I Am the People, the Mob

“I Am the People, the Mob” depicts a working-class revolution as a constant threat when those workers are exploited. Despite the prophetic turn in the poem’s last two lines, the speaker’s foreseen revolution is mitigated by a few significant factors. First, the speaker collective suggests that the oppressive treatment of the people results in “the best of [them being] sucked out and wasted” (Line 5), and that their effort and work life is commanded by “Everything but Death” (Line 5), and not their own drive and desire to work. The constant demand for labor and the low wages those job earn, in other words, result in a “wasted” populace that has lost their potential to be to be their “best.” The idea, additionally, that “Everything but Death comes to [them] and makes [them] work” (Line 5), also suggests that “Death” is the only foreseeable reprieve from the worker’s vicious cycle of exploitation. These conditions make it difficult for the people to actualize their power as the producers of “all the great work in the world” (Line 2).

Similarly, the great individuals that come from the people are only partially effective. Even the “Napoleons and Lincolns” (Line 4) are temporary measures to improve the status of the worst off, and when their influence wains, more similar individuals are required to be sent forth from the people.