The fact is that the so-called European civilization—" Western" civilization—as it has been
shaped by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to
which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem;
that Europe is unable to justify itself either before the bar of" reason" or before the bar of"
conscience"; and that, increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more
odious because it is less and less likely to deceive.