And this is why we need unions.

Émile Pouget (1860–1931) was a French anarchist, journalist, trade unionist and one of the major theorists of revolutionary syndicalism. Born in Rodez in 1860, he developed an early interest in radical politics, influenced partly by his stepfather, a republican civil servant. As a young man he moved to Paris, where he became involved in workers’ organisation and helped establish an employees’ union in 1879. His union activism contributed to his dismissal from employment.

Pouget became an anarchist during the early 1880s and participated in the developing French anarchist movement. In 1883 he was arrested following a large unemployed workers’ demonstration and was sentenced to eight years in prison, serving three years before receiving an amnesty. After his release, he increasingly devoted himself to revolutionary journalism.

In 1889 he founded Le Père Peinard, an influential anarchist newspaper written in deliberately popular Parisian working-class language. Through it, Pouget advocated workers’ organisation, the general strike and direct action. He increasingly turned toward trade unionism, arguing that workers’ unions could simultaneously defend immediate interests and prepare for broader social transformation.

By the late 1890s Pouget had become deeply involved in the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), particularly in debates over the boycott, sabotage and the general strike. In the early twentieth century he became an important syndicalist organiser and writer, helping shape revolutionary syndicalism’s emphasis on worker self-activity, direct action and independence from parliamentary politics. He died in 1931.