In making this point, Rousseau says, “In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.” Rousseau does not intend “that degrees of power and wealth should be absolutely the same for all.” However, “where wealth is concerned … no citizen shall be rich enough to buy another and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself.”

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 654