If one were to locate in Deleuze a political philosophy in the classical sense of the term, this would be his theory of the institution, which he inherited from Hume.

The major currents of political thought, among which the most well-known is the tradition of the social contract, have always defined society in terms of law. According to this theory, in the stage prior to the formation of societies, men lived as self-sufficient units possessing natural rights. From which it follows that for the formation of societies it was necessary for men to abandon this innate right and to submit themselves to the rule of law. In this case, ‘law’ signifies the prescription of a prohibition upon natural right, where ‘one may do as one pleases’. According to social contract theory, in other words, at the origin of societies lies the law as prohibition.

It is this idea that Hume critiques. To place law at the origin of societies presumes a determination of men as unrepentant egoists. The prohibition of law is necessary to keep in check this fundamental egoism. However, to see egoism as the essence of man is possible only when we have enclosed him inside an abstract ‘state of nature’ which exists nowhere in reality. In contradistinction, real men and women, as they are studied natural-historically, have always formed bonds with each other, grouped themselves into families; they have always lived enveloping each other within a natural ‘affection’. ‘[T]here are few’, says Hume, ‘that do not bestow the largest part of their fortunes on the pleasures of their wives, and the education of their children, reserving the smallest portion for their own proper use or entertainment’ (quoted in ES, 38/25). The difficulty rather is that this affection is splayed with partiality (ES, 38/24). To undo the undesirable consequences of egoism, all it takes is to keep it suppressed. But the ‘partiality of affection’ cannot be done away with like this, rather it must somehow be integrated. To that extent, we can say that theories of the social contract have overly simplified the true challenges of the formation of societies.