deep freedom 309single, self- evident institutional form that a free society, or a society
faithful to the aspirations of the religion of the future, should take.
Contemporary social demo crats are mistaken to treat the estab-
lished and inherited institutional settlement as the more or less natural
and necessary setting for the prosecution of their characteristic eff ort
to reconcile economic fl exibility with social protection, and effi ciency
with equity. Many po liti cal phi los o phers are wrong to treat the institu-
tional structure of society as a concern peripheral to the enunciation of
the principles of po liti cal life.
Th e liberals and the socialists of the nineteenth century were free from
these illusions. However, they in turn erred in entrusting their po liti cal
hopes to a dogmatic institutional formula: the establishment of a par-
tic u lar system of private and public rights, including a par tic u lar ver-
sion of the market economy and of democracy (for the liberals) or the
governmental control of the economy, accompanied by another style of
democracy (for the socialists). In every instance, their institutional pro-
gram proved inadequate to their goals.
Th eir mistake was not simply to have chosen one institutional for-
mula rather than another. It was also to have failed to grasp the fl awed,
circumstantial, and transitory character of every institutional form given
to a free society. We must choose a direction of institutional change
rather than choosing a defi nitive blueprint. Moreover, we must choose
it in the awareness that there are always other directions and that we may
have reason to change our judgment of which direction is, on the whole,
to be preferred.
It is not enough to respect the prerogative of apostasy from the vi-
sions of the good and the ideals of humanity informing the regime. It is
also necessary to or ga nize a permanent experiment, both worldwide and
in the space of the in de pen dent states of the world, regarding the institu-
tional arrangements of a free society. Th e apostates may dissent from
the ideals and the visions associated with the free order, with the sacred
or profane versions of the struggle with the world, or with their radi-
calization and reformation by the religion of the future. Th e votaries
of these projects will and should diverge among themselves in their
understanding of the institutional implications of their commitments.
Such divergence is not an accidental or passing restraint on the revolu-
tionary ideas, to be overcome by convergence and consensus; it is a