Rousseau's theories on equality and popular sovereignty inspired many subsequent revolutionary struggles of the masses. As Marx said: "Rousseau constantly avoided making even superficial compromises with the existing regime."

Rousseau’s ideas of equality and people’s sovereignty are the most valuable contents of his doctrine. He studied the origin and basis of human inequality and pointed out that the origin of inequality lies in private ownership. In his view, there is a true equality in the state of nature. At that time, even if people have physical differences, their impact is almost zero. Since humans learned to use tools and fire, invented agriculture and metallurgy, private ownership and property inequality arose, rule and slavery emerged, and people entered a state of war to plunder each other. Then inequality enters the second stage as the law identifies the strong and the weak. When the tyrant turns everyone into slaves and confirms the relationship between master and slave, inequality enters the third stage.

He obviously understands that legal equality is not equal to de facto equality. Without a certain degree of equality, freedom is just an empty talk. He believes that even if absolute equality cannot be achieved in fact, people's actual inequality should be minimized so as to prevent those with excessive power from committing violence and those who are excessively wealthy from doing whatever they want. He admired Locke's maxim very much: "Where there is no private property, there is no injustice." He wanted to minimize the gap between rich and poor. He said: "If you want to make the country stable, the two poles should be as close as possible; there should be neither wealth nor poverty. These two naturally inseparable levels are equally fatal to the happiness of the people. "One will produce the champion of tyranny, and the other will produce a tyrant. There is always a fair and free transaction between them: one buys freedom, the other sells freedom." About how inequality arises. Yes, Rousseau has a famous saying: "From the moment one person needs the help of another person; from the moment people realize the advantage of one person possessing the food of two people, equality disappears, private property appears, and labor became necessary, the vast forests became prosperous fields that had to be irrigated with human blood and sweat; soon saw crops sprouting and growing along with durability and poverty. "In his opinion, all human disasters are inevitable. It is the first consequence of private property and the inevitable product of new inequality. According to this logic, as long as he takes another step forward, he will come to the conclusion of eliminating private ownership to achieve social equality. However, class limitations prevented him from taking this step. Because for capitalist economic relations, "the first law of the entire society is: there must be some agreed equality between people or things." Therefore, he believes that property rights are indeed the most sacred of all civil rights. In some aspects, they are even more important than freedom. These are all reflections of the needs of modern capitalist economy. His ideas of preventing extreme inequality in wealth distribution were also accepted by some later bourgeois thinkers. His ideas of preventing polarization, such as progressive taxation of property, restrictions on inheritance rights, and state intervention in the economy, all reflected a desire of the people. ; His ideal is "neither beggars nor rich people."