Ever wondered about inequality today, and how it came about? Rousseau’s treatise offers some insight. Published in the middle of the 18^th century, the essay attempts to show the link between humanity, the natural world, and how we evolved to collect, covet and hoard stuff. The stuff of course is important, because it begins with land, produce, buildings, and evolves into high stakes commerce and business enterprises, which have for all intents and purposes, got us where we are today: gross inequality, obscene amounts of wealth coveted by the few, and mass global hardship, privation, and in some cases destitution for the many.

The 2025 Global Wealth Report indicates that the United States of America and China hold over half of the world’s wealth despite being only 4% of the global population. The United States has 40% of the world’s millionaires. And of course there are more than 3000 billionaires today suggesting that the accumulation of wealth by the few, is disadvantageous to the many. So, how has this come about?

Rousseau’s argument is in the grand narrative style of the times he lived in. He asserts a first cause argument that humankind’s emergence in the natural world was initially idealist. At a later point in human history a confluence of events in the natural world like floods, earthquakes, fires, volcanic eruptions and so on, force humankind to search out a collective support network of sorts.[i] However, this was not without its problems. Collective support turned into a kind of competitive game and people wanted to be perceived as the better or best at anything and everything:

“He who sang or danced the best, he who was the most handsome, the strongest, the most adroit or the most eloquent, became the most highly regarded; and this was the first step to inequality, and at the same time, towards vice”[ii]

Rousseau asserts that a collective work ethic, along with egalitarian support through working the land created the conditions for competition over cooperation. He argues that when it was realised that provisions for one person and their family, could be turned into twice the amount, or even threefold, equality disappeared. Ownership supplanted collectivism, and property ownership created the environment for slavery and servitude. The emerging differences in a person’s capacity to work and their personal circumstances, created an imbalance within communal groups. This led to social fragmentation, greater inequalities, setting neighbour against neighbour, communities against each other and a once balanced social order was irrevocably broken.

He claims that at some point in human history we learned to see our neighbour as exhibiting some kind of deficiency in their character and behaviours. This spans across centuries and includes ideological wars over what one could think or believe. Wars over wealth and the acquisition of power and control of peoples and their populations ensued. Some assumed the right to lead and rule by birth, which led to the establishment of groups who proclaimed their superiority over others.

For an essay written in the 18^th century, Rousseau’s insights resonate today. Cultural wars, cancel culture and the absurdities of political correctness persist, and exacerbate social fragmentation across most human societies. We read about the US military forcibly removing homeless people out of Washington DC; the unbridled wealth of tech billionaires and their lifestyles of excess; the digital media exploiting the masses with their social media influencers preaching their superiority to ordinary folk; and the gross inequalities in global education opportunities for children and youth.

So, Rousseau’s A Discourse on Social Inequality is a book for anyone interested in taking a walk through an historical grand narrative on human history. The edition I read is published by Penguin Classics (1984), ISB number: 978-0-140-44439-1

[i] Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, p.38

[ii] Ibid, p39