I didn’t want to be in the teeming mass of the working class. I wanted to work, but not like him. I didn’t want to disappear. I didn’t want to live and die in the same place with only a week at the seaside in between. I dreamed of escape – but what is terrible about industrialisation is that it makes escape necessary. In a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out. But then what happens to community – to society?
