The oil and economic crisis provoked by Trump's assault on Iran and the Iranian regime's strategic closure of the Strait of Hormuz is only going to get worse over the coming months. Prices are going to keep climbing and stockpiles are going to keep dwindling. Australia has less than one month's worth of fuel left; Asian countries are limiting how much consumers can buy at the pump; prices in Pakistan have rocketed 90-odd per cent; and Europe is going to face a summer of discontent as jet fuel shortages necessitate waves of cancellations. No matter if Trump and Iran reach a deal in the next few weeks—which looks increasingly unlikely given Iran's upper hand has the world in a chokehold—the seismic effects of this war will cause global seizures for months to come.

What is so deeply frustrating about our exposed vulnerabilities—which will translate into lives lost, worsening economic inequality, and more dangerous gender relations for vulnerable women around the world—is that these vulnerabilities have been artificially maintained at the behest of a handful of governments and industries. The world could have been so different had the democratic and socialist momentum of the post-war period not been deliberately undercut by the Minority World's refusal to share power. In the 1950s, a wave of socialist movements was revolutionising politics across Africa and Asia, two continents brought together by the first democratically-elected leader of newly independent Indonesia, Sukarno. As Vincent Bevins details in his phenomenal book, The Jakarta Method, socialist leaders from both continents held an annual conference to deepen their ties and promote a unified vision of global socialism which would liberate the world from the inequalities and vulnerabilities provoked by capitalism. That dream was lynched by the CIA.

Similarly imperfect but daring dreams of revolutionising the raison d'être of states were sweeping the Middle East, with newly-elected leaders nationalising their oil supplies to invest in public infrastructure, including education. Critical to their sovereignty was chasing out the vampiric European oil companies who had sucked their political power dry for decades. The Brits and their allies did their best to undermine these revolutions, keeping the flow of goods which should have been reserved for national development throwing through a global capitalist market.

And lest we forget the anti-imperialist movement of Latin America which, despite its many coups and Western interventions, continues to default to a strident Leftist platform.

Socialism isn't the only future that was ripped from us. National nuclear programs were cut all over the world in the 90s, leaving us dependent on non-local fuel sources and geopolitical calm. The inventor of solar panels was kidnapped in 1909, leading to his business shutting down, which stalled the technology's growth by 40 years. Pedestrianised city centres were ripped up to make way for private vehicles at the behest of automobile companies financing American politics. Fair tax rates which took up to 90% from the very wealthiest were only scrapped under Reagan. Countries like West Papua were promised their independence only to have it stolen away.

Next week I'm releasing an episode with Julia Steinberger who explains that the most critical component of reducing our global energy and material footprints is the provision of public services. Had these socialist dreams been simply allowed to come to fruition, rather than cut off at the knees for daring to interfere with capitalist hegemony, it's very likely we would be living in a less material and energy intensive world today. A world of public luxury and private sufficiency was well within grasp, powered by whatever resources made the most sense for each localised context, be it nuclear, solar, wind, or fossil fuels. Land reforms which would have returned the commons to the people could have produced a global food supply independent of fertiliser whilst reducing economic precarity. Knowledge and technology could have been developed through open-source channels and shared widely. And it is highly likely the planet would have been better-off for our collective socialism because economic inequality drives environmental degradation.

The world could have been so different, and we in such a better position today, had the public desire for better standards, fairer distribution and practical technologies been allowed to come to fruition. We would not be so vulnerable today to the whims of despots, billionaires and religious fanatics. Perhaps they wouldn't even exist; the waves of terror they unleash upon the world would certainly have smaller impacts. I do not believe in the narrative of progress but what we do see time and time again throughout history is the people's willingness to fight for their freedom and dignity and sovereignty—and a convulsion of powerful forces to arrest that development.

I don't find this history depressing. I find it invigorating. We have been so close, so many times, to fundamentally changing the political DNA of our global hegemony, and our collective vision has barely changed across the ages: we want to eradicate inequality and improve our standards of living whilst contributing something to the world. The fight today to protect ourselves and our kinfolk from the worst of the eco-crisis is merely the most recent iteration of a battle between the haves and the have-nots since the dawn of modern states. That battle's progression has not been linear by any means, but the spirit and conviction by which it has been fought has not changed. Those powerful forces never cease convulsing to arrest us because we never cease to throw ourselves headlong at the horizon of history and dare it to expand.

We may not see, in our lifetimes, the kind of revolution which will liberate each and every one of us from the violence by which mass inequality is maintained. But that is not the point. The point is where you choose to push back, with all your might, so that in fifty, seventy, one hundred years, the children of that dawn can know that resistance is their inheritance, and new worlds are always possible, because look, look, we were so close, so close not very long ago.

Do you know something about a particular piece of history or technology that was lost to these powerful forces and want to riff on this piece? Feel free to write it up for the Commons section of the website I tentatively launched a few weeks ago. Currently open to paid subscribers only.