David Lay Williams, author of Rousseau’s Social Contract, explains what Rousseau had to say on the subject:
[P]erhaps the most pernicious effects of economic inequality, for Rousseau, are wrought on the soul. Tremendous wealth, on his reasoning, enfeebles the conscience. We social animals are always driven to distinguish ourselves, to prove ourselves better than others. This is not always socially destructive, insofar as distinction is granted for the right reasons – namely, civic and sociable behavior. Society, however, has increasingly not only rewarded distinction with wealth, but made wealth a distinction worthy of respect. Where this happens, one’s status owes not just to one’s wealth per se, but to one’s wealth relative to the poverty of others. Rousseau worried that in the most unequal societies, the rich would acquire a “pleasure of dominating” that renders them “like those ravenous wolves which once they have tasted human flesh scorn all other food, and from then on want only to devour men.” Against a mind degraded in this way, addicted to the pleasure of domination, no appeal to justice, fairness, or any other value we like to think defines us, can have any effect; and no just society can stand on such foundations.
The Dish 