During the interwar years, the international communist organizations tried to mobilize unemployed workers. That strategy consisted in giving to those movements an international revolutionary prospect through the “class vs. class” tactics, which was supposed to lead to the collapse of capitalism. Thus, the unemployed enjoyed a political rehabilitation, being considered as a “revolutionary avant-garde”. At the time, the virtues expected from the “good” communist activist — the one who could drag the proletarianized masses into the class struggle — have also been redefined. But the mass mobilization of unemployed workers remained, generally speaking, a political wishful thinking. The French experience illustrates that failure: it reveals how difficult it was to lead unemployed workers into a wide, lasting mobilization. Above all, that experience shows how complex, ambiguous, distrustful and filled with stigmatization were the links between impoverished people and their backers — whose involvement was not only a matter of “conscience”, but also the result of strategic considerations. Thus, looking back on the historical difficulties of the unemployed workers’ movements which took place during the 30’s proves that today’s debates on the mobilization of “deprived” (“sans”), “outcast” (“exclus”), or “precarious” people are not as "new" as one hastily thinks they are.