>The salto morale is a contentious theme for him and this is
>how he sets up the dialectic of materialism vs. idealism.

Okay. That tracks. I was using Marx as my sole guide for that idea and it doesn't have to be that way. I guess the distinction that is (maybe) worth making is that Bakunin's is more of a second-person dialectic, wherein pointing out this tension is an exhortation for the reader to break out of it. It's addressed to YOU! in a way that Marx, even at his most rhetorically passionate, kind of avoids - the Marxist dialectic moves through history and therefore settles the reader as largely, a passive part of that history where Bakunin's wants to shake the reader into reframing his intellect.

>His characterization of authority as necessarily antagonistic
>to humanity by its having been anointed by a divine will
>brings the conflict of materialism vs. idealism into the
>political, worldly sphere. His comparisons of both Greek and
>Roman cultures and the nations of Italy and Germany are also
>attempts at anchoring the dialectic in concrete terms.

You're ahead of me here, so I've got to play catchup a little bit.

>Also, doesn't his incorporation, intentional or not, of
>Darwinism emphasize his vision of scientific advancement as
>the noblest objective of human work? Am I reading it correctly
>that you are saying he is mixing his models here in repeatedly
>making reference to evolutionary concepts instead of taking
>the dialectical approach?

Well, as you point out, he's got a dialectic in there - but yeah, it seems to me that the degree to which he leans on evolution makes his dialectic more confrontational. Rather than the thesis/antithesis/synthesis that moves through history progressively in a two steps forward, one step back kind of way, it seems like he's got a sort of constant confrontation of history with our tendency toward rebellion.

So, he's got the kind of inevitable "spirit of history" that he cribs from Hegel and Marx, but I think he'd characterize those guys (even Marx, maybe?) as the enemy "theologians and metaphysicians" of your citation - which means that the spirit of history gets divinized to one degree or another and isn't properly materialism. That's clear and intentional in Hegel, and I don't agree that Marx shares this but I suspect that Bakunin still reads Marx that way.

But evolution can come to the rescue because it's a material process. So it gives Bakunin a movement through history that he can identify as real progress but permits him to do so in such a way that doesn't require something that can be so clearly analogized to God. Does that make sense? Like I said, I need to catch up and I'm simultaneously trying to work some stuff out on paper. It's a weird dynamic as I rather like this text but I'm struggling with Bakunin himself because I recognize his sources but don't think he's reading them correctly or always in good faith.

>I think you may be right in saying he has Darwinism on the
>brain, because he also strangely echoes a kind of evolution
>from molecule to man in describing the spread of the fallen
>divine essence on earth:
>
>“In this way it passes through all degrees of materiality
>and bestiality – first, gas, simple or compound chemical
>substance, mineral, it then spreads over the earth as
>vegetable and animal organization till it concentrates itself
>in man. Here it would seem as if must become itself again, for
>it lights in every human being an angelic spark, a particle of
>its own divine being, the immortal soul.”

Wow. There's a whole lot going on there. Breaking things down to its smallest component and having it progress through materiality owes a ton to Darwin but then the immortal soul stuff is a tough right turn.

>I don't know his influences but it sounds like there is a
>template he is fixated on that acts as an undercurrent of him
>talking about completely separate and conflicting themes.

Yeah, I agree. I think he's gonna break out of it pretty soon though. This text is so much more aggressive (more or less what I was trying to say with the YOU! above) than his predecessors so I kind of imagine he's just trying to use them to clear himself some elbow room.