This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning – from "I" to "we." If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I", and cuts you off forever from the "we."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14. Steinbeck speaks here about the power of "we" in his strong warning message to the powers that be. He warns the banks and landowners of a revolution of the dispossessed as he positions Marx and Lenin alongside Jefferson and Paine. The same powers could save themselves if they understood that the dispossessed were no longer isolated individuals but were uniting together in common cause. But Steinbeck believes that their wealth wealth has placed them in their own bubble and isolated them and cut them off from the people.