title: Of the Social Contract and Other Political Writings
author:  Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
description: <b>Jean-Jacques Rousseau</b> (1712&ndash;1778) is the author of numerous political and philosophical texts as well as entries on music for Diderot's <i>Encyclop&eacute;die</i> and the novels <i>La nouvelle H&eacute;lo&iuml;se</i> and <i>&Eacute;mile</i>.
zlib_text: Rousseau’s Theory of the State
  Mikhail Bakunin
  … We have said that man is not only the most individualistic being on earth – he is also the
  most social. It was a great mistake on the part of Jean Jacques Rousseau to have thought that
  primitive society was established through a free agreement among savages. But Jean Jacques is
  not the only one to have said this. The majority of jurists and modern publicists, either of the
  school of Kant or any other individualist and liberal school, those who do not accept the idea of
  a society founded upon the divine right of the theologians nor of a society determined by the
  Hegelian school as a more or less mystical realisation of objective morality, nor of the naturalists’
  concept of a primitive animal society, all accept, nolens volens, and for lack of any other basis,
  the tacit agreement or contract as their starting point.
  According to the theory of the social contract primitive men enjoying absolute liberty only in
  isolation are antisocial by na