Do I want to wish Voltairine de Cleyre a happy birthday?

Absolutely ridiculous comparison.
Lenin and Trotsky were typical political opportunists; their involvement in labour disputes was usually with the purpose of making a strike into a platform for their poxy Party. Can't say I know much about de Cleyre's activities, but Rocker organized immigrants in the East of London for pretty much no profit to himself at a time when no one else would. He got sweatshops unionized, made solidarity campaigns with local striking dockers possible, and gave shelter to radical fugitives from all over Europe under pain of exile or imprisonment.
That in old age he made the mistake of seeing the Allies as the only force capable of stopping Nazi Germany (even though as a German he was imprisoned in Britain during the war) in no way invalidates his championing of working class causes.
What did Trotsky do except squirm his way through the Petrograd soviet's chain of command and became a repulsive autocrat and opportunist?
Lenin and Trotsky waged AN ACTUAL WAR on the working class in Russia. Rocker and Kropotkin merely expressed certain opinions, which stupid and misinformed though they are, are nothing compared to Kronstadt and the destruction of workers' democracy by the Bolsheviks.

Uh, Trotsky was elected vice-chair of the Petrograd Soviet as far back as the 1905 revolution. So either the soviets were working-class institutions, and you thus have to account for working-class support of those eeevil party-based Marxists within the soviets, or all those evil party-based Marxists were mere chair warmers who never got their hands dirty with "real" working class politics, but in that case you also have to forgo any criticism of the later Bolshevik suppression of the soviets, since by your own assessment they weren't "real" working-class institutions anyway.

And my broader point is still valid: counter-revolutionary activity by self-proclaimed anarchists can always be excused as a "betrayal" of anarchist principles, while counter-revolutionary activity by party-Marxists is somehow always a fulfillment of sinister intentions.

Angelus dear, do take a break from this sophistic gymnastics or you'll tire yourself out.
The thing is I'm not talking about "anarchist principles" or "marxism," you, and you alone, are. Ideas are fine and grand on paper, and some are finer and grander than others (in this sense yeah, I do think most strands of anarchist communism will always trump political marxism), but it's deeds that matter the most. The fact is Rocker, through his solidarity work, improved the material conditions of many workers. He never had any political ambitions of any sort, as far as I know. That he became a war apologist later in life is something which definitely cannot be reconciled with his earlier work as anarchist organizer, and I'm not trying to do that. Pro-war Rocker was not the Rocker of Arbeyter Fraynd. People are different things at different stages in their lives, depending on what conditions they find themselves in. I would've thought that was painfully obvious to anyone with even only a quasi-materialist understanding of history/society.
Trotsky was at best a leftist agitator who "helped" stoke a revolutionary fire that was already burning quite intensely without him (he comes close to saying as much himself in his History of the RR).
The fact that he and other professional partyists were "seat warmers" does not mean soviets per se were anti-working class. This is a ridiculous way of looking at anything; soviets were both organs of working-class self-organisation AND (esp. after the October events) embryonic vehicles of the Party's dictatorship. The latter tendency won out in the end (because of specific historical circumstances).1 The soviets were never just one thing; no organ of class struggle is (see "occupy" events for contemporary examples).

• 1. (Yes, this means there were rank-and-file Bolsheviks, at least before the purges became status quo, that worked for actual socialism, and whom I don't consider "evil Marxists," because their structural role was not the same as Trotsky's or Lenin's.)

Yadda yadda yadda.

Translation into English: what anarchists do is "improve the material conditions of many workers". What Marxists do is always a "party dictatorship in embryo".

Truisms of anarchist sectarianism, episode #308. Tune in next week for more.

jeez Angelus, way to alienate the crowd .

Translation to English" What Marxists do 'explain how Trotsky really was a nice guy and how things could have all been different*'

*if the bastard hadn't have implemented Taylorist working conditions SOMETHING NEITHER ROCKER NOR KROPOTKIN WOULD HAVE EVER DONE!

Nope, that's the thing, I really don't things would've been all that different if, say, Trotsky had been in power rather than Stalin. Maybe there wouldn't have been show trials directed against upper echelons of the party, but there probably would have been a party dictatorship and some variant of forced accelerated industrialization.

I'm not a moralist who thinks good intentions have some sort of magical ability to transcend material conditions.

As long as we're talking about who our favorite superheros are, I think Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko's mid-60s creations for Marvel comics are still the best.

well, that was was actually meant in jest (the post that is). But its nice to know that the stereotypes of comms having no sense of humour bares some relation to reality . Still Rocker is to Trotsky what Superman is to the Green Lantern!

What's that then, shit?

swings and round abouts really. All comics are shite. I just always thought the Green Lantern looked particularly bad

It has a ring that can make anything you imagine. ANYTHING. Even your smutty deeds with Scarlett Johnansson a reality.

So rather than read a book you've yourself selected and bought, you'd rather believe nine lines on the Internet from FallBack rather than forming your own opinions from your own reading and subsequent judgement. What independepence of thought.