Anarchism in France can trace its roots to thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration and was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. According to journalist Brian Doherty, "The number of people who subscribed to the anarchist movement's many publications was in the tens of thousands in France alone."

The origins of the modern anarchist movement lie in the events of the French Revolution, which the historian Thomas Carlyle characterized as the "open violent Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt worn-out Authority". Immediately following the storming of the Bastille, the communes of France began to organize themselves into systems of local self-government, maintaining their independence from the State and organizing unity between communes through federalist principles. Direct democracy was implemented in the local districts of each commune, with citizens coming together in general assemblies to decide on matters without any need for representation. When the National Constituent Assembly attempted to pass a law concerning the governance of the communes, the districts instantly rejected it as it had been constituted without their sanction, causing the scheme to be abandoned by its proponents.

In particular, the sans-culottes of the Paris Commune were denounced as "anarchists" by the Girondins. The Girondin Jacques Pierre Brissot spoke at length about the need for the extermination of the "anarchists", a group that did not form any political grouping in the National Convention, but nevertheless were active participants in the revolution and vocal opponents of the nascent bourgeoisie. The Enragés were among the defenders of the sans-culottes and expressed a form of proto-socialism that advocated for the transformation of France into a directly democratic "Commune of Communes", a call later taken up by the 19th century French anarchist movement. The Enragés attacked the bourgeoisie and the representational composition of the National Convention, which they opposed in favor of the sectional assemblies.

The conflict between the Paris Commune and the National Convention escalated into a "third revolution", as an insurrection was openly championed by the Enragés led by Jean-François Varlet, who desired to overthrow the convention and establish direct democracy throughout France. However, this attempted "revolution of anarchy" was defeated by the Girondins, partly due to a lack of support from the Jacobin Club and the National Guard. Nevertheless, the continuing escalation of the conflict and increasing radicalization culminated in the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, during which the Girondins were purged from the Convention and the Montagnards took control, centralizing power in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety and leaving the direct democratic ambitions of the sans-culottes and Enragés completely unfulfilled.

With the beginning of the Reign of Terror, the Enragés underwent a campaign of repression by the committee, although the government also attempted to make some economic concessions in order to not alienate the sans-culottes. The Enragés leader Jacques Roux committed suicide after being called to trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal and by 1794 the Enragés had all but disappeared from public view. The Committee subsequently began to move against sectional democracy and undertook a vast bureaucratization of the state machinery, converting elected positions into ones appointed by the state and transferring power from the hands of the sectional assemblies into those of the government. The power of the sans-culottes began to wane as the Terror intensified, with the Hébertists and Dantonists also being suppressed. Eventually, the fall of Maximilien Robespierre brought an end to the Terror and the Thermidorian Reaction began to rollback many of the revolutionary changes that had taken place.

The lasted vestiges of revolutionary anarchism were expressed by the Conspiracy of the Equals, which advocated for the overthrow of the Directory and its replacement with a communist society. In his Manifesto of the Equals (1796), the proto-anarchist thinker Sylvain Maréchal demanded "the communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth" and looked forward to the disappearance of "the revolting distinction of rich and poor, of great and small, of masters and valets, of governors and governed." The Conspiracy's attempt to overthrow the Directory failed and its leader François-Noël Babeuf was executed by guillotine, but their ideas carried on into the 19th century. Following the Napoleonic Wars and the restoration of monarchy, socialist and anarchist ideas inspired by the Enragés and Equals began to replace republican ideals, setting up a new framework for French radicalism that began to reach an apex during the time of the July Monarchy.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist." Proudhon opposed government privilege that protects capitalist, banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of property (and any form of coercion that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth in the hands of the few. Proudhon favoured a right of individuals to retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed that any property beyond that which an individual produced and could possess was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted from labor and was required for labor and the latter when it resulted in exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally called the former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labour and opposed the ownership of land.

Proudhon maintained that those who labor should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies on credit and land are the forces that prohibit such. He advocated an economic system that included private property as possession and exchange market but without profit, which he called mutualism. It is Proudhon's philosophy that was explicitly rejected by Joseph Déjacque in the inception of anarchist-communism, with the latter asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature."