In all times and in all places, whatever may be the name that the government takes, whatever has been its origin, or its organization, its essential function is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, and of defending the oppressors and exploiters. Its principal characteristic and indispensable instruments are the bailiff and the tax collector, the soldier and the prison. And to these are necessarily added the time-serving priest or teacher, as the case may be, supported and protected by the government, to render the spirit of the people servile and make them docile under the yoke.

Along with Christiaan Cornelissen he cited as example US trade-unions where trade-unions composed of skilled qualified workers sometimes opposed themselves to un-skilled workers in order to defend their relatively privileged position. Here he befriended Elisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin helping the latter to produce La Révolte. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of Mikhail Bakunin.

He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of Mikhail Bakunin. He was an enormously popular figure in his time. He was an insurrectionary anarchist[citation needed] early in his life.