Rousseau Social Inequality

The origin of social and economic inequality traces back to the establishment of private property and government. These two actions started a series of revolutions for society, twisting and contorting man into a slave to the rich and a victim to their own vices, resulting in monumental consequences in the form of crime and social inequality.
Political and economic inequality started with building shelter, the first revolution of inequality. Rousseau, to start the second discourse states the begining of civil society, which in turn begins the process of inequality,

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to whom it occurred to say this is mine, and found people sufficiently simple to believe him, was the true founder of civil

While the establishment of private property may not seem to tie directly into the process of increasing inequality, it starts it all.
With the establishment of private property, love resulted in families living together. Each family was like a small society. Each family starts to live as an individual unit, with each member of the family leading individual lives. This individuality is the start of change from a herd culture to a culture of individuals, a possible starting point for pride, the core of inequality. Rousseau illustrates the progress of civilised society, but the pitfalls that come with progress:

It became customary to gather in front of the Huts or around a large Tree: song and dance, true children of love and leisure, became the amusement or rather the occupation of idle men and women gathered together. Everyone began to look at everyone else and to wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem acquired a price. The one who sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most skillful, or the most eloquent came to be the most highly regarded, and this was the first step towards inequality and vice: from these first preferences arose vanity and contempt on the one hand, shame and envy on the other; and the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence. (Rousseau