> Apparently, Albert Parsons was willing to accept the socialist
> label, just as he was willing to accept the anarchist label, if
> we are to believe the quotes that Mike Ballard provided.
> I don't think that most people in his day, drew the fine
> distinctions that you draw between anarchists and socialists.
> I get the impression that you are trying to project back in
> an 1870s context, concerns that people back then did
> not necessarily share. To be sure there were clashes
> between Marxists and anarchists (i.e. Marx vs. Proudhon,
> and later Marx vs. Bakunin) but those were generally
> seen as conflicts within the broader socialist movement.
The 1880s were a different time, of course, and the fluidity of political labels was smoother. The break between socialists and anarchists was still rather fresh in 1886. Those clashes were fundamental and they led to a break up of the left with anarchists and socialists going their separate ways.
On the other hand, this Orwellian effort by leftover socialists to redefine the Haymarket martyrs as "socialists" (see the Socialist Worker) or "radical labor activists" (Illinois Labor History Society) is just a bunch of bullshit. Why can't these pinheads let dead anarchists be anarchists and leave it like that? You aren't going to find any anarchist trying to redefine Marx as some kind of libertarian socialist.
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