Things will be different, one day
This is how we make history
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.