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Morality just needs equality and an absence of authority

			Full Idea: Equality and the absence of authority are the only conditions essential to the morality of every man.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.128)
			A reaction: The anarchist's view of the basics of morality. I like the recognition that even the most personal morality has a social and political dimension. It is a Kantian view that morality from authority is not the real thing, which needs personal judgement.

Wealth is essential for all human goods

			Full Idea: Wealth has always been and still is the indispensable condition for the realisation of everything hunman.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.120)
			A reaction: Diogenes of Sinope (perhaps the first anarchist) would disagree, but in the modern world it is hard to deny this claim, which comes from a famous anarchist. Note that it is necessary, but probably isn't sufficient. Anarchists must create wealth, then.

A state can only exist as a conspiracy for exploiting working people

			Full Idea: No State can exist without a permanent conspiracy, directed, of course, against the mass of drudge-people, for the enslavement and fleecing of which all States can exist.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.129)
			A reaction: The view of a famous anarchist. The interesting claim is not that states happen to do this, but that necessarily all states do it. Presumably any state launched with lovely intentions would quickly turn into this criminal enterprise. Power corrupts.

The tacit general contract was a fiction, supporting the propertied classes

			Full Idea: The science of law, based upon metaphysics but in reality upon the class interests of the propertied classes, sought to discover a rational basis for the existence of the State. They reverted to the fiction of the general and tacit agreement or contract.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.144)
			A reaction: Might one raise the same challenge to Rawls's original position? I don't think Rousseau is committed to any particular outcome of the initial contract, and anarchists can offer their own version of how the first contract might have gone.

Given power, people are natural oppressors

			Full Idea: Human nature is such that given power over others a man will invariably oppress them. …Take the most radical revolutionist and place him on the all-Russian throne …and within a year he will become worse than the Emperor himself.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.128)
			A reaction: Humans can live well in anarchy, so humans must be intrinsically good, but not so good that they can resist the temptations of power. Bakunin must hope that no such temptations are available among anarchists.

The ruling classes produce a small group, to organise state power and exploit the people

			Full Idea: The interests of the ruling classes demand that an even more compact governmental minority crystallise from their midst, small enough to agree between themselves to organise their group and the forces of the state, for the estates and against the people.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.129)
			A reaction: This just states the obvious fact about any government, but Bakunin sees a different motivation in the process. An organised crime group would similarly produce a small group to run it. But then so would a monastery, or a bunch of saints.

My freedom needs everyone's freedom

			Full Idea: The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.136)
			A reaction: A resounding slogan, but I doubt whether it is actually true. The full citizens of ancient Athens had a high level of freedom, despite reliance on slavery. Prisons don't overtly impinge of the freedom of the rest of us. Maybe we just don't feel free.

Respect for freedom is the highest duty and virtue

			Full Idea: Respect for the freedom of others is the highest duty of man. To love this freedom and to serve it - such is the only virtue. That is the basis of all morality; and there can be no other.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.137)
			A reaction: I sometimes think that respect might be the highest virtue, but that would involve more than respect for someone's freedom. Freedom to commit suicide? Freedom to oppress others? Freedom to be miserable? Freedom to believe nonsense?

Deny free will, and abolish punishment, since human actions are the consequence of society

			Full Idea: Anarchism needs the negation of free will and the right to punish. Every human individual is but an involuntary product of natural and social environment.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.134)
			A reaction: [He then spells out four social causes of immoral behaviour] I don't think negating free will entails the abolition of punishment, so these two are separate. Hegel and Marx seem to be the sources for this view. All actions are 'involuntary'?

A free society needs full compuslory education, followed by promotion of exact science

			Full Idea: A genuinely free society must grant to knowledge a two-fold right. 1) the education of both sexes, accessible and compulsory until the coming of age, which then ceases. 2) the spreading of ideas based on exact science, aimed at universal conviction.
			From: Mikhail Bakunin (Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task [1870], p.133)
			A reaction: We would now be less confident of a consensus on what 'exact science' tells us, and compulsory education followed by brainwashing (however virtuous) doesn't sound very anarchist. Is philosophical dialectic permitted? I do think free needs truth.