BAKUNIN AND THE TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CONTRACTARIANISM: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

In Classical Greece, the Sophists were the first to conceive of law as a covenant or agreement intended to secure rights shared by all. Although Athenian democracy developed without the explicit formulation of a social contract, the idea that the will of the people constitutes the source of political power found its systematic expression in the contractarian theories of authors such as Hobbes and Rousseau. The juridical consequence of these theories was—though not always with democratic outcomes—the establishment of the modern State. From a contemporary perspective, democracy is often understood as the ongoing renewal of the social contract through citizens' participation. However, this conception tends to naturalize the democratic State as the only legitimate form of political organization. This article examines the principal philosophical foundations of classical contractarianism and then analyzes how this tradition was subsequently subjected to a radical critique by Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), particularly in the essay Rousseau's Theory of the State, challenging the assumptions of the modern State and opening a horizon for reconsidering other possible forms of collective organization.