Fernand Léonce Émile Pelloutier (1867–1901) was a French journalist, trade union organiser and anarcho-syndicalist theoretician. A revolutionary from an early age, after beginning a career in journalism, Pelloutier became involved in socialist politics. He briefly joined the French Workers' Party, but following a disagreement with its leader over his proposal for a general strike, he left the party and joined the anarchist movement. He became the leader of the Bourses du Travail, in which he advocated for anarcho-syndicalism. Having suffered from tuberculosis luposa for most of his career, he eventually succombed to the disease, and died in 1901 at the age of 33.

Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in broader society. The goal of syndicalism is to abolish the wage system, regarding it as wage slavery. Anarcho-syndicalist theory generally focuses on the labour movement. Reflecting the anarchist philosophy from which it draws its primary inspiration, anarcho-syndicalism is centred on the idea that power corrupts and that any hierarchy that cannot be ethically justified must be dismantled.