This exclusion of the poor, which consists in denying them the status of a final end in the teleological chain and, as we have seen, does not even permit them to stand there as a means, is also manifested in the fact that within the modern relatively democratic State public assistance is perhaps the only branch of the administration in which the interested parties have no participation whatsoever.

XREF: Connects to themes of exclusion and civic participation found in Arendt and contemporary welfare-state critique.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 415