summary

The author described his experiences and recorded his thoughts changed through the experiences. The author was born in the working-class, environment he lived in and grew up was really crude,raw and rough, he resolved to climb up the towered edifice of the society. This is the only way out. Up above,men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed in beautiful gowns. Also, there were good things to eat. Also,there were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. To realize his dream, he became a capitalist. He exploited,squeezed his staff, even robbed others . He knew robbery was precisely the spirit of capitalism. The capitalist takes away the possessions of his fellow-creatures by means of a rebate, or of a betrayal of trust, or by the purchase of senators and supreme-court judges. He was merely crude. That was the only difference. He used a gun. But later for some reasons,he was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists. His employer worked him nearly to death. Too much work sickened him, so he fled from work and became a tramp, begging his way from door to door. In those days, he reflected himself and thought deeply. He realised the cruelty of capitalism and the common feature between brain labour and muscle labour. He decided to become a brain labourer. During the pursuit of the knowledge, he became a socialist and a revolutionist. He struggled to overthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to build the society of future . He witnessed a lot of chaos and disorder on the back of the bourgeoisie. So he went back to the working-class, caring no longer to climb. There he was content to labour, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals, idealists, and class-conscious working-men. He resolved to topple over rotten life and unburied dead.