One of the main things Marx and anarchists have in common is a commitment to human development. Just as Marx advocated the “development of human powers as an end in itself”, Goldman sought "the widest and greatest scope for unhampered human development".

Malatesta thought that "the purpose of human life here on earth" was "the full and optimum development of our faculties". Galleani wrote that everyone should be free "to grow, to develop his faculties in every way, to achieve his full and integral development".

Kropotkin argued that an anarchist communist society is one in which all people can "reach the full development of his faculties - the full development of his individuality". Bakunin insisted that "every man should have the material and moral means to develop his full humanity".

Rocker defined "freedom" as "the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account".