Moribund Society and Anarchy by Jean Grave

This question of colonization immediately brings up that of the so-called inferior races: for have not those actions of the whites that have led to the extinction of these conquered peoples been attempted to be justified by the argument of so-called race inferiority? Is this not, moreover, the same argument employed against the worker to justify the exploitation to which he is subjected by taxing him with belonging to the inferior classes? Does it mean, then, that for the capitalist, and even for certain savants, the worker is but a beast of burden whose sole role consists in creating prosperity for the "elect," and reproducing other beasts of burden who in their turn may work out the happiness of the descendants of the "elect," and so on? However, we workers do not believe ourselves lower than anybody else; we believe our brains to be quite as capable of cultivation as those of our exploiters if we but had the leisure and means for it. Why should it not be the same with races said to be inferior?

If it were nobody but the politicians who asserted the inferiority of races an attempt to refute their assertion would be quite unnecessary; at the bottom of their hearts they care very little whether the assertion be proven or disproven, since it is but a pretext anyway; if it were shown to be false they would not fail to find others. But certain savants have tried to bring science to the support of this theory and prove that the white race is a superior race. There was a time when man believed himself to be the centre of the universe; he not only thought that the sun and stars revolved around the earth, but he declared that all this had been so created with a sole view to his advent. This is called the anthropocentric theory. Long centuries of study were required to eradicate these vain illusions, and make man understand the insignificant place he held in nature. But his ideas of domination are so strong and tenacious, he renounces them with so much difficulty, that after having lost the sceptre which he claimed over the stars he fell back upon the declaration that the terrestrial globe with all its products had been made on purpose to serve as a cradle for him, the king of creation. Again dispossessed of this fictitious kingdom by science, which shows that he is but the product of evolution, the result of a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances, that there was nothing premeditated in his coming into being, and consequently, that nothing could have been created with a view to his advent, man's spirit of domination was incapable of resolving to accept the facts as they are and consider itself an intruder; summing everything up it re-entrenched itself in this idea of superior races, and as a matter of course every race declared itself to be the most intelligent, the most beautiful, the most perfect. It is in virtue of this declaration that the white race absorbs all others, and upon their elimination the savants base the declaration!