ABSTRACT
I am in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, fighting for Spanish democracy and against world fascism…for those of us with a bourgeois background the transition from organizing one's life around personal interests to social interests is a tremendous emotional strain—it is the problem of Peer Gynt. [Yet] to be involved in solving social problems automatically solves most of one's personal problems…the more one is interested in social problems, the more personal hardships are passed by almost unnoticed, simply because they are too insignificant…in fact the words selfishness and altruism lose their original meaning and merge into one quality, namely social consciousness.
