‘The expression Tu que no puedes appears to be only the beginning of a saying of Goya's time: Tu que no puedes, llévame à cuestas (‘You who cannot, carry me on your back’) which, according to a contemporary dictionary meant: ‘oppress the feeble who cannot resist.’ This sort of interpretation is confirmed by the 1799-1803 Ayala text which reads: ‘The producing classes of society carry all the weight on themselves, which is to say that they carry the true asses (of society) on their backs’. The Madrid Biblioteca Nacional text goes a step further in saying: ‘The poor and the working classes of society are those who carry the asses on their backs, which is to say that they carry all the weight of the contributions to the state.’
Two particularly marking aspects of this print's explanation concern the fact that the eyes of the two workers, carrying the asses, are closed (ignorance) and the presence of a sharp, cruel appearing spur on the hoof of the left-hand ass. (Eleanor) Sayre points out that this is not only a world turned upside down when men carry donkeys: there is here an even more profound moral negative meaning in an upside-down society in which productive men carry donkeys on their backs, donkeys who eat as they cannot and donkeys who also control them brutally with their spurs. In this print, Goya has presented us with one of the strongest condemnations of contemporary Spanish society found in all of his Caprichos.’

Johnson, R. S., Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, R.S. Johnson Fine Art, Chicago, 1992, p. 110.