Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

While great poetry has traditionally been the realm of the bourgeois elite, those whose leisure to write has been bought with the sweat and blood of their fellow men, the occasional true master has managed to overcome the oppression of wage-slavery, to become the voice of his or her compatriots, the proletariat. Such a master was the artist we know as Mother Goose. Though she was forced to work under a foolish pseudonym and cloak her brilliance in children's rhymes to escape the oppression of the Management, nonetheless her cry of rage against the system of her oppression and of triumph at its ultimate and inevitable demise rings true though the ages in such works as "Humpty Dumpty."

The title character of this poem, Humpty Dumpty himself, is a clear caricature of the capitalist boss as seen by the workers. The name itself has a foppish, ridiculous sound to it. Furthermore, popular tradition has attributed to Humpty Dumpty the form of an egg with a face, arms, and legs. The egg's rotund shape and its pallor brings to mind a well-fed, foolish dandy or nobleman, just the sort of boss-character Mother Goose might have seen. Furthermore, the egg metaphor captures the fragility of any such boss whose power rests on the backs of those he oppresses, and indeed of the capitalist system as a whole.

Mother Goose further extends her metaphor with the image of the Boss-figure precariously perched on a wall. On a basic level, the wall is a symbol of the exclusive property rights that allow those in power to control even something as basic as land or living-space, and to keep those without power, the proletariat, out. On a deeper level the wall symbolizes the central division created by the capitalist system: that between those within the wall, those who own land and are their own masters, and those outside, who own nothing and must depend on the whims of others for their daily bread. It is this division that turns waged workers into mere animals scrabbling with their brothers for whatever scraps their masters throw to them, while the masters look on from behind their walls. It is this division that allows the capitalists to treat workers like slaves, and thus makes capitalism itself possible. Thus Humpty, the embodiment of capitalism, rests atop the wall like a sentry, guarding the divisions.

Yet Humpty's position is precarious indeed. For it is not possible to keep a race of men forever in the position of dogs. Eventually, the foolish sentry must fall and the wall itself must succumb to the inevitable advance of the workers. When this occurs, Humpty has a "great fall" indeed; the very system that created him is destroyed. Once the workers have tasted their own freedom, there will be no chance of repairing Humpty or the Wall he guards; they will be nothing more than the ghost of a memory to the proletariat after it has risen at last to claim its own. The last line of the poem emphasizes this by evoking armies, obsolete once the system at the route of human conflict is destroyed. It also mentions the "king," the chief of the capitalists in Mother Goose's time, and using a possessive construction that covers both horses, dumb animals man has enslaved for millenia, and men in one breath. When the Revolution of which Mother Goose is speaking comes, men will not be owned and enslaved like horses. Without his workers' help, the king will be pwerless to repair either his sentry or his wall. This fact in itself emphasizes the irony of the capitalist system that exploits workers like slaves, yet depends on them for its very survival. Today the working class of the world is ready to feel its own power, is ready to unite and bring about a truly free, classless society under the famous motto, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Yet it is inspiring to look back from the beginning of this great new era into the dark times, and see that even so far from hope of salvation, so deep in the smog of capitalism, some true visionaries saw the Light. Such a visionary was Mother Goose.

no parking