"Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. The sympathy I felt for Kō, the menial at my grandmother’s in Korea; the feeling, almost as for a comrade, toward the poor dog they kept; and the boundless sympathy I felt for all the oppressed, maltreated, exploited Koreans I have not written about here but whom I saw while at my grandmother’s—all were expressions of this. Socialist ideology merely provided the flame that ignited this antagonism and this sympathy, long smoldering in my heart.
Oh how I want to… to give my life, to give everything, in the struggle for this wretched class of mine!"
Adam Curtis, in his movie HyperNormalisation, talked of a theory that this kind of activism disappeared around the 70s and 80s. It's the kind that requires banding into groups, to a significant extent giving up individuality. According to the theory this is also the death of politics: the hyper individuality took away politic's power and left only spectacle and populism. The way he told it was that the hippy revolution back-fired: the look-within insight turned into consumerism and heightened individuality. My retelling is a bit scattered. The movie is well worth a watch.
Oh how I want to… to give my life, to give everything, in the struggle for this wretched class of mine!"