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A common Marxist critique of anarchism is that it embraces the spontaneity of the masses and ignores the need for an organization of conscious revolutionaries which influences on-going social movements. Anybody who says this hasn't read historic anarchist theory.
Bakunin, Kropotkin and Malatesta all advocated the formation of mass organisations which united workers as a class - trade unions - and specific anarchist organisations which brought anarchists together to coordinate their activity and share experiences and lessons from struggle.
One of the main roles of these specific anarchist organisations was to influence workers to adopt anarchist ideas or at least act like anarchists, such as taking direct action, rejecting electoral politics or making decisions within general assemblies.
Crucially, anarchists only thought their role was to influence workers through persuasion or engaging in acts which provided an example to others. They explicitly rejected the idea that any anarchist org should rule over workers or impose decisions on them through force.
Some of the main debates within the historic anarchist movement were on how specific anarchist orgs should be structured, what their programme should include and how they should relate to and participate within wider social movements, especially trade unions.
Anarchist authors not only spent a great deal of time writing and debating on what the role of anarchists as conscious revolutionaries should be in the class struggle. They also refered to themselves as the conscious minority, guide of the workers movement or even the vanguard.
The fact that historic anarchist workers thought they had the most advanced revolutionary ideas makes sense when you compare what they were doing with republicans and state socialists at the time who overwhelmingly focused on electoral politics.
I personally am not in favour of repeating this historic anarchist language and calling myself a part of the vanguard of the workers movement. But their ideas on the role of anarchists within social movements can be detached from these phrases and remain relevant today.
