Across the United States and other countries around the world, as reported by many news organizations, including the BBC (BBC 2011), protest movements are gathering around financial districts to voice discontent with the growing inequality of the world economy.

They call themselves the 99 percent, arguing that it is the 1 percent of the population who control the financial markets, and in turn, the majority of the wealth. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO 2011), income tripled for the richest 1 percent between 1997 and 2007 and only increased by 18 percent for the poorest 20 percent. Additionally, in the years preceding the financial crisis, between 2005-2007, the top 20 percent of the population earned more than the entire bottom 80 percent combined.

A great deal of statistics, but the general theme is that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing. And the feeling in the protest camps is that it is the 1 percent who have created the de-regulations that not only allow them to make even greater profit, while others do not share the same growth, but also prevent any government action from preventing it.

In general, those who earn the most not only control the financial markets by owning the banks and the stock exchange, but also have enough political sway to ensure that the regulations that prevent corrupt or scrupulous practices are removed.

In the middle of the 19th century, Karl Marx described a process of capitalization with the central theme being economy equals politics. His theories described how, as mass industrialization brought on the mass production of material goods, this in turn would allow those at the top of the financial ladder to prosper.

However, in order to maximize profits in a system where competition is key, then, this financial “bourgeoisie” will not only cut costs and wages but also use political power to achieve this end.

His theory of Marxism described the evolution of this model to the point where the working class could no longer afford to purchase the material goods being produced and, as such, realizing that the only way to achieve financial equality is to regain political equality, they would therefore revolt against the system. Therefore, capitalism would sow the seeds of its own destruction.

Many people confuse this idea of Marxism with that of communism, yet Marx argued that they are indeed separate entities. Marxism is the theory that capitalism has inherent faults that will in the end produce its own destruction. Communism is the end process whereby society has become so equal that there is no longer the necessity for a State to exist.

The Stalinist-era and resulting so-called Communist governments, such as the Soviet Union or Mao’s Chinese republic, were indeed not Communist at all. They were merely socialist regimes attempting to force the process of revolution by dissent. In fact their common theme of centralized government with massive control over the population was exactly what Marx argued against. In his theory, revolution would not need to be forced, it would organically come about as a natural progression from the dissent produced by this capitalist inequality.

— Jamie Greig is a junior in journalism and electronic media. He can be reached at jgreig@utk.edu.