It is a popular belief among anarchists themselves that all anarchists are socialists. Indeed, in the Anarchist FAQ, when discussing the divisions within anarchism, it promotes that the main divide is between individualist anarchists and social anarchists. But they are all, nevertheless, socialists. The crucial reason why is because of the way socialism is defined. Socialism, they say, is simply the negation of exploitation of man by man. And since individualists are against that same exploitation as social anarchists, they are counted as socialists. But this a loose definition of socialism and someone like myself subscribe to a more narrow definition that asserts socialism is a specific conception of an economic arrangement. It refers to how that exploitation is brought to an end.
What I find wrong about the Anarchist FAQ is that it presents all of this as if it is consensus among anarchists. It may well be. I mean, if you ask any anarchist they will likely say the same thing. It is treated as a matter of fact. But here is the problem. If you consult classical anarchist writers like Malatesta, you would know that they don’t believe every anarchist is a socialist. And they pretty much never used the label ‘social anarchist’; it would seem this came around more recently, probably since the 1960s or 1970s. If somebody knows better than me, please contribute to this thread.
Instead, many anarchists, including Malatesta, identified themselves with anarchist socialism, which pretty much implies that not all anarchists are socialists (an implication not present in the category ‘social anarchism’). It was used to distinguish themselves from socialists who were not anarchists, essentially social democrats and other authoritarians, and from anarchists who were not socialists. Malatesta spoke of it as a distinct current from individualism. And it encompassed only anarchist collectivists and anarchist communists. Anarchist socialism was often brought up as a reconciliation of only the latter two tendencies, to constitute a movement.
It might be said that individualist anarchists themselves said they were socialists. But why should we take their word for it? Someone like Malatesta is a more valuable insider to the anarchist movement than someone like Benjamin Tucker. Who would disagree?
In my view, anarchism should be divided into three branches: individualist anarchism, mutualism, and socialist anarchism. Further, individualist anarchism and mutualism could be grouped and categorized as non-socialist. And it should be explained why. We should do this when we introduce anarchism to others new to the idea rather than the too common view found in the Anarchist FAQ.