I. In the progress of mankind from its bestial existence to a human existence, one of the next steps, according to Bakunin, will be the disappearance—not indeed of law, but—of enacted law.

Enacted law belongs to a low stage of evolution. "A political legislation, whether it is based on a ruler's will or on the votes of representatives chosen by universal suffrage, can never correspond to the laws of nature, and is always baleful, hostile to the liberty of the masses, if only because it forces upon them a system of external and consequently despotic laws."[336] No legislation has ever "had another aim than that of confirming, and exalting into a system, the exploitation of the laboring populace by the ruling classes."[337] Thus every legislation "has for its consequence at once the enslavement of society and the depravation of the legislators."[338]

But mankind will soon leave behind it the stage of evolution to which law belongs. Enacted law is indissolubly connected with the State: "the State is a historically necessary evil,"[339] "a transitory form of society";[340] "with the State, law in the jurists' sense, the so-called legal regulation of popular life from above downward by legislation, must necessarily fall."[341] Everybody feels already that this moment is approaching,[342] the transformation is at hand,[343] it is to be expected within the nineteenth century.[344]

II. In the next stage of evolution, which mankind must speedily reach, there will be no enacted law to be sure, but there will be law even there. What Bakunin predicts with regard to this next stage of evolution enables us to perceive that according to his expectation norms will then prevail which "are based on a general will,"[345] and which even secure obedience by forcible compulsion if necessary,[346] so that they are legal norms.

Among such legal norms of our next stage of evolution Bakunin mentions that by virtue of which there exists a "right to independence."[347] For me as an individual this means "that I as a man am entitled to obey no other man, and to act only in accordance with my own judgment."[348] But, furthermore, "every nation, every province, and every commune has the unlimited right to complete independence, provided that its internal constitution does not threaten the independence and liberty of the adjoining territories."[349]

Likewise Bakunin regards it as a legal norm of the next stage of evolution that contracts must be lived up to. To be sure, the obligation of contracts has its limits. "Human justice cannot recognize anything as creating an obligation in perpetuity. All rights and duties are founded on liberty. The right of freely uniting and separating is the first and most important of all political rights."[350]

Another legal norm mentioned by Bakunin as belonging to the next stage of evolution is that by virtue of which "the land, the instruments of labor, and all other capital, as the collective property of the whole of society, will exclusively serve for the use of the agricultural and industrial associations."[351]