To be subject to the private will of another person is tantamount to domination; to be subject to self-given laws as an equal, by contrast, is freedom. Equal citizenship, of this variety, presupposes an ability to exercise your powers to set and pursue your own conception of the good independently of permission by other private wills.
Poverty, the condition of not owning any productive assets, makes you dependent on the private wills of those who control such assets. Poverty is therefore a condition of domination.
This is Kant's go-to example of economic independence, foreshadowing Hegel's discussion of poverty and Marx's discussion of the subsumption of labour to capital.
The domination objection to this predicament is not that my dependence on you might make me fearful, obsequious or servile in my music-making, but rather that my ability to create and express music is compromised.
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