One hundred and fifty thousand years, perhaps, were required for us to emerge from animality; and ten thousand years have witnessed the extinction of the Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Roman, Hindu, and Mauritanian civilizations, whilst the Mongolian race was continuing a parallel development. Today we witness the beginning of the decadence of the Latin races, which will shortly become a death-agony unless a social transformation occurs in time to rejuvenate the physical and moral decay entailed by the capitalistic system. Perhaps, if the nations continue to entrench themselves behind their frontiers, our prestige may be taken from us by the Slavic races, which appear younger to us, having more lately come into the current of European civilization. But how long will that period last? What will come after? What will be the regenerating current which will come to restore our anaemiated race, exhausted by the excesses of a badly directed civilization? Every civilization, in its decline, has seen a new race surging in, which, being capable of assimilating the knowledge of the race it replaced, yielded in exchange a new brain, new aptitudes, young and vigorous blood; and this disappearance of civilizations would seem to show that every race has but a certain amount of energy and ability to expend, after which it disappears or remains stationary.
Relative to the foregoing, however, some friends object that today there are no more races, that the civilized world is divided into States, (remains of a past which is in discord with present reality) but constituting an indissoluble whole—civilization from France to Russia and from America to Australia being the same civilization everywhere; that there are no longer any opposing races, but opposing classes. Assuredly we also are convinced that, given facilities of locomotion from one country to another, the enormous extension of international relations, races are bound to disappear by fusing, mixing with each other through intercrossings; that is the very reason we are choked with indignation at seeing entire tribes disappear before they have been able to contribute to our civilization the original share which they may have potentially possessed. When we reflect upon the massacre of inoffensive tribes, on whole races vanished or about to disappear, our thoughts overflow with sadness and melancholy; for we ask ourselves if these “inferior” brothers did not possess some of those qualities, so many of which are lacking in us. The white race could not understand the retarded races; it has broken them. If it had sought to bring them up to a higher phase of development, it could only have done so after the course of a long evolution; but it has never desired to educate; it has desired to exploit, and exploitation becomes extermination in the long run.
To sum up: in view of our rage for mastery let us ask ourselves whether the civilization of the Iroquois, for example, was much inferior to ours. Are we right in proclaiming ourselves superior to the Incas, who had at least learned how to secure food and shelter to all the members of their society, while poverty gnaws our modern civilization? Nothing justifies the theory of the alleged “inferior races;” it serves only to justify the crimes of the alleged “superior” races.
XVI
Why We Are Revolutionists
We have demonstrated—at least we hope so—the right of every individual, without exception, to evolve without constraint; the right of everyone to satisfy his needs fully; and hence the illegitimacy of authority, property, and all the institutions which the exploiting class has established to defend those privileges which can only be secured by the spoliation of the masses. It remains for us to examine the means for overturning this state of things which we attack, for founding the society which we demand in the future, and to prove the legitimacy of these means; for many persons who admit our criticisms of the existing social condition, who applaud our vision of a harmonious world, fly into transports at the idea of employing violence. In their opinion it would be better to proceed step by step through persuasion, seeking gradually to ameliorate existing conditions. “Everything in nature,” they tell us, “is transformed by evolution; why, then, not proceed in the same way in sociology instead of wishing for sudden ruptures? While seeking to transform society by force, you risk wrecking everything without producing any good; above all you risk getting crushed yourself; bringing about a reaction not less violent than the attack and thus causing a setback to progress for several centuries.” This reasoning which is addressed to us by honest men, who discuss solely with a desire for enlightenment, rests upon a semblance of truth and merits being considered.
It is true that everything in nature is transformed by a slow process of evolution, by an uninterrupted sequence of progress acquired little by little, imperceptible if followed throughout its course, bursting upon the eye only when we pass suddenly from one period to another. It is thus that life progressed upon our globe, it is thus that man emerged from animality; and therefore it
