The original 99 per cent

The Occupy Movement – with its slogan ‘we are the 99 per cent’ – may perhaps not be willing to acknowledge the origin of that idea. But it comes from none other thanIoseb Besarionis Dze Jugashvili, more commonly known as Joseph Stalin. In his lengthy report to the sixteenth congress, in 1930, of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), he observes:

The share of the kulaks and urban capitalists wasin 1927-28—8.1 per cent; in 1928-29—6.5 per cent; in1929-30—1.8 per cent.

Meanwhile,...