Notably, Pouget introduced the term "sabotage" as a tactical approach, a concept later adopted by the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) at its Toulouse Congress in 1897.

In 1883, Pouget and Louise Michel were jailed after they led a protest at Les Invalides, where the emblematic anarchist black flag is said to have been flown for the first time.

There, he was exposed to international anarchist militants like Errico Malatesta, as well as the British trade unionist movement, which inspired his contributions to revolutionary syndicalism.

Returning to France, Pouget resumed his political activities, starting the newspaper La Sociale in 1895 and collaborating closely with Fernand Pelloutier to promote revolutionary syndicalist ideas within the French labor movement.

[2] Pouget's stepfather Philippe Vergely lost his position as a petty official because of his political writings in a small-scale journal that he had established titled L'Aveyron Republicain (The Aveyron Republican).

[9] He became a regular at meetings of the Cercle Anarchiste International, which gathered in Paris' 15th arrondissement to discuss tactics including the general strike and a potential alliance with the Bourse du Travail labor councils.

[11] Following the promulgation of the Lois scélérates, a set of press laws outlawing the advocacy of any crime, in December 1893, the anarchist movement started a series of political assassinations.

[12] This in turn led to a series of arrests of prominent anarchists, and on 21 February 1894, Pouget published his final issue of Le Père Peinard and went into exile.

[15][14] During this time, he avoided the anarchist circle Club Autonomie, composed mainly of French immigrants in London, but maintained contact with Louise Michel, Augustin Hamon and Fernand Pelloutier.

Crucially, Pouget's tactical approach became heavily influenced by an international group of militants including Errico Malatesta and Olivia Rossetti Agresti, all of whom were contributors to the anarchist newspaper The Torch of Anarchy.

Pouget's period in London led to his adoption of syndicalist tactics which would, together with Pelloutier's similar trajectory, prove instrumental in the eventual rise to dominance of revolutionary syndicalism in the French labor movement.

[23][24] During the publishing of La Sociale, Pouget collaborated closely with Fernand Pelloutier and Bernard Lazare, advocating for revolutionary syndicalist ideas within the French labor movement and seeking to unite anarchists with antiparliamentarian socialists across Europe.

The antiparliamentarians set up a debate in margin to the London Congress where, concurring with Malatesta's views, Pouget criticized the Marxists' economic determinism and argued against forcibly collectivizing agricultural land, as well as the notion of waiting in anticipation for the ostensibly inevitable proletarianization of the peasant class.

He passionately argued for sabotage as a tactic of the labor movement, leading to its adoption by the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) at its Toulouse Congress in September 1897.

French society became deeply polarized, with supporters of Dreyfus known as Dreyfusards and opponents labeled anti-Dreyfusards, reflecting underlying tensions of antisemitism.

[34] He used the instability to organize a campaign in favor of anarchists condemned to forced labour, and in October co-signed a manifesto of a Revolutionary Coalition Committee which brought together various libertarian factions in opposition to anti-Dreyfusard nationalism.

[34][36] In 1900, Le Père Peinard was discontinued and Pouget became the editor of the CGT's daily newspaper La Voix du peuple (Voice of the People), its title a reference to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

[30] The year 1902 marked the culmination of the anarchist permeation of trade unions, with the merger of the CGT and the Fédération des Bourses de travail, a federation of local labor exchanges.

Pouget, Griffuelhes, Yvetot and Delesalle thus became the effective leaders of the syndicalist movement in France in the following decade, forming the revolutionary faction of the union's leadership.

[38] His position was that the struggle for immediate reforms, if done through direct action, was not only an end in itself, but also an evolutionary moment in a process of social change which would gradually intensify to the point of revolution and the overthrow of wage labor.

Therefore, he argued, individual reforms served to build a mass social movement with sufficient strength and consciousness to challenge and ultimately end capitalism.

Nonetheless, he maintained his advocacy for syndicalist tactics such as the general strike and sabotage until the outbreak of World War I. Additionally, he authored several stories in Jean Jaurès' L'Humanité in 1913.