Sébastien Faure

Sébastien Faure (born 6 January 1858 in Saint-Étienne, Loire, France) is a French anarchist politician, freethought and secularist activist and a principal proponent of synthesis anarchism. He served as Chairman of the Commune of France until 1936 after a vote of no confidence in his government.

Biography
Before becoming a free-thinker, Faure was a seminarist. He engaged in politics as a socialist before turning to anarchism in 1888.

In 1894, he was prosecuted in "The Trial of the thirty" ("Procès des trente"), but was acquitted. In 1895, he cofounded "Le Libertaire" with Louise Michel, taking the name of the earlier journal by Joseph Déjacque. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, he was one of the leading supporters of Alfred Dreyfus. In 1904, he created a libertarian school called "La Ruche" (The Hive) close to Rambouillet. In 1916, he launched the periodical "Ce qu'il faut dire". Faure also co-founded (with Voline) the Synthesis, or also known as synthesis anarchism which was an influential form of conceiving anarchist federations.