While Rüstow attributed colonial imperialism to the 'warlike spirit' of states, his real concern was not with the state per se, which he believed needed to be strong in order to depoliticise civil society. Rather, he traced the 'cult of the great Leviathan' not to Thomas Hobbes, but to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the tradition of revolutionary popular sovereignty. As anticolonialists struggling for self-determination were drawn to Rousseau's theorisation of the 'will of the people', Rüstow, in common with much neoliberal opposition to popular sovereignty, positioned the Swiss philosopher at the origin of modern totalitarianism.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 282