He held government responsible for disorder and believed that only a society without government could restore the natural order and re-create social harmony. He argued that the language could furnish no other term and chose to restore to the old word anarchy its strict etymological meaning. In the heat of his polemics, however, he obstinately and paradoxically also used the word anarchy in its pejorative sense of disorder, thus making confusion worse confounded. His disciple Mikhail Bakunin followed him in this respect. The immediate followers of the two fathers of anarchy hesitated to use a word so deplorably elastic, conveying a negative idea to the un- initiated, and lending itself to ambiguities which could be annoying to say the least.
Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism.
The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State. Some anarchists consider themselves to be the best and most logical socialists but they have adopted a label also attached to the terrorists, or have allowed others to hang it around their necks. They were under the influence of the International Anarchist Congress, held in London in 1881, and also of Johann Most, a social democrat turned anarchist, who reached America in 1882. Albert R. Parsons and Adolph Fischer were the moving spirits in the association, which took the lead in a huge mass movement concentrated on winning an eight-hour day.