This work results from questions raised by the research project "Pedagogy of Hope in Popular Social Movements: Perspectives for work, politics and education envisaged by ‘Movimento dos Sem Terra’ - MST (Movement of Landless People)"carried out by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. In this paper the use of the category ‘exclusion’ is problematized with the purpose of assessing its potential to identify the ability of the popular social movements to break with processes of social exclusion and to find alternatives for work, social relationships and education. Two possible uses of this category are the one made by Marx when retracing the genesis of the capital versus work relationship, and the exposure of poverty and intolerance as the ingredients of the "new social issue". The ‘culturalist bias’, the affiliation to the sociology of Durkheim and the conceptual vagueness, however, set limits to the category which thereby can not reach an understanding of poverty and unemployment as produced by the class struggle. Therefore, it can not apprehend popular social movements as producers of collective alternatives for work, society and education.
Exclusion; Popular Social Movements; Education