fear of an international Marxist middle class

From the Prudent Investor's blog: Britain's Ministry of Defence comissioned one of those "possible future studies" and, in addition to some genuinely scary and weird stuff, came up with this interesting scenario:

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".

I'm not sure what "popularism" is; is it a Brit version of "populism?" I wonder about the person who, in the brainstorming session of the future scenario study, suggested the proletarianization of the middle class. "The world's middle classes might unite" in a successful effort to "shape transnational processes in their own class interest." Is that the least, or worst, of the Defence Ministry's worries? Interesting stuff.