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The question of the relationship between scientists and politicians is discussed here from the perspective of continuity using the example of the intellectual relationship between Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) and both Marcel Cachin (1869–1958) and Max Bonnafous (1900–1975). In comparison, Mauss was more scientific and Cachin and Bonnafous were more political, even though all three were sociologists; a fact that brings him closer to Durkheim. We will describe the last Durkheimian moments of Cachin (in 1893) and Bonnafous (in 1933), before the two men shifted into professional politics and entered the history of the twentieth century, each in their own way, via Stalinism and Pétainism. While the link between sociology and politics seems inevitable, we conclude that there is an analytical need to separate the two, so as to avoid the temptation to connect, as Mauss and Durkheim did, in their illusions as scientists, but not in their scientific practices, the intrinsic force of sociology with the contingent weakness of politics.