habits of action and of mind. Th e practices and insti-
tutions in which cooperation, as a division of labor, is embodied defi ne
a cooperative regime. A cooperative regime may favor or inhibit the
development of capabilities of cooperation.
In the long sweep of economic history, we can distinguish three
stages in the development of our capacities to produce goods and ser-
vices: the most fundamental of our practical capabilities if we are to lift
from human life the burdens of poverty, infi rmity, and drudgery. In the
fi rst, most primitive stage, the size of an economic surplus over current
consumption remains a powerful constraint on the expansion of out-
put and the enhancement of productivity. Large states, such as the
agrarian- bureaucratic empires prominent in so much of world history,
may fi nd in this constraint reason to or ga nize the coercive extraction
of such a surplus against the background of stark social hierarchies and
divisions. Th e economic theorist may be tempted, however, to exagger-
ate the importance and per sis tence of this constraint. It is a limitation