Because, after all, we must resign ourselves to the inevitable and
say to ourselves, once and for all, that the bourgeoisie is condemned
to become every day more snarling, more openly ferocious, more
shameless, more summarily barbarous; that it is an implacable law
that every decadent class finds itself turned into a receptacle into
which there flow all the dirty waters of history; that it is a universal
law that before it disappears, every class must first disgrace itself
completely, on all fronts, and that it is with their heads buried in the
dunghill that dying societies utter their swan songs.
may I join you
—Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950)