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Rousseau discourse on the origin and the foundation of inequality among mankind: we were hunter gatherers living happily in small bands that ended following the agricultural revolution and the rise of cities.

In Leviathan Hobbes argues that life before civilization was poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Human society in this view is founded on the collective oppression of our baser instincts.

Arguing about whether humans are fundamentally good or evil makes about as much sense as arguing about whether humans are fundamentally fat or thin.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up.

All unintellectual labor, all monotonous, dull labor, all labor the deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the Stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing.

One man owns a machine which does the work of 500 men. 500 men are in consequence thrown out of employment and having no work to do become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it and has 500 times as much as he should have and probably more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all everyone would benefit by it.

The state is to be a voluntary association that will organize labor and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities.
The state is to make what is useful.
It is mentally and morally injurious man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure. All work of that kind should be done by a machine.

When each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his neighbor, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere with anyone else.

All modes of government are failures. All authority is degrading and demoralizing.
Punishment causes crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness.

Horrid, unwholesome dwellings
Extremes of luxury and pauperism
Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot.

What I mean by a perfect man is one who develops under perfect condition; one who is not wounded, or worried, or named, or in danger.
Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction (Byron).

Realizing the perfection of what is in yourself to your own incomparable gain and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world.
Charity is bullshit
The refinement of pleasures or joy of life.
The man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance.
Realizing some form of beautiful and intellectual life.
Abolition of private property

Reconstructing society such that poverty is impossible

Opening sentence: socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others.

Jared Diamond's conclusion that large populations can't function without leaders, executives in bureaucrats, and that the anarchist dream of living without state government is unrealistic, is a dismal conclusion not just for anarchists but for anybody who ever wondered if there might be a viable alternative to the current current status quo.

For Rousseau, Fukuyama and Diamond, what put an end to the equality of hunter-gatherer tribes was agriculture tribes leading to chiefdoms with hierarchies and leadership, but there is no reason to believe that small-scale groups are especially likely to be egalitarian.

But the Europeans did not act on the mission that was designated them which consisted of pondering these elements, modifying their configuration, changing them and finally taking the problem of man to an infinitely higher plane.

There were European who urged the workers to smash this narcissism and break with this denial of reality. But generally speaking, the workers did not respond to the call. The workers believed they too were part of the prodigious adventure of the European Spirit.
All the elements for a solution to the major problems of humanity existed at one time or another in European thought.

National consciousness is the highest form of culture but it is not nationalism.

The conscious, organized struggle undertaken by a colonized people in order to restore national sovereignty constitutes the greatest cultural manifestation that exists.

Political education means opening up the mind, awakening the mind and introducing it to the world. "To invent the souls of men."

He says the youth of Africa should not be oriented toward the stadiums but toward the fields and the schools, but how many African youth want to do agricultural work? They are much more interested in stadiums (and probably alcohol).

Development must be widespread
Mass participation, opportunity to speak

To nationalize the tertiary sector means organizing democratically the cooperatives for buying and selling. it means decentralizing these cooperatives by involving the masses the management of public affairs. All this obviously cannot succeed unless the people are politically educated.

Criticism of what happened in the Congo

Because the bourgeoisie is uncaring and underdeveloped, it deposits the profits it makes from national resources in foreign banks and buys cars, villas and ostentatious goods.
The post-colonial bourgeoisie ends up becoming the new colonists.

Independence does not bring a change of direction. The same old ground nut harvest, cocoa harvest and olive oil harvest. Likewise the traffic of commodities goes unchanged. No industry is established. They continue to ship raw materials and produce for Europe.

The bourgeoisie following independence is incapable of truly developing the country. They do not have a clue about the economy. The precariousness of its resources and the scarcity of managerial talent force it for years into an economy of cottage industries.

National consciousness is nothing but accrued, empty, fragile shell.

The masses must be involved in in the management of public affairs and this cannot succeed unless the people are politically educated.